Klarinet Archive - Posting 000395.txt from 2005/08

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Composers as teachers
Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 15:51:52 -0400


Tony Pay wrote,
>I don't think it does me much good being here.

Probably not, but it does us some good, so I hope you can stick around
without becoming *too* ill.

>Perhaps I'll go and join a list about, I don't know,
>computer programming, or health management, and
>tell them what *I* think about what *they* know
>and care about, and see how *I* get on.

Do you have time to stay on this list *and* have a go at those others? I
think it's useful for professionals to get feedback from educated laymen
(and better you than me...). If computer professionals really understood
*why* some of us sometimes cuss their products, instead of just assuming we
cuss them because we're too stupid and too lazy to learn what we'd need to
learn to make best use of them, then I think we'd have better computers. I
don't think you would let a computer expert get away with calling you
"idiot" for saying that the explanation in the manual looks opaque. Sic
'em!

>I like you because you're clearly somebody
>other than 'yourself as a clarinet fan'.

Aw, shucks. Well, one of the reasons I like you and wanted to meet you is
because you're more than a great clarinet player. I like being surprised
by a subject you might suddenly introduce and relate to clarinet playing
and I like being unable to instantly comprehend everything you write --
partly because it's good writing and enjoyable to read, but also because I
learn more from sorting out something complicated than I do from just
saying, "Oh, yeah, cool," and moving right along.

Since debate helps sort out truth from myth, and since I don't regard
debate opponents as enemies, I hope fear of anger and name-calling (though
I'd prefer to skip those parts) doesn't lead us to dumb down these
discussions to avoid conflict, the way educators sometimes do on the
specious pretext that music is "only" art: "Frivolous; unnecessary, fun and
games, so let's lighten up!" I think music is important to human beings
on some basic, primitive level (I was beyond disappointed when the
so-called Neanderthal flute turned out be nothing but a gnawed bone that
was 50,000 years stale), and therefore I think these discussions about
interpreting music are well worth the trouble, and, yes, the fights. This
conversation goes to what music really means and even to what music really
*is*. All that antiquity behind it, and yet we really don't have a
universally accepted definition that lets us say, *this* is musical--keep
it!--but *that* is not musical--throw it out!

>You're not a great clarinet player...but you don't
>pretend to be.

That's just the self-preservation gene throttling up. I'd better not
pretend to be a great clarinet player, because if I did, sooner or later
somebody like you would want to hear me prove it, and I'd be *so* busted.

>(Actually, you're probably a much better player
>than you think you are:-)

Ah, that's the secret of my success (such as it is). Thanks to the rich
legacy of that old fraud, Freud, and the fulminations of his faithful
followers and ferocious detractors, these days nobody's naive enough to
believe anybody's self-evaluation. If I boasted about my clarinet playing,
then everybody would assume I'm a jumped-up braggart who probably plays
like a pig. But, when I assess my clarinet playing realistically, to wit:
I do play like a pig -- then, naturally, nobody believes that, either, and
thus, without ever playing a note in public, I get credited with playing
better than I think I do. Evidently some people on this list even suspect
that I must be an uncommonly modest person who probably plays rather well.
Meanwhile, on the rare occasions when I do have to prove myself, I can
easily prove that I wasn't lying about playing like a pig, and thus I get
credit for being honest, for not indulging in obnoxious false modesty *and*
for not boasting. Not bad!
;-)

Lelia Loban

P. S. I'm making my stupid pet human type this. She types too much, but
she can damned well think she's fallen asleep and type some more, while I
control her sloshy wet monkey brain. (It's high time *somebody* took
control of it.) I just want tell Tony Pay that I haven't forgotten about
how you aimed that foreign screech-stick up the stairs and let it hoot at
me last year, when I peeked around the corner of the door. How rude!
*She* likes your playing because *she's* in league with the v*c**m cl**n*r
and it's possessed by g*rb*ge tr*ck demons, but I'm not fooled. And my
dinner was late one night last year because of you. I haven't forgotten
that, either. Sssssso there.

Ssssssssss!
Shadow Cat

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