Trumpet Christmas

Snow fell softly outside the windows, a warm glow from the sinking evening light as the sun wandered slowly down on Christmas eve. Johnny was the last person working the diner. His dad had opened the place over twenty years ago, and had sent home all the other employees to spend Christmas with their families because he actually cared about them. Johnny's mother had had passed away a few years after Johnny had started going to school. He had come home one day to find his dad sitting at the kitchen table with his head between his hands, a bottle between his lips, and an empty space between his ribs where his heart used to be.

Johnny sauntered over to the window and flipped a switch that lit a neon "OPEN" sign, watching it flicker a few times, then beam its bright neon declaration into the descending darkness. Johnny walked back behind the counter and poured himself another cup of coffee, and the top half of a nip of peppermint schnapps. The nice thing about this job is that he could always drink as much coffee as he wanted, so long as his dad didn't catch him, which he rarely did, on account of hardly being able to be bothered to work anymore these days. He mostly sat at home and paid the bills for the diner, cut the checks for the employees, watched TV, and drank. Johnny took a long pull of his coffee and wondered why they celebrated Christmas at all, since they didn't believe in Jesus. He thought for a bit, then started on wondering why he also celebrated valentine's day since he knew no one loved him.

His thoughts were interrupted by the bell tied to the door, and in walked an old man. He was rather stout, broad of hip and shoulder, and had a great big white beard that blended into the cascade of white hair from the peripheries of his balding head. Johnny figured that he just got off a shift working as a mall Santa, but decided not to ask. People can be touchy about this kind of thing.

"What can I get for you?" Johnny asked.

"Coffee, and steak and eggs." The man replied. Johnny figured he'd seen the BREAKFAST ALL DAY sign posted outside.

Johnny poured out a cup of coffee and put it on the bar counter. "Sure thing, set yourself down anywhere you'd like. I'll be a minute."

A few minutes later, Johnny emerged from the kitchen with a heaping plate of eggs and a few thin strips of cheap steak that had been seared up on the same girdle. He slid it in front of the man and wandered down the counter a few steps. He figured if the man looked to be wanting to eat alone, he'd just wander out around the register, but if he wanted to talk he'd be close enough to hear. The man picked up the salt and pepper and seasoned the eggs. Johnny watched as black flakes drifted through the air and came to a rest on a bed of fluffy yellow unborn chicken.

The man looked up and said "I'm a mall Santa".

Johnny hoped it wasn't because he was caught staring. "I was wondering about that."

"Everyone always is." The man replied.

"Why aren't you working tonight?" Johnny asked. It seemed to him this ought to be his busiest night.

"Because I'm Santa". The man replied.

"Well I know that. But shouldn't you be making some last minute orders on Christmas Eve?" Johnny asked.

"No, I'm him. I'm the real Santa" Santa said.

"Oh. I see." Johnny said. He didn't see. But he figured he'd drop it. Plenty of weird folk wash through this diner. It's best to just leave them be.

"I never stopped at your house because your father asked me not to" said Santa.

"And why did he do that?" Johnny asked.

"Because he didn't think anything was good enough for you" said Santa. 

"That's some bullshit" Johnny muttered.

"He didn't think there was anything good enough for you after your mother died" said Santa.

Johnny straightened up. he felt a little sweat appear in his shirt. He didn't know what to say. 

"She was the best thing that happened to him, and you were the best thing that happened to her" Santa continued. "When she died, he was afraid that if you came to love anything like you loved her, you'd see how broken everything is."

"That's a shit reason for Christmas to not come at all" Johnny spat.

"It came once, remember?" said Santa, not really asking. "In the 6th grade."

"I remember. I got a trumpet" said Johnny.

"Yeah. What happened to it?" Santa asked.

"I stopped playing in high school. They were going to make us march and I figured if I was going to stand out in the sun all day and get yelled at I might as well get paid for it." said Johnny.

"You were pretty good" said Santa.

"I was pretty good for an 8th grader" Johnny corrected.

"Your father was pretty proud of you. I know he never said anything. Hell, he never even came to your concerts, but he heard you practicing."

"So how did he figure the trumpet was good enough for me?" Johnny demanded.

"Remember when your mom used to sing?" Santa asked.

"Yeah" said Johnny, below his breath

"That used to be one of his favorite things about her. He'd stay up all night listening to her sing you to sleep." said Santa

"So what, he wanted me to take her place? Isn't that some sort of fucked up" Johnny muttered.

"No, he saw that you were a quiet kid, just shutting yourself up all the time. He knew how much you loved your mama and wanted you to have a voice to speak with that he knew he could understand" said Santa.

By now the plate and coffee were cold, and Johnny and Santa stared at each other in the diner. Johnny knew now why his dad acted the way he did when he told him he was quitting the band, and that he was disappointed in himself, not in Johnny. Santa stuffed a forkful of lukewarm eggs into his mouth and chewed slowly. He took a sip of coffee and swallowed it all together. 

Johnny thought of the trumpet now, sitting in a battered case in the corner of his room, collecting dust. "Is it too late? Is it too late to still learn to really play?" He asked.

"No. It's never too late" said Santa.

"Is it too late for him to want to listen?" Johnny asked.

Santa paused for a moment.

"No, it's never too late for that either" said Santa. 

Santa scooped the last of the steak and eggs into his mouth, stood up, and put his coat on. He reached into his pocket and put a twenty dollar bill onto the counter, then turned around and walked out the door. 

Johnny stood there at the counter, watching the snow drift in big, fat flakes that danced wordlessly in the navy blue night. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, wanting to think on everything but not knowing where to start. His thoughts were interrupted by the bell on the door ringing its bright, brassy announcement. He looked up and his father stood in the doorway. They stared at each other, and Johnny saw that his father's eyes were bloodshot. He'd been drinking. And from the keys in his hand, he'd been driving. His father walked over to the "OPEN" sign and turned it off. Johnny understood. he grabbed is coat and followed his father out the door, taking the keys from his hand. He opened the passenger side door of the car, and shut it behind his father. As he walked back to lock the door of the diner, he caught his reflection in the glass of the window, and saw the snow falling in the light of the moon. As the latch of the lock threw, the bell on the door jingled a little, and Johnny knew that this would be a Christmas unlike one he'd had in a very, very long time. 

What the Hell is Art?!

Today I had the great opportunity to visit the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan. A friend of mine worked for a corporate sponsor of the museum and could get a few extra tickets. The building itself is rather unusual, built by Frank Lloyd Wright sometime in the interwar period. It is primarily a large spiral which widens as it departs from the earth. The exhibits are organized along the procession of the spiral, and the floor is nearly perpetually slanted. I found this to be somewhat irritating after a while in the museum, but the content of the museum was somewhat spectacular.

I use the word “spectacular” in its literal sense, i.e. to relay the fact that I found the contents of the museum to contain a quality of spectacle. There were pieces with great variety in origin, medium, style, and era, as one would expect from a museum with the reputation of the Guggenheim. Because my brain is irritatingly categorial, I found myself misguidedly embarking on the folly that is trying to figure out what it is that is characteristic of these pieces. I found myself wondering what it is that held these pieces together, what they have in common. In short, I found myself wondering what it is that makes art art.

Certain things are almost certainly art. For instance, if someone stretches canvas over a wooden frame and slathers it with a fluid that is pigmented as to (ideally) take the outline or figure of something recognizable or even appreciable, it is rather undeniable considered art. Even when this sort of thing is done poorly, it’s still considered art. While there were many of these, including wonderful pieces by Manet, Picasso, Degas, Klee, and many other famous and notable artists, it is not these pieces that make me wonder what art indeed is. It was the weird sculptures, the scribbles on notebook paper, the photographs that don’t seem to depict anything, that make me wonder. And I’m sure that everyone has had this experience. They’ve been in a museum, and they’ll run across something that is so simplistic or so moronic that they’ll have that moment of wondering that surely, this is not art.

This is where I’d present an answer to this question, if not for a small problem, which is that I don’t have one. The idea I’m currently fooling around in the backseat with is that art is somewhat spectral. Everything has artistic qualities, and the applicability of those qualities is what determines whether or not something is considered to be art. For instance, I know someone who I consider to be a very beautiful human being. I often find myself talking note of the placement of their steps, the sweep of their legs, the rhythm of their gait. These are certainly things that have artistic qualities, but I think it would be offensively reductionistic to label them as art. They’re far more than that. They’re a human being that experiences laughter and frustration, who has snarky comments to make and opinions on religion and politics. To simply reduce them into the kind of interactive spectacle that art often is would be a akin to pirate only using his gold as a ballast. Because they are so much more than art. Indeed, I believe that everything is more than art, even things that are considered to be, well, art. One could use the Mona Lisa as a frisbee if they really wanted to, or the Starry Night cut from its frame could be a cape for a child. These are not only things that it could be, it is things that they are. The Mona Lisa, in its current state, IS a poor frisbee. Michelangelo's Pieta IS an unwieldy paperweight. I think that instead of focusing on sorting things, as I tried to, we ought to go through life looking for art as it manifests in the things that we see every day. The sunlight streaking through the clouds, the excited zoomies of a dog, the gentle wave of a blade of grass as cars rush by on the interstate. Art is not something that is categorized, or presented. Art is something that is found. I had a maxim in high school, which may and or may not explain my poor decisions to those of you who knew me back then. The maxim was that “every pizza is a personal pizza if you believe in yourself”, and I think that this embodies the spirit of potentiality. The potentiality of art is something that is already fulfilled. All that remains is for us to see it.

The Internet as Public Space

I’ve noticed a trend among some people, mostly arts/creative types, where they use the phrase formula “_____ as _____” such as “writing as activism” or “sculpture as architecture”. I thought I’d follow in suit, half in homage and half in irrelevant mockery.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking a lot about the internet and censorship. Following the most recent presidential election, Facebook has disclosed that many targeted adverts were purchased by money and probably individuals related to the Russian state. Given this, it was seen as pretty clear evidence that at least on some superficial level, these adverts propagated over various social media platforms, predominantly Facebook and Twitter influenced the informative process of a portion of voters in the country. To exactly what extent and to what possible detriment this occurred is for someone with thicker glasses and a higher security clearance than me to determine. What struck me about this story, however, was that Facebook resolved to “do something about it”. What exactly that thing is is yet to manifest.

Similarly, Youtube has been playing around with their monetization policy relating to advert revenue, and this has lead to several haunches being raised among some of the people I subscribe to on that platform. I think the poster child for this would be Cody’s Lab, which is a channel owned by bright, young, enthusiastic scientist who produces videos that are entertaining and informative. Basically, exactly the kind of content that Youtube would be interested in promoting. His channel was shut down temporarily because of complaints about animal cruelty. Not that he was indeed being cruel to animals, there was just a preponderance of complaints that lead to the youtube algorithm shutting his channel down. Content such as this, or content with strong language, violent behavior, things of that nature, generally get demonetized pretty much immediately, and by the time the underpaid intern at Google gets around to viewing the complaint, most of the advertising revenue that would go to the video maker is lost because the frequency of views tend to taper off over time.

Obviously there is a place for pointing at policies like Youtube’s and saying that that particular algorithm or policy needs to be better. Same with Facebook. They surely could have done a better job at disclosing where the adverts were originating from. However, what I want to explore is the idea behind policies such as this. Basically, there has been a recent trend of calling for content to be restricted, taken down, or censored on social media platforms. This lead me to wonder how first amendment rights would or would not apply to these platforms. Certainly, there is a romantic view that here in the Divided States of America, we have fought and died to protect our right to do and say whatever it is we want. If you want to say you think Pooh bear is a sugar addict and Christopher Robin and all his friends are just enabling his lifestyle instead of getting him the help he desperately needs before eating himself into an early grave of cardiovascular disease and diabetic shock, that is your choice. It may be an unpopular opinion, but it is certainly one you are allowed to have. However, there are restrictions on the kind of free speech one is allowed to partake in. The SCOTUS case Schenck v. United States established that free speech, in a first amendment kind of way, could be restricted if it represented to society a “clear and present danger”. The most belabored example of this is shouting fire in a crowded theatre. People think there’s a fire even though one would think it would pretty easy to see if there was a fire burning in a darkened theatre, and people get trampled because you lied. These rules seemed pretty straightforward and accepted in the age of their conception, but since then, much like our taxes, things have gotten much more complicated.

I suppose the first thing that ought to be done are functional clarifications. Firstly, no one owns the internet. If someone posts a selfie with a stupid superimposed cartoon filter of a dog face with the delusion that they think it makes them attractive, then sure; they may have taken that picture, but someone owns the cell tower it got sent to, someone owns the satellite it bounced off of, the transatlantic cable on the seafloor, the server it got stored on. And the people that own these things are typically not the person who posted that selfie. Furthermore, platforms such as Facebook are privately owned. They have the definitive right to determine what kind of content they want to host. You may not like it, but too bad. Go back to Myspace. In a manner of usage, social media platforms may seem like public spaces where you gather all your (in my case) 7 friends and you can hang out like you would in a town square or a public park, but this is not the case. Someone owns that park, and it’s maintained with advert revenue, not your hard working tax dollars. Platforms are not public space.

However, it seems like that’s the whole reason why the exist, so they can be that space where you hang out with your friends and your uncle who always sends you invitations to play Candy Crush Saga. They want you and all your friends to sign up and hang out so they can post adverts and target posts at you and take a bite out of your cookies so they can make money off of you. This is their first concern. How much you enjoy the website and how it connects you to your friends or family or people you’re facebook stalking is secondary. For the user, the connection and the people are primary, and we just put up with the advertisement because come on, who’s actually going to use Myspace.

The issues that have arisen recently with censorship have come from individuals which appeal to the “clear and present danger” discription among certain peoples on these platform. For instance, if an Islamic extremist militant group wants to recruit on Facebook, it’s pretty understandable, that Facebook would want to do something about preventing that. However, with a less extreme example, this distinction becomes rather blurred. What if someone posts something saying climate change is a hoax? Some people may say that this is “clear and present danger”, because it encourages your local congressman to not vote for legislation that would lead to us all dying from rising sea levels, ocean acidification, a preponderance of pollutants being released into the atmosphere, and other things of that nature. But is it really “clear and present danger”? If your local homeless person sat in a park and talked about how global warming is a lie told by those nasty tricksies chineses, would anyone try to get him arrested? Hopefully not, because that charge would in no way hold up. We’d simply chalk it up to a crazy person being a crazy person. What if someone posted something about a white supremacist gathering on a social media platform? Should that be considered “clear and present danger”? I don’t think that anyone will deny that white supremacists have done some very awful things before. One could see this post with that history in mind and claim that this gathering constitutes an instance of “clear and present danger”, and that the platform ought to take it down. However, the person who posted this information hasn’t actually done anything clearly or presently dangerous yet, nor has he or she threatened to. But then what if the post was a post about white supremacy ideology instead of a gathering? Would it be any more or less clearly or presently dangerous?

It’s right about now that one begins to see this less as the dichotomy of allowing good speech and prohibiting bad speech. I think the development of censorship policy on certain platforms will ultimately be determined by companies supporting and allowing the kind of speech they want, and censoring the kind of speech they don’t want. So in that way, good/bad is kind of irrelevant. But one would hope that what is allowed or censored somewhat aligns with good/bad. I think that in developing is policy and deciding what they want and don’t want, social media platforms have to decide whether or not they want to act like a public space, or engage in the thicket of righteousness. I chose here to use to use the word “righteousness” because I believe that this road will lead to battles not simply for speech that is good, but also for truth, for meaning, and for value. Righteousness is indeed a loaded word, so I shall take precaution to aim it carefully. One other thing to clarity is that these two choices are not mutually exclusive. Between them lies a wide swath of possibility.

If a social media platform chooses to tend toward acting like a public space, then they should implement policies like that of the standard of “clear and present danger”. So long as no one is making threats of harm or doing something like telling a habitually depressed teenager with a bad haircut and more zits than friends to go kill him or her self, speech ought to be allowed. This would include stuff like supporting climate change denial. This would include white supremacist or neo-nazi organization, so long as there is no definitive proof of violent behavior. This would include speech that one would deem hateful, racist, misogynistic, marginalizing, degrading, and disempowering, so long as they do not contain threats of violent behavior. Think about the speech that happens in public spaces all the time. People express racist views and slurs. People catcall women relentlessly and unfruitfully. I know a guy down at the park that knows just about everything there is to know about how aluminum foil hats stop brain reading lasers from the government and how they’re all really lizards anyway. This is stuff we as a society should work to eliminate, but through positive exposure to diversity and teaching equality and respect between each other, as well as apparently civic education and herpetology.

You see, the thing about freedom of speech is that it’s not freedom of speech without consequence. My friend with the curious headgear gets judgemental looks and gets ignored and brushed past for espousing what he believes in. That is his consequence. If you catcall a girl, that’s pretty much 100% insurance that she will never even consider going out with you. That’s your consequence. People get on the internet, and they don’t think that their speech should have consequences. This is in part because of the way that social media is structured. It is convenient for people with similar views find each other. For my lizard-fearing friend, he may sit in the park all day and never once meet someone who will listen to him for more than ten seconds, but if he made a facebook group, he’d probably find a group of people who would sit around and affirm his beliefs like the studio audience of the Ellen Show. When someone is surrounded by the people they have picked and chosen, they are somewhat more insulated from the kind of scrutiny and judgement that characterizes a public space.

If a social media platforms decides to pursue a policy where they plunge into the thicket of righteousness, like a stag who proudly saunters into the brambles, will find itself ensnared. Consider, again, the example of the climate change denier. If they were a reasonable human being who has looked at the sources available to him or her and has just decided that there wasn’t a preponderance of evidence that would allow him or her to scientifically conclude that climate change was a real phenomenon, most of us would probably understand where this individual is coming from. They’re not acting maliciously or out of ostrich ignorance, they’ve simply come to the conclusion that to them, follows from the facts. If the social media platform interprets this as something that ought to come down, it’ll likely be not for the reason of “clear and present danger”, but for the reason that it’s false, and that it’s more detrimental to society to allow than prohibit. What if a kid sees it and grows up to be someone who writes environmental policy? In this case, I believe that the standard of evidence in this case that people find justifiable is truth. But I believe that this standard is impossible to maintain. If someone posts that a pound of lemon contains more sugar than a pound of strawberries would we expect someone at Facebook to go and chemically deconstruct the fruit in the break room? If someone posts about there being a true 9th planet which is not pluto, would we expect twitter to launch a spaceship and confirm it? The standard of truth is something that will never be able to be upheld in a practical way because there are so many things that are filled with doubt. Science as a procedure is very clear about this. There might be a giant space mind reading laser run by a lizard government and the only person who is safe is my friend in the foil hats drinking from a Russel’s Teapot of I told you so. What if there’s a post about how eating an entire pizza is an acceptable form of self-care. Most of us would argue that no, that’s a dietary practice that ought to be prohibited, and might even complain about it to the platform saying that this post encourages eating habits that aren’t healthy and would lead to harm. It should be taken down because it’s not good for us. But then we’re in a position where it is up to the corporation to decide what is good for us, and their record on that isn’t one that tends to inspire confidence.

The problem is that is that people want the best of both worlds. They want to be able to say all the things that they want to say, but anything that they find offensive or objectionable they want taken away from them. Yes I want to share my objectionable opinion with the hashtag #sorrynotsorry but if someone else says something that offends me they ought to be sequestered in Facebook jail. People want media platforms to be this weird hybrid of public and private, and there is an obvious need for laws restricting freedoms even in public spaces, and free speech even in private spaces, but I don’t think we can Hannah Montana ourselves out a best of both worlds solution. In the coming months, years, and decades, there will be a struggle between deciding whether or not these media platforms will decide to take a public role of allowing speech, even of objectionable or offensive, to exist, or whether they will choose to shoulder the burden of selecting speech they think is good, true, or beneficial and proudly march into that thicket.

x

Health vs Resiliency

There is a not uncommon practice among my peers, which is to justify behavior in the name of mental health. I firmly believe that mental health is something that’s very important, and that ignoring it can lead to massively detrimental consequences. I think that mental health is an integral part of personhood, whatever that sentence actually means. I also want to clarify that my use of “mental health” in this essay does not refer to mental health in a psychiatric sense. Clearly, that is a realm of extremity in this subject matter that I, a non-professional, am not ready to make statements on. I mean to use “mental health” in its common or garden sense. I am not, however, saying that there is a clear distinction between the two, or anything that demarks them. I shall simply deal with generalities. What I find a little baffling and unsettling is that people often use the excuse of mental health simply as that- an excuse. It seems that some individuals, when faced with a challenging situation that they find personally uncomfortable or difficult to navigate, will find the easiest way out and say that it’s for reasons having to do with mental health. I take issue with this. I think that mental health is something that one ought to consider when they are facing situations that may cause them mental distress. But my perception of these people in their aforementioned situations don’t seem to be doing that. They seem to be resigned to the belief that any amount of mental distress past a certain threshold is bad for them, and therefore is to be avoided. They are unwilling to let themselves be challenged in meaningful, growth encouraging ways, and I honestly think that they are suffering for it.

One theme that I think represents my argument rather well is that of health vs resiliency. Let’s consider an analogy. Imagine a person sitting at home, considering going on a jog. Before them are three choices. First, they could not go for a run. Second they could go for a jog, but at a pace where they won’t really get out of breath, and their muscles won’t be sore the next day. Third, they could go for a jog and really push themselves. They’d soak their shirt in sweat and their legs would protest when they got out of bed the next day. I think that it’s obvious that the person wouldn’t get any stronger if they took the first option. I think it’s also obvious that the person would get stronger if they took the second option, but not as strong as if they took the third. A person who consistently takes the second option would be left in the dust over time progress-wise compared to someone who consistently takes the third. Does this mean that the third option is better than the second one? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps they’re running for different reasons that are undefined in the parameters of this hypothetical. I will, however, posit that the third option is better than the second at improving the strength and health of our imaginary person. Sure, we recognize that the person is going to have to leave his or her comfort zone. They’re going to have to challenge himself or herself in ways that he or she may find to be uncomfortable, or even distressful, but when presented in this context, I think that it’s not to challenging to see that simply because something is uncomfortable or causes distress does not make it an ultimately compelling reason not to do it. Yes, there will be times when this person is feeling sore, or tired, or weaker. There will be times when they maybe get shin splints or an ingrown toenail. They’ll probably even face an injury every now and then. There is also a scenario where this person pushes himself or herself too hard, and ends up having to stop for a while and recover. These are all adverse setbacks that would seem to indicate retrograde progress, but we know that this is not truly the case.

When people say they’re doing something for their mental health, the question that pops into my mind is “what about their mental resiliency?” What about challenging themselves so they can learn to get up again and bounce back? What about pushing themselves to the boundaries of exhaustion so they can recharge and be even stronger than before? I think that when it comes to mental distress, many people are not choosing between the danger of overtraining or injury and training at an appropriate and productive pace, to revive the jogger analogy. They are choosing between option two and three, or option one and three. They see the potential distress that seems looming and imminent should they endeavor to push themselves, and they see the dangers of risking injury, and the discomfort of the ingrown toenails and sweat drenched chafing, and they find themselves overwhelmed. So they shut down and sit down on the couch. And like the jogger, I think that in the name of health, they forsake it.

On Doing Good Band

So in case any of you on this blog are thus far unaware, I am a trumpet player. I started in 3rd grade, I remember the first beginner Walmart trumpet my parents got me, and taking lessons, and being a very poor player for a very long time. I think it is only through the instance of my parents that I stuck with it through elementary, middle school, and high school, and now I play for the marching band and Jazz ensemble at my college. I was recently having a conversation with my marching band director who is a very dear friend of mine, and he was berating the jazz band trumpet section for not performing musically. At first I was mystified as to the meaning of this criticism. Not that I’m not adept at handling criticism. Anyone who has ever learned music from a teacher knows that criticism is at least 90% of every rehearsal, and that’s how people get better- correcting and improving. But he went on to say that the music isn’t notes and rhythms. This statement is a little counterintuitive. If you pick up a sheet of music, what it contains is primarily notes and rhythms. When you’re learning music, what you sit down and focus on is learning the notes and rhythms. At least I do anyway. Instead, what he said that what makes music musical is details. I’m familiar with his teaching style, and I knew that by the term “details” he refers to thing such as the emphasis of certain notes and the deemphasis of others, the clean releases, the uniform attacks, and the nuances of balance and voicing. It seems to me that surely this is an instance of missing the forest for the trees. It’s all well and good if these are the things that experienced individuals and ensembles focus on because there is a tacit expectation that notes and rhythms are already prepared and mastered, but as we conversed, it became evident to me that to him, these things are of utmost importance. If you don’t play half the notes, so long as the notes that you play have the correct weight and emphasis in the lyricism of the material, then that is far better than playing every single note and rhythm correctly but flubbing the details. In fact, in our marching band, he encourages less experienced or competent players to do exactly that. Sousa’s marches are reduced to a series of downbeats. Slurs are supplemented for half the section because their legato tongue is too percussive. This is always something that I struggled to agree with, in my 3 years of playing with the ensemble. As a relatively experienced player, It seemed to me that what one ought to learn first would be notes and rhythms, and all that detail stuff is the makeup on the cake, the superstructure that elevates a solid performance to another level. To him, this is false. It is not only false, it is borderline blasphemy.

Whether or not this is true is not the subject of discussion here. I think that this too is a subject of contention and controversy and represents a bridge I’ll burn when I get to it. What really had me thinking is far more concrete than abstract, and far more selfish than grandiose. Because when I show up to rehearsal, I know that what I focus on is still very much notes and rhythms. When I take a rep, my first priority is “don’t flake up” (without the word “flake”). And it seems that on some level, my director is saying that that’s wrong. Obviously it’s important not to make mistakes, but it is not as important as making music musical. And what makes music musical is the minutia, the smallest sips of breath, the contrast between loud and not so loud, the fractions of seconds that space notes. So how are these two things balanced? Human capacity is boundless and incredible in many ways, but I feel like in a rehearsal situation, the number of things that I can focus on a reasonable juggle to effective execution is finite. Additionally, I don’t believe that what he’s suggesting is that one ought to under every circumstance attain mastery of material such that making rhythmic/pitch errors are unthinkable, and one only needs to focus on details, because he explicitly states that given a choice between complete rhythmic/pitch accuracy and appropriately executed detailistic choices, details are more important.

What I’m left to ponder is where is that threshold? What is the appropriate balance between attention to what is on the page and the details of the music? At what point does one decide to pivot from focusing on one to focusing on the other? Frankly, I don’t have an answer to this, but I think that it’s a massively important thing to understand. A similar approach to this concept would be to explore the question of which ensemble would you rather listen to? One that tends towards less precision is stylistic detail or one that tends towards more innaccurate pitches and rhythms? I think for me, the answer would have to be the latter. How I would listen to a band that makes some errors in pitches and rhythms is that these are distractions. They are inclusions or artifacts in a material of fine quality. However, how I would listen to an ensemble that has complete accuracy but no musicality in their details is that the fundamental substance of their performance is not so great as the other ensemble. I suppose that this perception isn’t too far off. How many beginner bands are there where they have complete accuracy in pitch and rhythm? . . . Okay probably not that many, but if they did, would that make them as good as the Chicago Symphony? My point is that what makes a beginner band a beginner band isn’t their accuracy to what is written, it is their understanding and execution of certain musical concepts. I think that what my director aims to teach is that these concepts are expressed through the details. I suppose similarly, what makes a player like Bud Herseth an extraordinary professional isn’t the fact that he allegedly never missed or even chipped a single note, but rather with the level of musicality to which he played.

I don’t know if this will or should in any way translate to my approach to music, because previous to this conversation, I already held both priorities in high regard, and I don’t think that this idea truly disparages the importance of either of them, but merely questions the ultimate importance of any of them.

x

Falling

The Marching Arts

I have a strong premonition that most of the people that read this blog know me personally. I have also not made an insignificant number of posts dealing with the subject of the trumpet. I am taking the assumption that either knowing me in person or having seen those posts on this blog are sufficient conditions for knowing that I am a band person.

I think that there is a great misconception about the label of someone in "band". Compared to orchestra, for example, band instruments play a great diversity of styles. Someone's experience as part of a wind choir is going to be infinitely different from someone's experience being in a jazz combo. I am personally very involved with a specific style of "band", which is the marching ensemble. The tragedy is that these ensembles are currently being threatened by the deforestation of fine arts defunding. Programs across the nation are either being directly cut or are otherwise suffering the effects of such cuts.

The value of education has long been monetized. I don't think that there is any debate about that. What I revile is that it is increasingly privatized. Monetization alone is simply a way of quantifying something's value. For somethings this is appropriate. Like a bushel of apples. For other things it is not. Like a human life. My intention is not to argue whether or not education ought to be monetized. My argument intends to rest on the assumption that so long as the things that valued properly, their benefit can be accurately assessed. I believe that the problem arises when unknown detriments are incurred once the value of fine arts programs are overlooked. One quick thing: there is a strong cognitive bias when I say the word "education", especially in the context of a discussion about schools, to think of the traditional fundaments of literature, english, mathematics, and sciences. What I intend to address is education in the strictest sense, but of a different sort. I also want to make it clear that I here have no intention to espouse the benefits of a musical education. I frankly don't understand how this matter can be so conclusively proven and yet so contested.

Certain aspects of schooling have become outright privatized. For instance, the majority of schools themselves never provide lunch for their students. They get a private company to do that. Most schools have contracts with textbook manufacturers instead of generating their own material. This itself may and or may not be a bad thing. The problem is that a schools are beginning to change their model into one that prioritizes getting the most for their money. Like any investments, it's natural for the overlords of these institutions to want to invest the most in the area that they see the most returns. For instance, since scrutiny of the academic competitiveness of primary and secondary schools has recently skyrocketed, many institutions are prioritizing this. The resources for the school such as the school's budget, facilities, staff, and administrative capacity have been directed towards the furthering of this goal. This is paralleled by the demand of these institutions on their students to likewise invest their time and energy. This is not simply a pull force. It is also a push force. The effect is that fine arts programs, particularly in music, are being reduced, redacted, and made redundant.

Why is this? Well there are several realities to contend with. The first is that a music program always includes a premium. Instruments are expensive. Their cost is not only a one-time investment, there is the continual cost of their maintenance and the cost to replace them when they inevitably become unusable. There is also the fact that the learning curve on musical instruments can often seem as barren as the Atacama Desert. It takes many more years to develop anything that would be commonly lauded for its musical merit than a typical student spends at a single school. An average American high school is four years. An average middle school is three. An exceptional music program typically doesn't include elementary schools children for more than three years. It is glaringly apparent to anyone who has tried that this is nowhere near enough time to "get good". Additionally, music by nature is noncompetitive. Of course people make competitions out of it, but that is a superstructure. It's not like a school basketball team where performance can be gauged against another school, as a way for justifying the cost of the program. Music is subjective. So imagine an elementary school program that normally begins students in 3rd grade. The superintendent decides to cancel this program on the basis of its expenses and the fact that the end of year concert for 5th graders still sounds like a flock of Canadian geese and bull elephant calls. Suddenly, instead of getting students with three years of experience, the middle school program has to dedicate its first year to teaching which fingers to press and how to read music. Suddenly, the quality of their ensembles takes a nosedive, and one can imagine how this buck gets passed around. Then at the high school level, the superintendent tells the director to think of ways to improve the quality of the band, when really the only thing that can really be done is for the superintendent himself to go yell at the district budget committee on behalf of the elementary school not to cut its program. Obviously this rarely ever happens.

This situation is even more aggravated in marching ensembles because their membership exists on a recursive trend of increasing exclusivity. Despite being multi-disciplinary (requiring for example a high level of both athleticism as well as musicianship), the near comprehensive majority of people that join a marching ensemble come from a band background. This group of people is a subset of so many sets that there are really quite few people (percentage wise) that find themselves in a position to be successful in the activity.

We are a dying breed. Those of us that run and play, those of us that know to count our steps and stay in line. Those of us that can look sideways without turning or head, and point our toes to the sky. There used to be many but now there are few, of those that can twist their hips and slide. The details, the beats, the turf, the seats. We are indeed a dying breed.