oook blog

Giving some thought to music

I replied to my son John's question about what I was up to with music these days, and it seems like something blogworthy, so snip:

I haven't had my mind very firmly on music in the last few months. I was playing a lot while we were staying at Scott & Judy's in VA (after the house was sold), and I've now got a good array of instruments where I can reach them, but other things have intruded, like the Nova Scotia Faces --which if I do say so myself, is getting to be a pretty remarkable document. If you haven't looked lately, nsfaces.schtuff.com is the main entry, and I'm now getting to more interstitial writing ...but still scanning a lot every day.

So I've done nothing systematic about music in the last 4 months; a lot has been leaking in via mp3 but that tends to be bits of preposterosity, not coherent bodies of stuff that one might study. I have some thoughts about doing that sort of systematic stuff, but the question is one of medium: the problem of managing the digital rights, and not stepping beyond Fair Use if I'm making something for distribution. I'm not sure that the world really wants the didactic, which is the default mode for the retired prof. There are so many really wonderful web-accessible radio stations that I'm not sure there's an open niche for what I might do with my collections --but that's really a matter of my having not yet realized what the empty niches are. So still thinking about it...

To some degree that's part of the reequilibration consequent upon not being in the ed biz anymore. For so many years I passed much creativity through the filter of teach-a-course, and was basically dealing with captive audiences and institutional trammelments. Free of those silly bonds now, I'm having to reinvent what it is to Learn, and I love it. I don't know that there's any reason for me to relearn or reinvent what it is to Teach ...certainly not in any sort of institutional context anyhow. I'm so done with that.