Ruminate

I thought of some domain names that someone should be using if they aren’t already: literaryclimax.com, orjazzm.com, jewsisfree.com. The first is from a conversation about books that “knock you out.” The second was my response about a site that would sell jazz tattoos, piercings, and that kind of thing. The third was just a typo, but it still should exist…

Eugene Volokh has an interesting piece about a legal battle between a CSU prof and the university regarding being denied tenure. What is interesting to me is not the legal issues, but Volokh’s conclusion that publication is and should remain a vital part of establishing a basis for tenure.

While I agree that research can be important, and I also agree that a faculty member should work “full-time” like anyone else, I don’t understand why publication has to be so important. The point of a university is not just research, and it is not just there to generate publication-worthy ideas… it is also there to educate its students, right? If a faculty member is an outstanding teacher, and complements their teaching with all the other political and administrative duties that go along with that, why should they not be granted tenure and given the same benefits and respect?

Let’s be honest here: many of the best researchers and most published scholars are the worst when it comes to actually teaching what they know to someone else. Being brilliant in a discipline does not make one a brilliant teacher. Consider that there is no requirement to learn how to teach before taking a position at a University, but you have to have at least a year of training– and often more– to teach kindergartners! With all of that, why is publication given such prominence in every case?

I have been fortunate enough to learn from some stellar faculty. That some of them were “under-published” shouldn’t even be part of the equation. And, in fact, Universities ought to do a lot more to protect their student body from the criminally negligent teaching perpetrated by tenure-seeking academicians who not only have no understanding how to impart information from others, but who see their teaching duties as a distasteful obligation betweem themselves and the academic pursuits they love.

My anniversary present– a DiscSox DJ case– arrived today, and it is great. It is crammed tight, but holding my entire CD collection– 619 discs– in one package. I went with the heavy-duty case (as opposed to the flight case) and let me tell you… this thing is built like a tank. I would even fly with it (though perhaps not on a regular basis). The DiscSox sleeves cost a bit more than generic sleeves, but they are constructed with better materials and an attention to detail where it counts, such as having a completely translucent side for the booklet and a matte side for the CD.

If you have a lot of CDs, I highly recommend this system. If you save the tray insert, the “DJ” style sleeves will hold the CD, booklet and tray insert– and are nice for browsing. I wish I hadn’t thrown the tray inserts away for over half my collection!

Now I need a bunch more sleeves (I still have about half the collection in generic sleeves of various heights) and another case when my next CD purchases start arriving…

If you aren’t familiar with him, you must find some Art Tatum to listen to. I am listening to his “Complete Solo Masterpieces” (which I downloaded in MP3 format from emusic) right now and I am astounded. The only pianist who I have heard that comes close to this kind of virtuosity and musicality in one package is Earl Hines. Fantastic…

I’m starting to do a little research about Tatum and it appears he has been vastly influential on the course of jazz. There are also many good anecdotes about his fantastic ear (he was blind, or nearly so) and his technique. Here is one:

‘He began with a story about the great Art Tatum, telling us how he was serving as a prot�g� to Art and how they happened to be in Los Angeles at Ivy Anderson`s after-hours club when they were approached by a gentlemen who was also a pianist. The gentlemen expressed to Art how much he admired his playing and told of how he had transcribed his piano solo of Massenet`s Elegie (one of the most virtuosic performances Art Tatum ever recorded). The man proceeded to ask Art if he could play this transcription for him. Art reluctantly agreed. Dr. Taylor goes on to say that about two minutes into the performance Art got up and went over to the bar to order a drink, basically ignoring the efforts of the young man`s performance. Being somewhat puzzled, Taylor asks Art why he chose to ignore what the young man was doing, given the fact that to his own ears the performance was quite masterful: “Didn`t you hear that he was playing your solo verbatim?” Art`s response was, “Yes, he played all the notes; but he doesn`t know why I played those notes!”‘

And another:

” To my mind, the best story about Art Tatum concerns a meeting he had in a 52nd Street Club with Igor Stravinsky when the Russian Master was on an American tour. Stravinsky had been told about Tatum’s virtuosity and wanted to hear it for himself. After sitting through a set in the dark bar, Stravinsky ventured up to the piano, and, through an interpreter, told Tatum that he had been trying to work out a complex piano modulation in one of the compositions he had in progress. I don’t recall the precise keys in question - but let’s say Stravinsky wanted to modulate from E Flat to B Natural. That is not easy. Stravinsky’s idea was that the theme played in E Flat would be restated in B Natural immediately after the modulation, and he couldn’t get it to work. Stravinsky played the theme once, and backed away. Tatum is said to have noodled with it for a moment or two, and then executed the modulation perfectly - first try. Stravinsky was, of course, beside himself and remained a major fan of Art Tatum for the rest of his life. “

I seek the perfect analogy. Lately I have been embroiled in a strenous debate about the potential invasion of Iraq. There are two reasons that I let myself get dragged into such irresolvable arguments. I am either 1) procrastinating and/or 2) feeling a need for some kind of intellectual community (that’s what happens when you have few friends). It strikes me that at some point in every long debate, the participants despair of making their point directly and turn to analogy. Then the debate turns from the issue to the imperfection of the various analogies. Is Iraq like Germany in 1938, with Cheney playing Churchill? Is the standard of evidence needed to justify an attack the same as that in a criminal trial? Straight descriptions fail because one side or both refuses to change their minds. Analogies fail under their own weight. The latter are more interesting, but ultimately they all become tiresome.

Personally, I can’t wait for the baseball strike. It’s a waste even of that most devalued of commodities: television time. My fantasy would be a strike so long that baseball basically died and became the equivalent of Arena League Football. Or the X Games.

For the past week or so I have been using emusic.com’s MP3 service. This is by far the best deal out there for a legitimate mp3 service. For 9.95-14.95 per month they offer unlimited downloads of real, non-expiring MP3s, single tracks and full albums. All mp3s are 128k and while quality varies, they are all more than good enough for computer/car/portable device listening. Converting to WAV and burning to CD results in variable quality– but what can you expect from that bitrate? The whole point is to provide music without sacrificing CD sales…

You aren’t going to find the latest pop/rock there, but it is a jazz dream come true: most of the huge Verve label output, most of the Pablo/Fantazy label titles… literally thousands of great CDs free for the taking. Good stuff.

I almost forgot to mention that their Blues selection is pretty good, and they have a nice collection of comedy and spoken word albums. I wonder how long this service can last at this price?

The Daily Howler is a regular stop for me. Bob Somerby deserves an award for his careful, factual dismantling of the shrill lies of Ann Coulter recently. His latest piece is a wonderful debunking of the lie, spurred on by George Will, that the NEA is anti-American, has subversive material about terrorism, etc.

The NEA has its problems, and I understand that some groups feel it is a liberal bastion. But is the truth really that hard to discern here?

I received a message this morning that Taslima Nasrin was awarded the Erwin-Fischer Prize. Excellent. I reviewed her book of poetry The Game in Reverse some time ago. Great, brave work.

I love jazz and I love poetry… so it stands to reason that I should like jazz poetry. I was thinking about this a few weeks ago. Off the top of my head, the only authors who have written jazz related poetry that really stood out in my mind were William Matthews, one of my favorite poets (alas, deceased) and David Graham, another great poet and personal acquaintance.

But I knew there must be more out there. At the used bookstore I found The Jazz Poetry Anthology. Printed a decade ago (it has a cover blurb by Dizzy Gillespie!), it has some good stuff. I like many of the poems that have jazz as their subject. Those that try to alter their form to be more jazz-like usually turn me off immediately. Turns out I was lucky– William Matthews is the best of the lot represented in this book. One of my favorites was there:

Bud Powell, Paris, 1959

I’d never seen pain so bland.

Smack, though I didn’t call it smack

in 1959, had eaten his technique.

His white-water right hand clattered

missing runs nobody else would think

to try, nor think to be outsmarted

by. Nobody played as well

as Powell, and neither did he,

stalled on his bench between sets,

stolid and vague, my hero,

his mocha skin souring gray.

Two bucks for a Scotch in this dump,

I thought, and I bought me

another. I was young and pain

rose to my ceiling, like warmth,

like a story that makes us come true

in the present. Each day’s

melodrama in Powell’s cells

bored and lulled him. Pain loves pain

and calls it company, and it is.

Courtesy of David Graham, I learned of a whole journal dedicated to jazz and poetry: Brilliant Corners and have since discovered a second volume of the anthology I bought and some others that are out there. A world awaits.

Now if I could just find some good volumes of Basketball poetry (no kidding… there is some great stuff out there by poets like Sherman Alexie, Bill Hickock and others).