In search of explanations for...
Omigosh, how did I not connect the dots between Soundpainting and healing, until this winter, when Denny McGinn and I drove up to University of North Dakota to attend "Love Your Horn Day" hosted by Gwen Hoberg. Jeff Agrell was the guest clinician, and he led the assembled hornists through the basics of this marvelous music-creationism thing
“The art of live composition...The Soundpainter composes in real time utilizing the gestures to create the composition in any way they desire"
The website for Soundpainting is HERE
Vanessa Cornett and I often threaten to perform again as our duo, Suite 2th. We were attending a conference on "music and healing," musing over the rather unusual demographic of participants. Where we two arrived with the expectations of sitting for scholarly presentations, many others arrived with capes, feathers, and vague notions of blessing food by means of laying on of hands. Gads, the two of us often exclaim, but we could write a book about so many unexpected experiences like this!
So many books, so little time. Or is it so little interest in reading within the same old trope of "scholarly inquiry into ____"?
Books for A4BL
July 2020
A new urgency has risen from the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. What the hell are white academics doing to help anyone but themselves? Academics for Black Survival and Wellness (website HERE) provided an intensive week of training. The reading list alone was gold. So was the encouragement to form weekly accountability groups to keep the momentum going. I treasure the colleagues in my weekly group.
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Reading for ... fun?
March 2022
The pandemic upended all remaining pretense, for me, of academic elitism. It has been confirmed that no one cares to read, hear, or learn about the hermeneutical metonym of Monk's chord voicings, nor of the performative hegemony in country dances in Bard County during the years 1823-1825. Let. It. Go., scholars. Use your smarts to reach out to students and assure them that they, too, are smart. Celebrate other authors, other scholars. Don't be so friggin uptight about pursuing only triple-blind-peer-review-with-a-seal-of-authenticity-from-god works. Covid can end your existence just as quickly as it can the healthcare worker, the shelf stocker, the third shift worker. We could be seeing the prelude to a world war if Russia continues with its attack on Ukraine. Read to learn about things and lives different than your own, because this difference is showing up to your classroom in the form of students who engage with learning with amazing new, inquisitive ways to explore our world.
I spent more time reading "for fun" books these past few months than I have in the past several years. It's a break from binge-watching shows - although I haven't curbed my Star Trek habit by any means. In the same week, I read The Violin Conspiracy (Brendan Slocumb) and The Prague Sonata. (Bradford Morrow). On break, I read The Life We Bury (Allen Eskens), and Blue Yarn (Carrie Classon).
Yes, there are music books and journals too. But I love to stop in to a local bookstore. - Books, Lines, and Thinkers in Rangeley Maine; Beagle and Wolf Book in Park Rapids, MN; Back Forty Books in Two Harbors MN. So what if I spend money on books that I won't get around to reading for several months (years)? They are mementos of time off the Work Train, invitations to take some time off here and there
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