fundamental jazzaversary

The Edmonds Jazz Connection was satisfying as it was last year. It was a treat for this event to coincide with my and my boyfriend's 6th month anniversary for it gave us an excuse to spend the entire day together, but also because I wanted him to experience something that he knows I love, but knows nothing about and does not understand why.

We started off the day at 10am in the Combo venue. My boyfriend sat bored and gazed with envy at my brother's active DS. I suggested he focus on the different musicians or close his eyes or tap his foot to get into it but he just remained looking sad and bored while i nodded my head and grinned at the talented performers. It was worrying to me that the entire day would be a bad experience for him but I thought maybe he would find the big bands more engaging and understandable.

At the big band venue, he liked a few slow balled songs. But whenever the tempo or dynamics increased, he would clench his hands to the arm rest and his leg would shake uneasily. It was quite extreme also, I was amazed and concerned but somehow not insulted. Big band isn't my favorite part of jazz, but it doesn't make me tense up. I was astonished. I couldn't really wrap my mind around the fact that jazz, of all things, was making my boyfriend extremely edgy. I had noticed before that all his favorite music is low key and mid to slow tempo, but I didn't think fast and exciting music would be this disturbing to him.

I stroked his arm and took deep breaths to instruct him to relax, but it was not helping him that much. I think he really dislikes the sound of trumpets, for whenever they would play he would tense his entire body. I admit that jazz is a little offsetting sometimes with it's sometimes unpredictable patterns and turns, but I associate that feeling of being on the verge of something else with a feeling of peace, not noises that you can't control which are scary and threatening.

I started to realize that the reason someone would feel edgy was because they don't understand the music. They don't understand how to tap their foot to it or count it or what chord progression will obviously happen or what noises are coming from which instruments.

I was softly tapping my hand with the music on his leg to help him get into it but he didn't understand that's what I was doing. At a song which had a rhythm resembling a heartbeat, I tapped on his chest. He asked "That's my heartbeat?" as if I had felt it and I was showing him. I looked at him and realized he couldn't tell that I was tapping to the music. He has trouble clapping with music and he can't really tap his foot without watching someone else do it first to a song.

It mystified me. I had always been able to dance and do musical things intuitively. And with musical training I have gotten to the next levels of understanding.

We left the venue and I was relived to see him relax a bit. We headed to the vocal jazz venue because I hoped that would feel more soothing to him. On the way there, I starting teaching him about simple music theory. I told him about counting, and that if a song is in 4/4, that you will count from 1 to 4 and then over and over again. And that in jazz, and also reggae, the emphasis of the count is on 2 and 4. This confused him a lot, so I demonstrated with the song "Mary had a little lamb." Once, while snapping 1 and 3 and singing normally. And again, while snapping 2 and 4 and singing with those emphasis. He didn't understand it, but he did say that he could tell there was a difference. I had him snap and say "1, 2!, 3, 4!" He got the hang of that.

In the vocal venue I took out a little (very little) composition notebook. I wrote a few things down for him, distinguishing the difference between a beat, and a rhythm. A woman next to me asked "ooh what's that? A composition?" It was a whole note and then two half notes on a staff with no lines with 1, 2, 3, 4 written above it. Crappy composition if you ask me. But the funny thing was that it was in a composition notebook, which she did not know and I realized the hilarity of later. I suppose it was a composition.

I once again tapped my hand on his leg, and this time I said "2, 4, 2, 4" once in awhile to him if he looked over. He said he liked the vocal a lot better than the other two styles. He started tapping his foot on tempo, on beat. I was so proud.

We headed to the combo venue again after a bit, and I told him more about music. And the more I told him, the more he asked. He is a quick learner, and he asks good questions, so it went along well and he learned a lot. Outside the building we sat on a bench instead of going inside, he didn't feel like listening more yet. I took out my trusty tiny composition notebook and started scribbling staffs and pianos and note names and definitions while I explained everything.

In the lesson he learned the applied definition and definition of beat, rhythm, percussion, measure, note, tone, clef, time signature, chord, key, interval, and tempo. I didn't have time to tell him about harmony, which is quite fundamental when listening to a band or choir. But impressive, huh? He asked me very good questions, like "how many notes are there in a beat?" To which I demonstrated the different note values and their notations, and explained that you can have between 0 and as many as humanly possible. I drew a piano to show him a chord and how to make a chord major or minor. And I showed him the three clefs and what this means. I feel quite proud of myself, but he really is a quick learner. I taught him how to read the wine blessing in Hebrew 10 minutes before Seder on Passover.

When we went into the combo venue again, and he didn't seem as bored anymore. And without my help, I saw him mouthing counts. Yay!

6 times 7

Why was it, that upon the realization that it would be impossible to calculate the immensity of the universe, mathematicians concluded that it must be infinity large?

I know, I know, there are many scientific and logically deductive reasons for coming to this conclusion other than what I will soon say, such as the theory of an expanding universe, and black holes; but for the sake of argument, let's look past these for the moment and assume that the infinite universe is an idea that was concluded without much factual evidence.

If we have no knowledge of when, why, if something ends, or what is beyond it, do we have to view it as infinite? Because we have no reason to think otherwise, and no evidence, we have to tell ourselves it is unmeasurable, and consistently the same of what we know already, but forever. We do this to cope with not knowing what is beyond.

Everything in our literal understanding has an end. An individual life, food, a ruler, a song. Why is the universe, a literal thing (or rather, a literal everything), clumped into the same category as ideas and ideologies such as God, numbers, and love, which usually have no end, and are therefore called infinite in many circumstances.

The universe may end! It is said that it is hard to grasp the thought of infinity. But really, I think it is the opposite. Infinity is hard to explain rationally and prove, but the thought is simple: never ending. The idea of ending has to be explained, and is not able to be accepted if it cannot be explained. We feel that we must know everything to have peace with ourselves. As a result, if we think that the universe goes on infinitely the same way that we see now, then we are theoretically not missing out on knowing how it ends, or anything within it, that is not in our sight.

We just don't know what the truth of the question is. We don't know how far it goes, if it ever does end, or what might be differing from what we assume is within it.

This being said, is it better for one to have peace with a likely false idea, or for one to spend the time to accept what they can not know?

teachers

A thing most of the human race has in common, is the fact that we have all been students, and we still all are students. Not including the informal teachers in everyone's life, over a lifetime people have many many teachers in school and to learn skills. In my lifetime I have had approximately 40 school teachers thus far.

Because everyone has had teachers, I am sure I am not the only one who has thought about what way to approach thought about their teachers. It is respectful to not think about their personal lives, and only care about the information which is being presented to you. You are allowed to hold respect for them, look up to them, or dislike them for their teaching style. It is not thought of as respectful to dislike them for their personality, refer to their personal lives, point out or think about their personal faults or fears or insecurities. Under my experiences, in high school and below, it is not heard of to think of your teachers as human beings, or analyze anything about them. We assume our instructors do not have feelings, do not have lives, do not have views different from what they are told to teach. This being said, is it wrong to think about these things?

Lately, I have been able to view my teachers in a different way than I usually have. More recently, I have the tendency to understand that my teachers are not perfect and just beings, nor is their entire life and love the classroom and the students within it. I find flaws and personal behaviors of teachers very interesting. Most students view these tendencies as reason to like or dislike the teacher, which effects if they want to learn or not, whereas I use it as a way to understand the person who is teaching me, and how it effects their teaching style.

My current math teacher, I before thought was mundane, and overly prone to long pauses between phrases of boring content. I now realize he is purely a perfectionist, making sure every painfully simple statement and equation he writes or says is completely precise. He is also very patient and friendly. I thought he actually enjoyed boring me to death, but all he is trying to do is not move on until everyone understands. Although he enjoys humor from time to time, he does not take kindly to anti-intellectual behavior such as not doing work or not finishing homework. He says "This is unacceptable" and shakes his head during this statement quite often. Unfortunately, I cannot sympathize with his character on this matter because I am student who understands the content of the class with ease. I find it comical to a point where I have to repress signs of comical influence on my face when he gets very serious about people needing to be focused in and about his class. This is because it is hard for me to imagine a universe where that was a class I really had to "buckle down" in. I'm not exactly sure how he can say it with a straight face. Then again, it shows he is taking his class as seriously as his students should that will allow them to pass the class, and I should admire this.

Regarding his sense of humor I have a story of an obnoxious comment I made during class! Scoring 105% on every test in this class, he knows that I understand the concepts without much explanation. One day, as I stared into space during the lecture about congruent triangles, I noticed a term on the projection with a definition that we were expected to copy into our notes which we would at some point use during a test. (Because I never take notes, and because attaching notes to our exams earns a few extra credit points, I have been attaching the same page of notes to every test which I took very close to the beginning of the year. I think I have the formula for the circumference of a circle and the definition of a supplementary angle on this paper.) Out of boredom I read the large projection on the wall which reads "right triangle: a triangle with a right angle". In response to this display I make a face resembling a capital o followed by a period, followed by a lower case o. Then, I almost choked on my own saliva as I fought not to attract so much attention to myself as I resisted the urge to laugh my as off. The teacher dismisses us to a private work time for that night's homework and I raise my hand as he strolls through the classroom. With a determined spirit for my wise-crack, I threw on an intensely quizzical and confused face, and I said the words "Mr. Taylor?" in the whiniest voice I could. When I saw his recognition and attention as he made his was towards me I questioned "What's a right triangle?" with overly believable inflection. I remained in that quizzical expression while he repeated my question and glanced at the projection. I'm not sure if it was my cracking face that gave it away in the unbelieving that he actually thought my question was sincere or the fact that he remembered my usual instant understanding of the curriculum, but he started to smile, realizing my severe sarcasm of the question. I laughed, asking if we had not been using right triangles since the beginning of the course and had I not learned that fact as a 9 year old. He confirmed this fact, but said it might help the students to have the definition.

Another teacher of mine, I before thought was eccentric and comical. I now see that he truly is obnoxious, impatient, and selfish. He takes measures to humiliate students in front of the class to make a cheap joke. He will do anything for the class's laughter and approval. He has no wife, as far as any of us can tell. And he surely has no children, he has spoken of many members of his family. It's not fair to judge or question why this is; it could be regarding fertility, his orientation, his mental stability or personal issues, or his tendencies. I'm not suggesting anything, I don't really have any evidence towards any of those options, but sometimes one wonders. Also, he rarely allows people to go to the bathroom. Ultimately, it depends how much of the class is listening when you ask, because the more people it is, the funnier it seems to him to refuse their request.

Other than this though, I find him quite reasonable. Even though I think it's funny when he tells the class something general on a topic I know quite a bit about, and understands it so briefly and obscured that it is almost wrong, I think he has a way with stories and comedy that engages his students into the class. These stories have nothing to do with the class content, but I won't complain about that. If anything, I respect him for being less uptight about the work he is supposed to be doing.

Point...point...I'm sure I had a point at some point in this point. Er...I mean post.

Right. The question is: How helpful, how important, how appropriate, and how easy is it to see the person behind your teacher?

bloggy look at what i made!

Not executed as well or ending compared to my previous trippy flower-inspired depiction, but the idea behind it is more important that the effectiveness of the art itself. At least that's the explanation I'm sticking with as long I have this piece under my possession.It is supposed to represent the overwhelming and startling power of nature. Those flower-like things are producing those giant globs of colorful who-knows-what and also the haze surroundng them. Also recently, I experimented a bit with charcoal and created a few minimal sketches of relatively simple objects in my room.