August 18, 2011
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1 All’s quiet.
2 Amazing how much I enjoy quiet, even though philosophically, one can make a case for there not being a quiet place on the Earth.
3 I say this boldly because I assume that somewhere there is, and that I’m simply too lazy to google it.
4 As far as I know, I’ve never experienced absolute silence.
5 I say this because my quiet class is working as I write this. I decided to write during class when the students are working on classwork. This is the same class as the first day, the class that came in five minutes early.
6 In my entire history of teaching I’ve never had a class show up five minutes early and stay in the room.
7 They already had today’s lesson yesterday (the selfsame first day), so I had to stretch my review a little longer, fully anticipating, “Oh! I told you all of this yesterday? My bad!”
8 I don’t think they picked up on the fact that I was throwing a lot of filler into the lesson. Trying to keep all your classes lined up and even is a part of the art. This class was almost a full day ahead of my other classes, so I sped up the other classes and slowed these guys down. It’s akin to doing digital recording.
9 It worked.
10 I’m home as I write this portion of the DN, and my last class was actually behind all the others! Their stuff worked so well the first day that it ended, if you recall, with John Sebastian’s Welcome Back as the final bell rang. But I left a major portion of their lesson OUT yesterday. So I had to rat-a-tat the Arthurian story of the sword in the stone and the wedding gift from Guinivere’s father to the bride and groom.
11 That would be the Round Table, of course, which brings instant images of pizza and guys dancing on street corners with cardboard lunch ads. Ah, corporate America.
12 You can run but you can’t hide. My intention wasn’t really to teach the Arthurian legend this early in the year, just to use it to augment an entirely different lesson. But this also sets up Arthur for later in the year.
13 Strategies, strategies, strategies.
14 The students were awesome for the second straight day. The first few days are always scary, especially if things have gone well, which they have.
15 Personally, I tend to forget that the students are far from being into any sort of routine with my class, so if I go in relaxed, I could easily get killed by sudden, explosive rowdiness. The early days of the school year are a bit of a leaded stroll on delicate eggs.
16 So far, so good.
17 I’ll keep you posted. I don’t want this to be all about teaching. Just wanted to give people a slight taste of what goes on when a school opens.
18 Moving on, Part the First: So the first part of today’s DN brought up the entire issue of silence, and in fact, absolute silence.
19 After having taught all day, coming home, and watching the Giants beat ATL in another heart-wrenching game, I sat down to plan some lessons. Spent two hours while the teevee blasted Bridezillas at me.
20 Amusing show when it is working as a loud, brash lava lamp. Some of those brides need serious therapy. Point is, it was brash and loud, like clanging pans and donkeys.
21 I eventually pulled up the DN, which I had started during class yesterday, and simply couldn’t concentrate. Bridezillas somehow went on another go, and the clanging pans and donkeys started in clanging and braying once again, only this time it sounded like the teevee had turned itself up so it could hear over the braying ladies of the veil.
22 At one point, I looked at my reflection on the computer screen and saw that I had acquired around forty more wrinkles in my forehead. You could grow corn in those rivulets. Clearly the noise had gotten to me.
23 I looked frantically for the remote, and almost destroyed the coffee table trying to get at it so that I could push first “mute” and then, “off”.
24 The braying and clanging and screaming reached a crescendo, and I pulled the remote into the air. With the ferocity of Thor I brought down the handle, finally pushing the “off” switch.
25 Absolute silence.
26 No. I had achieved absolute silence. I don’t care what John Cage or any other pseudo-audio-intellectual has to say about it. It was for one billionth of a cosmic second, but I truly believe I achieved what guys like Cage claim is impossible.
27 I wonder if Einstein would understand this?
28 All things are relative. The annoyance level of that one show had reached a dizzying proportion almost intolerable to the human psyche.
29 When the remote shut that dreadful cacaphony down with such utter swiftness, I am convinced that for one billionth of a cosmic second the Creator of the Universe, or God, or Joe-the-Bear, or whatevs, allowed me an extreme taste of absolute silence, which is also the magic of music: not the notes, but the nexus, the silence between the notes, the magical silence that makes music music.
30 I think there are these cosmic cracks that give us a peek at the alternate world that may just co-exist with our own sense of cosmic reality.
31 And I’m not even on medical marijuana.
32 It’s closer in essence to the guy who keeps hitting himself over the head with a hammer. When another man approached the guy and asked, “Why do you continue to hit yourself over the head with a hammer?” his reply was, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”
33 Moving on, Part the Second: Okay, okay, so I just took a cattle prod to Siddhartha, who somehow had hacked into my body and typed all that stuff you just read.
34 I hate when that happens.
35 Like you’re on Facebook, for example, and you get up to get a snack or something, and when you come back, some geek has written, “…has just adjusted a massive wedgie.”
36 Where is absolute silence when you screamingly need it?
37 Just some thoughts.
38 Moving on, Part the Thoid: Now that school is back in session for a lot of people, have they brought in the Halloween stuff yet? Do you ever wonder this: do the seasons change corporate focus, or does corporate focus change the seasons?
39 For example: As early as May we begin to see seeds, gardening tools, swimwear, sunglasses, coolers, beach umbrellas and stuff begin to appear in stores. Quite soon thereafter, we start seeing graduation things, balloons, mortar boards, Class of Fill-in-the Blank, etc. We see ads for Dads and Grads. Immediately after Fathers’ Day everything turns red, white, and blue. The flowers and garden areas brim with color, and all ads go fireworks. The day after the Fourth of July, all that stuff is on clearance, and binders, books, and school supplies fly into our vision, culminating in a monstrous hurricane after a school district has Opening Day. After this weekend, I’ll bet we’ll see all those rows and rows of neat binders and pencils and crayons and all lying on sales tables.
40 And they’ll instantly have Halloween masks, lights, costumes, extension cords, and all the rest out by next week.
41 Is there ever a season that is just the season anymore? Our every move is defined by seasonal profits. It’s massive. Always has been.
42 I remember when I used to direct shows, that we would be working through October, and our opening weekend was traditionally the first two weekends in December.
43 Nearly every year for a lot of years I would work so hard on deadlines that I wouldn’t really notice too much of the seasonal stuff, just that we would often go into costume stores to see if we could buy things for our shows. I would never really realize how close we would be to an opening night until I would stop everything, reach for a moment of absolute silence, which often happened while standing at center stage of the amphitheatre at YB. It would usually be on some November morning when I would look through the cherry trees at the quad and see Santa Claus’ face peering back at me.
44 Happened more than once. Santa would be smiling through the cherry tree leaves, a nice, happy smile, but it would happen, and I would think I was hallucinating, because it couldn’t possibly be that close to Christmas.
45 My vision would then unblur, and I would always realize that it was a Coke truck with Santa’s image on the side against a white backdrop.
46 It would all swirl around, but it would also happen after one billionth of a cosmic second.
47 And so we go full circle.
48 I like to think beyond evolution. I like to think that those sorts of moments give us a hint about something bigger. I joke about absolute silence. Cage once put himself in some sound-proof chamber that was as close to absolute silence as one could get, and emerged telling people that he could still hear his breathing and his heartbeat.
49 Some people just refuse to be happy.
50 I think someday I could be truly happy.
51 I was last night, actually.
52 For one billionth of a cosmic second.
53 Maybe that’s all it takes.
54 And that’s about all I can take. Gotta leave ya!
55 Have a great day. Enjoy your tea and crumpets.
56 Peace.
~H~
