Reversal of expectations

 Some jokes work through reversal of expectations. 

I've been counting calories, in and out, for a week, trying to be more mindful of what I'm eating and how much I'm exercising.   

So far I've gained two pounds.  [I'm not sure it's funny, but it has the structure of that kind of joke at least.] 

Seinfeld says: Pop tarts can't go stale because they were never fresh in the first place.  

***

The famous joke about the restaurant.  Two women are complaining: "The food there is inedible, it tastes like garbage; it makes me sick, etc... " and the other one adds, ",,, and the portions are small!"

A famous musician says: If I don't practice for a week, I know it.  If I don't practice for a month, my audience knows it. If I don't practice for six months, the critics know it.  [Usually found in a less funny version, with the critics second and the audience last.]. 

A pianist friend of my father's had a whole list of things to say to a colleague after a not-so-great performance, like "I've never heard the piece played that way before!" "That was a performance I won't forget any time soon!""I have no words."  I cannot remember what the quips were now, but they all could be said for either a great or godawful concert.  

Lester Young had a joke: "What Lester plays, Stan Getz."  Puns are usually bad, but this one is a zinger. 

Compelled Speech

 Compelled speech is even worse than censorship.  Saying you have to say something, sign a loyalty oath, etc... compels hypocrisy, given that some will sign just to go along [social pressure], some will sign out of fear, or simply because they don't even think about it very long. So it becomes impossible to tell who really believes in the content of the utterance. The point is to compel unanimity, social conformity.  

It's easier to object to this when the compelled speech is on the other political spectrum, but you also have to object to it when it is coming from your own side.  

My experience was in a Boy Scout trip; we were sponsored by the church and so the scouting was an extension of that. We had a testimony meeting, and I refused to say anything. It was just an awkward silence for however many seconds it took them to realize I wasn't going to say I believed in something if I didn't. I am not a particularly brave person, but as a kid I somehow knew I had to stick to my guns on this one.  Some of the other kids were saying their testimony was not too strong, but they wanted to believe in it, which was at least honest to some degree. Some actually did believe in it, to varying degrees.  

It is worse than censorship because, if you censor, you assume that people want to say it, but can't. It presumes the possible existence of the censored opinion.  

That reminds me another joke:

How are things in Spain under Franco?  

We can't complain! That is to say, we can't complain.  [no nos podemos quejar]

dreams

 There were some thick, complex chords made of "top" and "bottom" parts, but mismatched or condensed or accelerated somehow. 

***

We were vacationing with other people; somehow I had paid $3,500 toward a school for one of these other people's kid. I was somewhat unhappy with this, but had somehow committed to paying this, as part of the price of the vacation.  

***

Real life: had been thinking about a lecture by Herbie Hancock. He said Miles had told him not to play the "butter notes." HH interprets that as the 3rd and the 7th.  I was thinking, yes, but I want to play the butter notes, because they sound good. I can't be only playing 9th and sharp 11!  Avoiding the obvious, the butter notes, is fine for someone of Herbie Hancock's talent, but not for me. Most jazz is kind of abstract for most listeners anyway, and many solos are pointless technical exercises in going up and down a scale, rather than "telling a story," in the Lester Young mode.  

Then, at night, I see a post on facebook talking about this very remark by Hancock.  I compose a response to it, then I notice that the original post is from 2014 so I don't post my comment after all.  

Dr Seuss and Bernstein

 A candidate we were interviewing, when I asked her about how she would teach rhyme and other technical issues about poetry, said she would leave that until a graduate course.  I was thinking, well, that is Dr. Seuss level information. Let's not leave the C major scale for advanced music theory.  Sure, things can get complicated, but how much is lost just from not knowing the basics? Rhyme comes before literacy and helps it along, since the child can use the phonetic recurrence to learn how to sound out words. The parent would have already taught them "one, two, buckle my shoe, three four, open the door, five six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight, nine ten, begin again" and things like that.   

Then, before I got up this morning, I was thinking about Leonard Bernstein's educational concerts for young people.  He is aiming his pedagogy at little kids (apparently) but actually everything you really need to know about music as an adult is also there. I mean an adult who listens with some understanding, not a professional composer or musicologist, etc...  Someone like me. The kids in the audience, you can see, are responding to Bernstein's charisma and might retain something of this, but it is the parents who dragged them there who are getting what they need to know. I recommend these concerts, which you can stream on your favorite video streaming platform.   

Some dreams and real life

 

I am supposed to go to Oberlin next week, to give a paper on music, invited by Sebastiaan Faber. I don't have a plane ticket and haven't written anything. (Classical anxiety dream.) It is plausible enough to be real, but implausible enough to be a dream, so I lie in bed trying to figure it out, too lazy to wake myself up to check my email. In the morning, I dismiss it as a dream. 

***

I am in a thrift store, with some books and clothes I want to buy, and a small sewing machine. They say I have to use cash if it is over $45 dollars, so I give up the sewing machine, with some relief, since I don't know how to use it anyway. We have a hard time using the card in their machine, which is old. The person waiting with me, I feel, should probably just go away by herself, since she doesn't need to watch me try to pay. Ironically, the sewing machine is the only thing in the dream with concrete identity. The other stuff is just a pile of junk.  

***

A real life incident. In the morning, yesterday, they email us from apartment complex reminding us that they will replace all of our hot water heaters. A description of the process they will follow, etc... starting with buildings G and H. I think they won't get to me, and in fact, calculating the number of apartments times the number of buildings, I know they won't finish in one day. This is like a 40 hour job at least, even with two crews, one to remove old heaters and another to install new ones. Around 5:30 we get another email.  The plumbing company only got to a few units, not having brought enough "supplies," and will reschedule for another day, and will even have to re-enter the units they were already in to "modify" their work. 

***

Another real life thing: I am reading a Calvin Tomkins book from my office called The Bride and Bachelor. I'm wondering if he is the guy who wrote the racist poem about Chinese food. I have to look it up; no that is Calvin Trillin (they both write for New Yorker, have the same first name, and two syllable last names. The first chapter of the book is about Duchamp, and goes into his chess playing a bit. The second chapter is on Cage, and goes into his study of mushrooms. Duchamp is a top amateur chess player, and John Cage is the top amateur mycologist. I am wondering if the other figures studied in the book will have interesting side passions? Something reminds me of Weldon Kees, and I look him up, and find out he was jazz pianist and abstract painter! I try to remember who told me first about Kees, a poet who apparently jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.   

Someone on twitter, who I follow because we were once closer friends than we are now, asks a question about a Mallarmé quote he cannot find, something quoted by Blanchot. I find the quote for him with about 10 minute google exploration. The only true bomb is a book! My former friend has drifted away, I gave him some poems for a magazine [he had asked me] and heard nothing back, then I congratulated him for publishing a poem in the New Yorker (no answer). Then I didn't try again to keep in touch.      

There is nothing significant in any of this, but it is the texture of my everyday mental life.  

Some of my favorite jokes

 Why did they coronate the king in a submarine?

Deep down, he's not so bad.  

I started a club for introverts, but nobody showed up for the meetings.

I wanted to start a club for procrastinators, but I haven't gotten around to scheduling the first meeting.  

The Rabbi got up and said, "you know, you might think I'm a great rabbi, but really I'm nothing special."

A prominent man from the congregation stood up and said, "you know, I've made a lot of money, and contribute a lot to the temple, but really, I'm nothing. I'm no better than anyone else."

A schmuck in the back stood up and said, "you know,  really, I'm nothing..."  Then people started to murmur: "Who does this guy think he is, to say he is nothing?"   

A guy put two glasses by his bed side, one full of water, the other empty.  

"Well, one is for if I'm thirsty, the other is for if I'm not."

How do you make 5 million in publishing? 

Start with 15 mil.  

So what do people like about language?

 People like language that's direct, honest, and concrete, not motivated by cowardice, even when it's ambiguous. 

Here's a poem by Weldon Kees I like:

(For H.V. 1910-1927) 

I remember the clumsy surgery: the face

Scarred out of recognition, ruined and not his own. 

Wax hands fattened among pink silks and pinker roses. 

The minister was in fine form that afternoon. 

I remember the ferns, the organ faintly out of tune,

The gray light, the two extended prayers, 

Rain falling on stained glass; the pallbearers, 

Selected by the family, and none of them his friends.   

The phrase "in fine form" is brilliant, because it is a cliché and the poet know it.  That alerts the reader to the sarcastic tone here. Fine is the only overtly positive word in the poem, so it has to be mean the opposite.  Imagine if he had written: "the minister droned on and on." The poem would be ruined if it used words like church, or funeral.  

Poetic analysis, my craft, makes me attuned to uses and misuses of language.