25 ideas

 Here is something I developed several year ago.  

Think of 5 ideas about something.  Do it while walking or driving, when you don't have a way of writing them down.  Write them down when you get home, or to destination.  Put them in their most logical order so that they comprise an argument. Then refine their phrasing, and expand a bit. The same idea can be expressed in 10 words or in 40.  

Each idea should be able to be explained with five steps, so you now have 25 ideas. In paragraphs of 125 words, you have a paper of 3125 words, which you can read at a conference, or develop into 7000 for an article. 

So thinking about Miles Davis. I would have one idea about his relation to the beboppers. He is younger than them, is influenced not by Dizzy, but by other players, the same way Dizzy was influenced by Roy Eldridge rather than Louis Armstrong. I could talk a bit about Miles and Monk.   

My second idea would be about Gil Evans and Bill Evans, how Miles influences and works with the whiter style of cool jazz, rather than being a hard bop guy. How the dichotomy between hard bop and cool dominated the 1950s. 

I could do a thing about his two classic quintets, one with Red Garland, Coltrane, Philly Joe, Paul Chambers, and the other with Tony Williams, Herbie, Shorter, and Ron Carter. A general reflection on how he found the perfect musicians to work with at any point in his career.  

Then a thing about his innovation on dealing with the audience. The famous "turning his back on the public" trope. It's an explicit rejection of the Satchmo style of charisma.  It's introspective and "cool." Coolness come as antithesis to jazz as "hot." (While the earlier dichotomy was between "sweet" and "hot" music.)

My 5th idea would be about later Miles and incorporation of R&B and rock styles. How he is at the root of "fusion." How fusion was rejected by the young lions group--and how to explain conflicts between Miles and Wynton. 

You should bring able to do that off the top of your head about anything you know well, like I just did with the Miles example. About how many topics could you develop 5 ideas of a certain quality or interest, while taking an hour walk? I could do it with Monk, Cervantes, or Borges. Probably a few more things, too. Frank O'Hara, for sure. 

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1. Hay un “giro literario” en la música que afecta no solo a Lorca, sino a otros poetas como Miguel Hernández. El fenómeno se produce no únicamente en el flamenco, sino también en la llamada “canción de autor.” 

 

2. El Lorca que entra en el Nuevo Flamenco es un Lorca vanguardista e intelectual—aunque el elemento popular y folklórico nunca está lejos, en las canciones grabadas con La Argentinita, constantemente tocadas, cantadas y grabadas de nuevos en géneros musicales diversos. 

 

3. Con la introducción de una gran cantidad de textos literarios, el flamenco mismo se transforma: se vuelve menos purista, mezclándose con otros géneros. Se introducen nuevos instrumentos. La poesía es uno de los motores de este cambio.  

 

4. El efecto es doble: la literatura da respaldo el flamenco como música de “patrimonio” cultural. La poesía canónica se vuelve doblemente canónica, valiéndose de la importancia canónica de una música arraigada ya en el prestigio literario, desde el romanticismo en adelante. 

 

5. Lorca es la figura clave de este giro literario, por ser un poeta de vanguardia, pero con raíces populares y con un interés explícito en el flamenco. 

The Collected Blurbs of JM

 I've written blurbs for books when I've been asked. I have said no a few times as well. I wrote one for a Yusef K. book over 10 years ago. I went looking for it and found it on amazon. I had not even known for sure whether they used it, because they never sent me the book.  Not very good, is it, but I guess I felt the need to say yes to this. Often I have even done it without excessive enthusiasm, but simply giving a more or less honest view with a positive spin. I often use a tone like: hey, this book is ok and might be useful to people who like this kind of thing.  

'"Testimony' is a compelling tribute. . . . It is remarkably free of kitsch and cliché and has some wonderful details. The interview with Feinstein, and Feinstein's other essay, help to explicate some of the details in the poem for readers less familiar with Bird lore.""―Jonathan Mayhew, author of Apocryphal Lorca: Translation, Parody, Kitsch"

A certain look

 I was watching Golden Bachelor, I'm not sure why, in which several women vie for the attention of a single man. This particular variant has an older guy, in his 60s, and more or less all the women are in their 60s or so, and mostly tall, thin white women with straight hair.  They all have the same look (maybe because that's what the guy is looking for, and it is late in this season), but it struck me that the aesthetic is rather narrow. Of course, the whole thing is somewhat objectionable, but why not have Latina, Asian women, and other shapes and sizes? The tone of the conversations is also somewhat monotonous, as though the producers had taught everyone the exact right thing to say. 

The only thing you know about a writer

 Kafka.  The Trial. Metamorphosis.  The "Kafkaesque." 

Proust. Involuntary memory.  The madeleine.  Swan as family friend. Maman finally kisses him good night. 

Beckett. Godot never comes. Absurd. 

Lorca. Deep song & flamenco. Gay and killed by Franco. Body never found. 

Cervantes. Fat and skinny guys tilting at windmills. "Quixotic." An etching by Picasso.  

Blurry

 Suppose a picture is blurry. The problem could be with my eyes; I am not wearing my glasses! Or the problem could be with the picture; it is blurry in and of itself.  Or some combination of the two factors that makes it difficult for me to see. 

Now, let's think about this in terms of hearing.  I can hear perfectly in my own language. Not really; it might be a difficult to understand dialect, or we could be in a noisy place, or you could be mumbling. But really, I can hear pretty well.  

But in another language, what I hear is "blurry." The problem is not my hearing, or the mumbling of the native speakers of that language.  It is a mismatch between my hearing and the things I think I ought to be hearing. 

It could be a failure to distinguish between two similar sounds...  Like a basic minimal pair problem.  

Unrest

 They want to merge our department with others. There is also a movement to give us an incentive to retire early, In my case, I would be retiring anyway but can get a year's salary without working as part of the deal (one hopes). The legislature is considering abolishing tenure, as well. The attack on the university is serious.  As I said before, we are squeezed on all sides. The administration is stalling on negotiations with the union, and meanwhile we don't even have a raise for this academic year yet. 

Even if I were young enough, I wouldn't be hirable in today's climate. When I was trained we did genres, and I chose poetry. It is true that my research now is interdisciplinary, on music and poetry, and yet I don't think there would be a job for me, in part because there just aren't jobs in general, and many ask for highly specific laundry lists of things that do not include what I do. I'm not seeing a huge future for my profession in general, and I have no interest in a lot of the more recent trends. 

Everything is interdisciplinary now, but in a way that omits actual disciplines.  

I don't mean to be negative. I have (and have had) a great career. I am lucky that this stuff is happening when I have a foot out of the door anyway.   

Xībānyá yǔ

 Words in Chinese re generally one or two syllables. There are sometimes 3 syllable words, or things like Xībānyá yǔ which means Spanish language. Nouns tend to be two syllables, adjectives and verbs, one syllable. Xinshiliu, or Saturday, is the most beautiful word I've found so far. 

You can make easy compounds like fruit cake, which is fruit + cake.  Ice coffee is bing + kafei.  It is almost Germanic in word formation. 

They say there aren't many loan words, but there is coffee, sofa, and chocolate.  

There are reduplications, like baba, mama, yeye, for family members. Or xiexie (please) or chang chang (often.). 

Sibilants are a problem.  There are a lot of zh, s, x, ch, ts sounds at the beginning of words, The syllables are usually a consonant plus a rhyme, ending normally with a vowel or nasal sound, never with a hard consonant. This means that syllables tend to sound similar to one another, silibant + nasal.  We are grateful when a word sounds more distinctive or stands out more against a backdrop. 

But I'm supposing all languages sound more mushy the farther they are from one's native language. I'm sure the mass of schwa sounds doesn't make English easy.