caliarch.net

A recent article (registration required, but it’s free) in the New York Times points out that many students who have not graduated from high school are enrolling in college — in fact, says the article, something on the order of 2% of all U.S. college students do not have a high school diploma (4% of community college students)!  This has raised the issue of whether such students should be entitled to the same state and federal financial aid programs as entering college students who do have a high school diploma.  Some officials point out that students who have not earned a high school diploma or GED are less likely to be prepared for college-level work and therefore more likely to drop out and default on loans.  Additionally, some worry that in these situations the money is being spent paying for college programs in which underprepared students learn high school-level skills.

The funny thing is, many of these ”unprepared” students are succeeding.  While the article admits that the exact numbers are difficult to gauge, academic officers at many colleges say that non-high school grads experience success in college courses at about the same rates as their peers who hold diplomas or GEDs.

So what does this tell us?  I’ll tell you what it tells me.  It makes me question the value of a high school diploma.  It used to be that you had to have a diploma or GED to go to college, because completing high school supposedly certified that you were ready for higher level work.  Apparently, though, it doesn’t, since many students without these documents are succeeding in college and many with a diploma/GED drop out.

It also makes me think about the typical American high school in terms of its conduciveness to academic discourse.  One kid in the article says that he dropped out of school and started going to community college instead because high school made him feel like “a rat in a cage.”  In college, he said, everyone was there voluntarily and focused on learning, which made the whole environment more productive and efficient.

I guess I don’t really have a point.  Not yet, at least.  It’s just something to think about.

Hee hee; I never wrote a CD review before!

So my initial introduction to the Peppers was back in ‘99 when I snagged Californication. For a long time it was the only RHCP album I had, but I *loved* it (still do). In fact I can’t really remember why I didn’t seek out any of their other stuff. Anyway, it eventually dawned on me that maybe I should do this. So I did. The next one I picked up was Blood Sugar Sex Magic on the recommendations of a few other fans, and I have to say that I never really loved it all that much. Nevertheless, I grabbed By The Way when that came out, which I liked a lot, and when Stadium Arcadium hit shelves a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t resist giving it a shot. I mean come on — it’s a double frikkin album!

So firstly — well done, Peppers. You rock. I tend to be pretty ADHD when it comes to music, but since I got it one of these two discs (titled “Jupiter” and “Mars”) has been in my player roughly 75% of the time. I’m paranoid about wearing out albums that I really love too quickly, so I’ve tried switching it out with something else from time to time.   For some reason I keep coming back to it, though. I’ve seriously had days at work where I’ve got one of the songs stuck in my head and I absolutely cannot *wait* until I can get back in the car and listen to it. It’s been that addictive for me.

Why? Who knows. In general, I think RHCP has been a staple for me because it simultaneously feeds my rock-junkie cravings and scratches an itch I get from time to time for white-boy funk. There’s a soulful, obscure edge to the lyrics that appeals to my abstract, artistic side and something decadent and juicy about their overall style and sound that I can only describe as ear candy. For me, Stadium Arcadium was a lot like someone taking all these aspects of the Peppers and distilling the whole mess down to its most concentrated form.  Some of my favorite tracks include Dani California, Snow, Tell Me Baby, and She Looks To Me.

“[W]e only speak so much about memory because it doesn’t exist any longer.” ~Pierre Nora.

…so there’s no wedge. Only some instruments producing soundwaves with increasingly high frequencies and some producing waves with increasingly low ones. We (practicing musicians) hear that as a wedge because (I think) we are thinking about what the notation looks like. Using shape words (or textural words, or what have you) to describe sound is metaphor. In the case of the term “wedge,” it’s a metaphor for the notation. Of course, it’s important to remember that musical notation is itself a metaphor for sound–quarter notes and half rests and ledger lines are not literally present in the actual music. Thus, using the term “wedge” is a metaphor for yet another metaphor.

Nicely caught up? Excellent. Because it gets worse when we regard art on a larger scale.

(more…)

“[Y]ou will make me the greatest sword since excalibur.”

“I will beat my body into ruins for you. Perhaps I will fail But no one will try harder….Come back in a year.”

Such a year.

Domingo slept only when he dropped from exhaustion. He ate only when Inigo would force him to. He studied, fretted complained. He never should have taken the job; it was impossible. The next day he would be flying: he never should have taken the job; it was too simple to be worth his labors. Joy to despair, day to day, hour to hour. Sometimes Inigo would wake to find him weeping; “What is it, Father?” “It is that I cannot do it. I cannot make the sword. I cannot make my hands obey me.”

Some nights Inigo would awake to see him dancing. “What is it, Father?” “It is that I have found my mistakes, corrected my misjudgments…It will be done tomorrow and it will be a miracle.”

But the next night, more tears. “What is it now, Father?” “The sword, the sword, I cannot make the sword.” “But last night you said you had found your mistakes.” “I was mistaken; tonight I found new ones, worse ones…”

Such a year.

One night Inigo woke to find his father seats. Staring. Calm. Inigo followed the stare.

The six-fingered sword was done.

“At last,” Domingo whispered. He could not take his eyes from the glory of the sword …

“I am an artist.”

~William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Attempting art is always risky. That is, the risk involved in attempting to realize an artistic idea is directly proportional to one’s desire to do it. If you’re not really that into it and just kind of doodling something on the back of an envelope, it’s hard to feel terribly crushed when your cow or pony or what have you doesn’t turn out so well. When the Thing’s been trying to claw its way out of you for days / weeks / months and your heart starts to pound a little bit every time you think about it…well…that’s different.

I think that many people who are not actively engaged in creating works of art tend to think of it as sort of an intuitive process–the muse strikes and off you go, letting her guide your hand / body / mind / whatever. And it can be. There are certainly artists of every ilk that work like that. But the vast, vast majority don’t, at least the vast majority of the time.

I think people sort of think of it like a train or a roller coaster–as if the whole process were on rails, on a pre-determined course, and all you have to do is follow where the path naturally leads in order to realize the Thing. But the truth is–for most artists, most of the time–it’s more like laying down the tracks as you go along. Certainly it helps to have them there before the train comes along, but it’s up to the artist to decide not only where the tracks go but what they are to be made of, how far apart they are to be spaced, how they are to be connected, etc. etc. And those are hard, scary choices! The more committed you are to your Idea, the more you worry about making a wrong move and throwing the thing off. Or worse yet, you know where you want the tracks go and just can’t seem to get them there.

And suddenly you’re Domingo Montoya. Your heart knows what the finished product should be, even if your mind doesn’t; that’s how you can tell when it isn’t going well, even though you don’t really know what you’re trying to create yet. On some days, you’re a genius; you’re brilliant. Your hands or pen or body obey you, and every move brings you closer to realizing the Work. On other days, you are an abysmal failure. Nothing you do is right; you were presumptious and arrogant even to try. It will never be right.

In my own experience and (it seems) in that of many other artists that I’ve known, art nearly always seems to fall short of its Creator’s hopes. Personally, I can’t think of any time when it hasn’t. It’s frustrating to look at something you’ve spent so much time on and know that it isn’t quite what you imagined, and the closer it is to the Idea, the more irritating the imperfections are. It’s a little like working a Rubik’s Cube — if you spend a little time and don’t really get anywhere, that’s not really all that bad. But to have the thing nearly perfect and have only a few squares wrong is infuriating, because it’s now a matter of rearranging the whole thing. One of the most valuable lessons I learned at conservatory about making art: At some point, you simply have to stop, and say you’re done. Even if you know you’re not. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself insane.

So I guess what I’m saying is that once you know that that’s how it’s likely to turn out, that you’re likely to feel tormented and inadequate (or at best mildly irritated) when the Thing inevitably doesn’t live up to your expectations, it gets a little scary to even start. It’s tempting to whisper to yourself, “Maybe it’ll go away,” “Maybe it’s nothing,” “Maybe it’s a dumb idea anyway.” Because art is scary. Really scary. There is always the risk of frustration, loss, helplessness, feeling worthless and inept. Attempting to realize an inspiration is a brave thing.

I kind of wish I talked to more people who don’t consider themselves creative or artistic about their artistic impulses. Is the difference between people who think of themselves as artistic and those who don’t a matter of feeling the impulse, or of the drive to realize it? Having been an artistic person all my life, I can’t speak for those people. I can, pretty confidently, speak for people who make art on a regular basis. Everything I have to say is based on my own personal experiences and on interaction with other (self-described) artistic people.

Here’s what I know. When an artist (visual artist, performance artist, writer, composer, musician, etc.) creates art, it generally comes from one of two places. The first place is “inspiration.” You get a flash of something, a hint, a vague impression, and that creates inside you a drive to figure out what the flash was about, to understand the whole thing and how it relates to you and to the rest of the world. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t think about anything else. All you can do is sit in front of the canvas or the computer or the staff paper or whatever and sketch and doodle and imagine and let it drain out of you and into your medium until you figure it out and things start to make sense. So yeah. That’s inspiration.

One thing I do know about self-described “unartistic” people (or, as a teacher of mine liked to call them, “non-practicing artists”) is that many of them think it’s always like that. That that’s what artists do: they sit around and wait for the muse, and ideas just pop into their heads, and off they go. But the truth is that effortless inspiration is maddeningly rare. As a composition teacher of mine once said, you can’t sit around waiting for the muse to kiss you, because let’s be real–she’s a lazy wench. And even if she does get off her ass, she might not kiss you in the right place to turn you on.

The majority of artistic impulses don’t come from the muse. They come from sweat. And pain. And boredom. And feeding your brain with other art, shaking it around, seeing what pops up. Hoping something pops up. Begging it to. Art is work. Hard work. You get inspired eventually, most of the time, but you have to work for it.  Another pearl of wisdom from one of my composition teachers: The composers who make it are the ones who can face the terror and uncertainty of thinking and brainstorming and reading and improvising and listening and not listening for days or weeks or months on end without getting discouraged when nothing they write seems worth keeping.  In other words, the ones that sit around waiting for the muse usually don’t.