Day 40 (Round IV) "In the trenches": strong women edition

I've been blessed to be surrounded with some strong positive people in my life--and some right bastards too, and some who've been both. But most of those strong people, even the bastards, gave me a vision of some ways to be, and so for that I owe them all a debt.

I have enough suspician about manipulative, dysfunctional, and co-dependent family situations--having grown up in one--that I've got a very short fuse for certain kinds of destructive behavior. Dharmonia can vouch for the absolute towering rage certain types of parents will evoke in me: it takes huge reserves of (my limited) self-control to refrain from telling certain moms (especially) 'n' dads just what assholes they've been to their children. And I have a sort of stumped/mystified reaction to the experience of those raised in loving, healthy families--that feeling of "jeeze, I wonder what it must be like to grow up un-fucked-up about music, self-image, success, money, trust, sex, or any others of the whole sad legacy to which I'm heir", because I have absolutely clue what that must feel like (it's no coincidence that 3 of the 4 siblings in my generation went far away from the possibility of having kids). But I have to believe that growing up thus un-fucked-up is both possible and real.

Anyway, there've been a lot of fucked-up experiences in my own life, but there've also been a lot of remarkable, brave, creative, strong, compassionate people too. And I am distinctly grateful for that.

Most particularly, there've been a lot of strong, positive women in my life. Although some of my most significant role models have been male (that's kind of the definition of "role model", isn't it?), and although I suspect that most acquaintances and students would think of me as occupying a spot far on the masculine end of the spectrum (I've not got much of a "soft side"), strong women have been some of the most important influences and most valued collaborators in my life. Guitar teachers, musical collaborators, co-writers, academic colleagues, mentors, you know it: my karma seems to require strong women.

That's continued to play out in my life here. Pretty much from the day I started, I've been surrounded by women who enriched my life: students, colleagues, and, especially, assistants. I've never had the luxury of "selecting" graduate assistants--have always had to take the luck of the draw or whomever we could recruit for our small-but-growing graduate program--but for whatever karmic reasons, the assistants I've gotten have been, pretty much without exception, smart, talented, imaginative, responsive, tough, remarkable women. Maybe that's partly because we try, within our division, to balance the male/female energy in the various partnerships of teachers & assistants. Maybe it's because, somewhere up the food chain, some suit thought maybe they could keep Coyote happy if they gave him smart women.

But for whatever reason, I've been blessed: the ones who've worked for me have just been these strong women, who are now out in the world raising children, holding down professorships, assuming directorships, running arts organizations, creating endless positive energy. As I've said before, there's absolutely nothing more charismatic and attractive than guts and brains.

I've blogged before, intermittently, regarding my own limited sense of how tough it can be to be such a woman in a society as fucked-up as ours, but tonight I'm just grateful that these remarkable women have been and continue to be part of my life, and my learning.

So, Caroline, Setareh, Michelle, Shannon, Lauren, Meredith, Abi, Tif, Elissa:

this one's for you.

Overtook

Done been overtook by the day in every way. Hoping for more time and blog-energy tomorrow.

To make up for it: here's Al Green taking us to church on the late, great, never-to-be-matched live-TV show Night Music:

Day 38 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Sallie Ann edition

Interesting weekend. Got on the return flight from London conference (which same's schedule and selective internet access explains the blog-silence): 9 long hours from London-Heathrow to Houston, but I'll still take that over sprinting through airports to make multiple too-tight connections, made it into Lubbock around 9pm on the Wednesday night. Graded mid-term essay exams 'til around 12:30am, crashed.

Got up Thursday AM: made a committee meeting w/ the Boss 9am-11am; taught 12:30-2pm; by 3:30 was on the road with a student for an Irish music teaching weekend SE of here.

Interesting situations. I've taught at various festivals and summer camps over the years, and been a student at others, but this one is anomalous in a couple of ways--most notably because of the site, and because of the general stance and sociological profile of the organizers and attendees.

Facility incredibly effective: a huge rural retreat center owned, of all things, by the Salvation Army, situated in the rolling hills south of Dallas TX. Barns, corrals, golf-links, multiple chapels, decent dorms, a small music conservatory, a dining commons (with decent food, thank the universe) by an artificial lake. Effective organization, smart scheduling, good promotion and presentation of the music. Top-notch faculty (leaving aside your humble narrator), nice and outgoing folks, attentive students, meticulous yet relaxed staff.

And yet there are a couple of details that feel a little "off"--or at least unfamiliar.

The first is that, because this is a camp owned by (and rented from) the Sallie Anns, there is absolutely no alcohol allowed anywhere on the grounds: this including music session rooms, dining hall--even the dorms and private rooms!

Now, I'm not much of a proponent of the "Irish music and/or musicians automatically require booze in order to function" premise, but the total absence in this case did make me reflect on it. In one way it was nice: generally speaking, at such camps, you're so busy teaching, and then playing tunes, and then going to concerts or playing your own, and then playing tunes, and then playing more tunes, and then sleeping maybe a couple of hours before getting up and doing it all again, that your body is already pretty much pummeled (especially if, like me and I suspect a number of the other teachers who'd come direct from Ireland, your body clock is totally jetlagged); adding the booze to it can ease the pain and fire the crack, but it doesn't do anything good for your metabolism (psyche another question). In this case, it's actually kind of a relief not to have any alcohol in the system: you can concentrate on getting enough H20, and trying to limit the intake the amount of carbs, grease, and salt that are typically present in cafeteria food, and on getting in the walking (and schlepping of instruments) that a campus this size requires. And god knows I've been at some camps where the overgrown nostalgic "here's how much of a party animal I was way back in college" beer consumption--mostly, to be fair, on the part of adult male students overexcited at being off the leash for a couple of weeks--was way out of hand, and actually counterproductive to the learning process that the camp is supposed to be about.

But it's still a little weird. Going without the booze is OK--though I'll admit that, around 6pm after teaching ALL day, or around midnight for a nightcap, it feels like a little bit of a deprivation--but more because of the kind of overarching "we (anonymous all-powerful Sallie Ann "we") are going to dictate a very wide range of conduct while you're here on our grounds" stance it manifests. It feels a little invasive--and DAMNED sure alien to the world of cantankerous individualism that I associate with Irish trad musicians.

A second weird factor, and one definitely related to the first, is that, for the first time, I think I've encountered what's become in the past 10 years or so a sizable portion of the market for avocational Irish music: the home-schoolers, opt-outers, social or religious conservatives who think they're finding in Irish music a haven from a messy, modern, secular, foul-mouthed, booze-drinking, changing world.

Don't get me wrong: they're very nice folks, very appreciative of the teaching, obviously very dedicated to their kids (18 hours a day teaching, feeding, clothing, caring and earning for them: you'd have to be dedicated), and very committed to the idea of a "traditional" music they can share across generations without amplifiers, even after (or if) the Lights Go Out.

I 'magine a few of them are Left-Behinders, or maybe incipient survivalists, or "from my cold dead hands" automatic-weapons freaks who still plan to vote for Palin as Prez in 2012--but my guess is that, rather, they're folks who are concerned about the world in which their kids are going to grow up, who think new technology, the sheer pace of input, is a corrupting influence more than an opportunity, and who think they've found in Irish music a haven of a simpler, purer, cleaner, more moral, safer time. And an all-ages music retreat at a Salvation Army center a good 3 miles from the nearest outside habitation--or booze--must seem like a return to that idealized, safer, earlier age.

Which I don't think was ever there. Yes, I believe the Irish village culture that was the cradle of the music manifested some values that we could damned sure use in the modern world--modesty, restraint, memory, participation, a decent work ethic. I believe that learning, loving, and sharing the music can give us back a hell of a lot that we damned sure have lost.

But I also believe that there was never a Golden Age--there was never a time before the Fall. And, for damned sure, both the contemporary world of the music, and, I believe, the journey of the music through the history of the Irish at home and in the Diaspora, is anything but clean, simple, peaceful, pure, or moral. Irish music--traditional music of all kinds--is and always was about helping people, especially poor people who were materially poor but culturally very rich, get through all of life's hard challenges: birth, marriage, hunger, cold, loss, fear, anger, departure, injustice, war, and the whole messy megillah. For Chrissake, that's why there are so goddamned sad songs! It's about the mourning and the fierce joy that comes from living close to all the hard aspects of life, and a music that helps you cope with all of it.

I don't wanna idealize the music. I don't want to see it as a chance to escape for the weekend to a bubble of a halycon Past before the Fall. I don't need the fictions that I hear being expressed around the music--the actual history is quite sufficiently remarkable. And admirable. And I'm in it for all of it--not just the safer more idealized more sequestered or romanticized bits that seem to live here this weekend.

In fact, between the quiet, manicured grounds, the soberly-dressed moms 'n' dads 'n' home-schooled kids, and the ubiquitous electric golf-carts careening across the grounds to transport instructors schlepping instruments or the large incidence of large people (lot of these folks seem to like their carbs), it's actually a bit reminiscent of the bandbox little village in west Wales where they filmed the McGoohan version of the Prisoner.

But I'm home now. The sequestered, quasi-monastic aspect of the retreat was sort-of refreshing and sort-of peaceful, but I live out here, in the messy, smelly, complicated, contentious, challenging world of Samsara. And prefer to.

To celebrate which, I believe I will go drink a little whiskey.

Mountains are mountains, mountains are not mountains, mountains are mountains.

I never climbed Cotopaxi, and I never will.

But he has, and because of his guts, strength, and friendship, I've seen the summit through his eyes.

And we're standing there right now Coop, you and me, and we're dancing.

And we will again, goddammit.



If you care about this blog and what this blog cares about, then send up some positive energy for my brother in music Steve.

Thanks.

Day 34 (Round IV) "In the trenches": "Waal, the Stranger jist rode inta town" edition

Spent the last week on a UK campus as the guest of an old IU friend's department and lecture series. My buddy T has been after me for the past couple of years to come and give a talk as part of their colloquia on the minstrelsy project, but until this year we've never been able to work out the finances--not the fee (fee?!? ha!), because nobody in academia really has the money to be paying extra for scholars not on the payroll to come in and give extra presentations, but rather the adjacent/ancillary "Music & Migration" conference whose CFP ("call for papers") T was able to tweeze sufficiently to include both historical as well as ethnographic studies on the topic. That got a paper accepted, which in turn let me go to my own boss and Dean and request "international research presentation" travel support, which in turn made it possible for me to get here, and, by crashing with T and his family, spend the week at a cost T's colloquium could afford.

It's been a nice visit: lot of quality time with the family (knew both T and spouse at IU) including hot & cold running kids (ages 2, 4, 6), wander in the New Forest.

Actually pretty nice to spend time in the New Forest--not a terribly dramatic landscape (heath, bog, scattered trees), but with animals (pigs, horses, sheep, etc) running free. Because this is the largest remaining patch of "common land"--unowned by any private holder, but held "in common" by those who work and graze the land--the last vestige of the way that land was, before Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and the Acts of Enclosure that ensued when the rich realized they could lay claim to anything not newly-documented as owned (kind of what Certain Irish Musicians have done with anonymous tunes). I've done a lot of work on concepts of the Commons--the pre-Industrial, pre-copyright, barter-era social compact that says "as long as everyone in a community understands the vernacular rules by which the resources get used, we don't HAVE to nail down every last bit of who 'owns' what". It's ironic that the reason the New Forest has remained a "commons" area is that it was (originally) a private hunting domain established by William I (it's in Domesday Book), and it was a pleasure and a unique and precious experience to spend time in a landscape that has NEVER been "owned".

Also had a nice visit with Taiyo--first her, here, for a day of the Music & Migration conference. Felt a little embarrassed that she'd traveled and was spending money to hear a variant of a paper that she's heard at least twice before, but it was nice to introduce a friend from one Dr Coyote era (Lubbock) to a friend from another (Bloomington). And it was nice to see her coming along as a professional scholar able to hold her own in foreign climes.

Then to Oxford, which I commented upon briefly last night. Though it's a beautiful place, and the sense of history comes up between the cobbles and out of the walls of the buildings, probably the most enjoyable parts of that visit were the chances to meet her own friends and supervisors. I can do without the spotty little Children of Privilege with their posh accents and carbon-copy blazers and scarves and Potter-/Auden-esque spectacles and their general air of tentative privilege: "privilege" because they've always been told by Mum and Dad and their rich relatives and the family's corporate relations that they are Among the Elect, and "tentative" because, even in Oxford, they can bump shoulders with people of every different ethnicity, economic experience, and set of political convictions--including Very Large Americans with earned PhDs and contempt for the English Upper Classes coming off him like waves.

But it was a pleasure to meet the guys she works for. I won't go on at length about them--they're prime material for her OWN blog--but it was felicitous, after the toxic Privilege of the Oxford streets (not unlike what I feel in the streets of Taos, Boulder, or Cambridge MA), to be reminded that the English university system is still capable of turning out diametrically opposite personality types who are both, nevertheless, bright as hell and very approachable: one buttoned-down and understated, the other expansive and hyperbolic, but both of them obviously delighted to be dealing with people who are quick enough, and flexible enough, to alleviate the sheer intellectual boredom that comes from being way smarter than everybody else in the room (not an experience I know, but cf Dr Coyote's Elder Brother here). Nice guys, and it was delightful to see them both pleased with and proud of Taiyo's contributions to their operations.

After that, a late ride back through the darkling countryside of Oxfordshire and Hampshire, and being reminded that, had we in the US ever been able to escape the oligarchies of the Big Oil that demanded a the suicidal construction of superhighways and a dinosaur of an auto industry (thanks, Prescott Bush, damn you), we might have had a light-rail system that was a fifth as effective as the UK's. And, if we hadn't allowed ourselves to be so utterly cowed by the fucking Puritans, it might even be possible, en route on such a quick, clean, quiet train, to enjoy a split of a decent red wine and read about Samuel Beckett.

Now sitting in the cafe of the university (pretty good lattes, actually, as long as, in ordering, you say "one leh-tay and one bah-nah-nah, please", or they won't understand your Yankee accent), tap-tapping on the presentation (give me surplus time before a public lecture, and I will wind up rewriting) and waiting to be met by a posse of T's Master's and PhD students, who are tasked with taking me to lunch.

I sort-of remember such jobs, from my own 12 years as a graduate student. While I wouldn't wish my own graduate-student self on ANY visiting professor (large, ragged, skeptical, accustomed to the worst possible self-indulgent pomposity from professors), I actually enmjoy and value meeting other peoples' grads, and I go way out of my way to be as positive, engaged, and encouraging as I know how to be.

Because being in graduate school is fucking HARD. I have the impression from T, and from some other observations, that it's nowhere near as hard here as it is across the water--here, there are few classes, only the occasional seminar, you pick your own supervisor from the available faculty, you meet with your tutor once a week to discuss whatever has been your recent reading or writing. Master's in 1 year and a PhD in 2. I 'magine this does a very good job of preparing UK grad students (call 'em "post-grad" here) for work in the UK university system doing the same thing for more recent students, the contrast between the criteria of this system, and those of the US (massive coursework, allegations of comprehensivity, batteries of entrance and exit exams, extended dissertation approval and vetting process, many more years in the pipeline) helps me understand why it's so difficult and uncommon for UK PhD's to wind up teaching in American institutions: if the American school isn't of sufficient stature to provide "pure research" or at the most "senior single seminar" status, the UK people are going to have trouble displaying the range of expertise--or at least competence--to provide the service that a Stateside school needs.

Coming up on colloquium Zero Hero in about 4:00 minutes now. Here we go...

...Aftermath: went well. Nice selection of the faculty there, but much more importantly (sorry, T), good representation of the Master's and PhD students. As a mutual friend said, in the pub after the lecture, "It's really around the students that T lights up," to which my response was "that's exactly how it should be." Good kids, good questions, good energy, with all of which I'll be really happy to keep in touch.

On the London/Heathrow coach in less than 9 hours. Indian food on the horizon right now. 30 hours from now I should be Back Home.

You hang tough, goddammit

You went up Cotopaxi like it was a fuckin' walk in the park, and danced a jig on the summit.

I refuse to believe there's a bacterium on this fuckin' planet that can take you. You hang tough, you hear me?

Oxford (the real old one)

First visit today, in tandem with Taiyo. Beautiful place, and the history, literature, and learning of the place comes up through the cobblestones.

But I have a little bit of the same reaction, walking past Christchurch Cathedral and Balliol College, that I had the first time I visited the Vatican: yeah, they're wonderful places, stuffed to bursting with erudition and artistic beauty and a sense of tradition--and neither one of them would have existed if they hadn't been funded by feudalism, colonialism, and empire.

I walk the streets of both places, and I can't help but be conscious of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people whose work made them both possible, but who never enjoyed their benefits.

Still an old Chartist/Wobbly/anarchist at heart, I reckon.

Day 34 (Round IV) "In the trenches": "6/8" edition

You want a rewarding challenge--a task that is both, simultaneously, rewarding and challenging? Sitting in a hopelessly ill-chosen conference room, as echoey as a bathysphere and with about as much acoustical quality, straining your ears and left-brain/right-brain cortex integration to catch every nuance as Dama, Justin Vali, the great Regis Givazo, and their bandmates conduct a master-class in Malagasay rhythms, lightly interpreted by the young German ethnomusicologist who they've obviously adopted as their musical baby sister but otherwise in their heavily-accented French which you can barely understand, but which you follow without even breathing, because the sophistication and precision with which they speak about their own music makes the patronizing German sociolinguist who told the young ethno person that what she "really should do is 'explain' 'it' to 'us'" seem just as pompous and condescending as it actually is.

The reward? Hearing that conversation, and getting to shake the hand of Regis Givazo, maybe the most brilliant button accordion player, in any idiom, I've ever heard.

Good day.

"It comes in pints?!?"

"...I'm getting one!"

Day 33 (Round IV) "In the trenches": jiggity-jig edition

Puddle-jumper flight from Lubbock to Houston, long, long (9-hour) overnight Houston to London Heathrow. Heading on up outta this joint for a conference, at which I'll present yet more stuff from the minstrelsy project, and then follow up Tuesday with a colloquium/guest-lecture shot for an old friend's department.

Right now, sitting in the London-Heathrow coach station, and skyping onto the free wireless, and diggin' it all the way. The wrinkle is that I keep getting kicked off and having to reconnect to a different (free) wireless network, because--get this--I'm getting that wireless signal from the buses waiting to depart, and every few minutes a given bus--and wireless router--will pull out of the station and I'll have to reconnect. Yes, folks: in England--a nation with a really very good bus service, and top-notch rail service--even the buses have free wireless.

I don't have much use for their imperial history, and their heritage of class & privilege makes me want to vomit--but their concept of broadband access as a citizenship right makes us seem like a bunch of fucking Neanderthals.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

On the tube right now, and I'm tripping enough on Pseudophed that it's about the level of cognition I can handle.

It's actually a pretty sweet little movie. I can take or leave Michael Cera: I think, to really enjoy the mono-character he plays in pretty much everything, you have to have either been, or had a crush upon, a pseudo-nerd like that character in high school. But there's some good comic writing in the screenplay, and some good comic small turns (Ari Gayner's drunken party girl is particularly good--no surprise, as she's from Baahstin and the role probably isn't too far from folks she knows), and I've thought Kat Dennings was a smart little, atypical actress ever since she play the great Catherine Keener's daughter in 40-Year-Old Virgin.

And I really like the idea of a movie in which a bunch of people, including the male and female ingenue, spend a movie running around New York trying to find a legendary underground band's unannounced show, and that those two ingenues bond because they recognize that a shared sense of which music you like can damned sure save not only a relationship, but even your life.

Sure saved mine.

Well, the blue light was my baby...

Just sang an unaccompanied "Love in Vain" in the San Antonio hotel ballroom where Robert Johnson recorded in Nov 1936, and damned near burst into tears.

We goddamned well ought to treat our geniuses better: Buddy Bolden, Charlie Christian, Bird, Dolphy, Mingus, Janis, Jimi, Duane, Clifford, on and on and on.

And we never will.

Thank you, Robert.

"Dark aberration"

The Nobel has frequently not been awarded as a result of completed accomplishments, but rather "to encourage innovators to stay the course". Marshall nails it--and here is the part that the far right-wing "who for 8 years ruled this country like a medieval fiefdom really should be paying attention to:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world,...became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

Right on. They were all culpable.

Eyes on the Prize

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: they gave the Nobel to war criminals and terrorists (Kissinger and Arafat), heroes and saints (Mandela and HH the Dalai Lama), villains and fools...but they also just gave it to my president. And it's the rest of the fucking world telling American right-wing birthers, 10-per-centers, Teabaggers, Blue Dogs, and hate-radio-mavens that the entire rest of the world knows they're wrong.

I'm glad he won.

This ain't bidness...

The 1991 New Jack City is not a very good movie, by any metric: sort of low-rent wimping-out-on-itself blaxploitation only with the gloss of pretending to have a "Message", but there is one great line in it, delivered by the right actor: Ice-T--an authentic badass--to Wesley Snipes, just after beating the living shit out of him:

Well, listen, you dirty little draft-dodging faux-cowboy dry-alcoholic entitled sociopathic little preppie shithead, your fucking imperial-fantasy-wet-dream war is still taking my students to serve overseas on a mission that is Fucked Up Beyond All Recovery:

"This ain't business anymore. This is personal."

Don't you ever forget. I'm not done with you yet.

Day 26 (Round IV) "In the trenches": lachrymae edition

I deal with tears surprisingly frequently in my job. Not as often as priests or doctors, of course, and not even close to as often as hospice workers and EMTs--may their cycles of rebirth be shortened!--but still with surprising frequency. The stereotype would be of the "tear-stained email" (Dharmonia's phrase) or face-to-face visit when someone comes to tell me that their grandmother has died for the fifth or sixth time, but in point of fact, I deal with real (not crocodile) tears with surprising frequency.

Thankfully, they're not all tears of frustration or anger--though that is the source of the kids' upset an unconscionably large percentage of the time--because they can sometimes result from relief, stress, or true sorrow. When they hit this age of 18-24, it's when some of them for the first time encounter death at close range: a grandparent, a friend, and it brings home to them the terrible brevity of life, in a way that their teenaged Bubble of Presumed Invincibility usually shields them from.

During the 12 years I was in group therapy, I learned a lot about how the stages of powerful emotion work--not only by observing my fellows in the group, because their emotion was often so powerful it was hard to refrain from getting sucked-in by it, and because, hell, we were all in the therapy group precisely because we needed work on how to handle emotions.

But more from watching how my great therapist/Dharma sister/teacher handled the emotions of others. The therapist's charge is to maintain perspective (not "objectivity", which is a bullshit chimera that some therapists hide beyond in order to avoid commitment), but the Buddhist teacher's charge is to not only maintain perspective but also to manifest compassion. Which is a delicate line to walk, and every circumstance is different. But I also learned that one of the best ways to walk that line most constructively is to be present in the moment. And part of that "being present" is to sit with someone else's pain, and refrain from either trying to escape it, or to "fix it"--both of which are attempts to avoid it.

My therapist did neither. She was present. She stayed present. She engaged with the in-the-moment needs of the person and the situation. I watched when she would speak and when she would be silent, when she would nod or remain impassive, when she would tender the Kleenex or when her own eyes would fill with tears.

I also learned to watch her breathe with my fellows: when someone was overwhelmed with emotion, or even more in those moments when the emotion was still bottled-up inside--when she/he--and our therapist--were pounding up against the internal barriers that had walled-in all that pain for all those sad silent years. At those moments, sometimes, I would see her watching the person's body as well as face, watching the shoulders, hands, and spine. I would watch her keep still when that emotion was still bottled inside. I watched her lean forward and nod when the stumbling words began to come. I learned to know when the logjam would break, and the tears of old sorrow and old pain were about to flow, because her own eyes would fill with tears. And I learned not to try to stem those tears, but to sit silently and be present when they came--because the release of those tears parallels the release of the old painful emotions. And when the tears were over, I would watch her watch the person's breathing--and as the old emotions washed away, she would match her breathing with theirs.

I don't deal with that kind of old painful emotion quite so much: not because my students have experienced any less heartache than anyone else--though it's simple arithmetic that if you're 19, you've had less time to experience the suffering of somebody twice or three times as old--but because the nature of my job is different. It's not my job to help them "work through" their old pain.

But it is part of my job to recognize the reality of the pain they may be experiencing. I'm their teacher, and so I am charged to use all appropriate means and information to help them learn. Sometimes that includes learning to cope with sorrow, old pain, or injustice unchecked.

Thankfully, it's also part of my job to help them learn how to handle the power of the positive emotions that their job sometimes brings, because sometimes they are tears of appreciation and gratitude. When the intensity of the emotions that musicians deal with, day in and day out, making and breaking them down--and have done for 40,000 years--when that intensity comes out, when a young person recognizes the power of the traditions of performance and ritual she or he is entered, there maybe should be some tears.

I love my job. I love my students. And I'm grateful for the work that I, and we, do.

Brings tears for me, too. Still.

Day 25 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Celtic Accelerator cookies edition

Way back in the 1970s, the old Guitar Player magazine ran a regular monthly column with an LA studio guitarist named Tommy Tedesco, who claimed to have played on more than 10,000 sessions and to have the real "low-down" on being a working studio musician--this was back in the day before computers or samplers, when you actually hired musicians with command of their instruments to come in and invent something unique, and perfectly played, for your record. I suspect I probably wouldn't have liked a lot of what he played--he certainly didn't--but it was kind of refreshing, and inspiring, in a "wouldn't it be great if only...?" kind way, to hear somebody talk about making a living playing music. I didn't have too much contact with people who were doing that, and as a teen I mostly saw people who were scuffling to play "their own" music.

At the time, Tommy's column was one of the only sources you could find about the studio musician's life "in the trenches" (to coin a phrase)--there was no way of knowing then that Tommy was talking about an art form that was shortly to essentially disappear.

He had a "rule for living" giving criteria for taking a studio job which I think is still one of the best articulations of the basic rule of thumb for a working artist I've ever heard. He said, "you should never going to take a job unless you're going to (a) learn something, (b) make money, or (c) have fun. And preferably at least two of those three."

I've adapted that as one of the "rules for living" in the Celtic Ensemble (along with "Don't suck" and "Keep your head up, keep your eyes open, don't forget to breath" and "look out for each other, onstage and off"), as "always find out if they're gonna feed you."

I've also discovered that, working with musicians, and especially young musicians, it's never a bad idea to try to add some kind of free food into the mix. I can't pay my guys, but I try damned hard to make sure that they get other kinds of perks--ideally from the clients, and if not from them, then from me.

Especially when your rehearsals happen at 7pm or 9pm, and they're coming into rehearsal after a full day of classes, rehearsals, and practicing. No matter how willing their spirits--and they usually are very willing--by 9 or 10 or 11 at night, they are just physically dragged-out (or "drug-out", as they say up here) and it's damned hard for them to overcome that exhaustion in order to concentrate and focus the way I need them to.

So, after the occasional iteration last year, this year I've just given in, and, on every rehearsal night, planned to cook (usually bake) something, and tote it into rehearsal, along with a big thermos of "proper Irish tea" with milk and sugar. A lot of these kids have only ever had tea as iced tea, and so the tea itself is a revelation for them. The baked goods are usually cookies, or soda bread, or muffins, or something that is portable, incrementable, and which I can load up with extra sugar. The Irish have understood for generations that you can get by without too much meat, in a cold climate, if you consume lots of dairy (in Ireland, cows are far more valuable as sources of milk/etc than of beef) which keeps pretty well in a cold climate. So they eat a lot of baked goods (flour, eggs, salt, baking soda, all keep without refrigeration) and use them as delivery methods for dairy calories: especially butter, cream, and milk.

So I'll bring in some kind of cookies, usually with an extra dose of sugar spiked into the recipe, and the big jug of tea, and know that, after about an hour, when they're drooping with exhaustion and morale is sinking accordingly and they need a break anyway, then taking that break and pumping a dose of butter, sugar, and caffeine into them will lift not only their spirits but also their metabolisms and ability to concentrate.

It's gotten to be so much of a tradition with the band that I now joke with them that "I can never stop doing this now, can I? Because you'll just never do the work without the caffeine and sugar, will you?" And they laugh, and I laugh, but there's also a kernel of something important and valuable here.

For millenia, before union scale or modern copyright, musicians' contributions to their community have been recognized in a huge variety of ways: barter, produce, exchanged work, etc--but at least one of them, one of the millenial modes, has been that the musicians get fed. Whether it's a dram of whiskey and a ham-and-butter sandwich in the West of Ireland; or a foil-wrapped tray of ribs in an after-hours blues joint; or "chicken clump with B-flat sauce" at a WASP wedding; or a huge platter of hummus, tabbouleh, dolma, and et cetera at an Iranian graduation party; or lamb and rice and baccala at a Portuguese fishermen's wedding (all of which I've received), getting fed by the hosts has been a way for the clients or patrons to acknowledge the fundamental, important-as-air-and-food-and-water contribution of the musicians to such celebrations.

And beyond that--I'm their teacher. Subject to the restrictions and boundaries that any mentoring situations requires--the recognition that sometimes you have to refrain from telling them or showing them how to do something, in order that they can learn better--it's appropriate that I should feed them: I'm supposed to take care of their needs, musical, intellectual, and physical. And by doing so, I can show them some ways that they can think of taking care of themselves, of each other, and of their own students, when I'm long under the earth.

So, in keeping with this "if you get fed at the gig, it's like you've been paid more money" rule for living, I've been pumping out multiple batches of oatmeal cookies, so we can share them not only with each other, but also with the concert audience this weekend. With a concert hall that is a former church, and audiences who've come over the years to expect something different, if not also extra, out of our gigs beyond the run-of-the-mill classical concert, it seems appropriate. And it seems right, that, in addition to bringing into reality music that many of them have never heard before, and in as-always-and-ever unique performances which will begin, end, and never be heard again in just that form, we should also be feeding them.

It just feels right.

Dr Coyote's Celtic Accelerator Oatmeal cookies

In just about any baking situation, you need about four ingredients in a recipe: a grain for bulk and calories, shortening and spices for texture and flavor, eggs to bind the grain, some active agent--either yeast or baking soda--to make it rise. In most North European situations, the soda is more practical, because it doesn't have to be refrigerated and it can't die-off.

1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Soften the butter and cream all ingredients together in a food processor; you'll wind up with a soft, cake-frosting-like consistency.

Meanwhile, mix/sift:

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups quick oats

To this, add the two secret ingredients:

1 tsp nutmeg (replaces cinnamon with some subtler and more aromatic)
2-3 tbsp brewed coffee

Mix dry and wet ingredients thoroughly

Roll dough between your palms (wet your hands with cold water) into walnut sized balls and place on greased baking sheets.

Cook in a 375-degree oven for 10-12 minutes. Remove baking sheets from oven, but allow cookies to cool 6-8 minutes before removing cookies and further cooling. Makes about 24.

Remove and refrigerate. These keep very well, and it's never a bad idea to have a couple of dozen in the freezer for emergencies.

Day 24 (Round IV) "In the trenches": crystalline blue edition

Crystalline blue evening up here on the South Plains: one of those nights we'll get in the fall when, as the daytime heat holds but the overnight lows begin to differ, the daylight gets shorter but the
twilight longer. When that long, slow twilight brings cooling temperatures, the cloudless sky is a crystalline blue, shading to cobalt overhead and azure in the darkening west.

On nights like this, the West Texans have discovered that it can be pleasant, in the cool stillness of the evening, to sit outside, drink some beer or good coffee, and listen to some low-impact music. They've been doing it in places like Austin for decades--both my deario Molly Ivins, rest her soul, and her mentor Willie Morris, in his memoir of LBJ and Austin in the Fifties, have written great scenes set in the Austin beer "gartens"--but it ain't so bad up here neither.

So, sitting outside the local indie coffeeshop in the cool of the evening, waiting for Coop and The General to arrive from the early-evening country jam in the auto-finishing shop, before we slam out our own personalized take on the Irish tradition, seems like a not-too-bad place to be: in a week, or in a lifetime.

Not too bad at all.

Day 23 (Round IV) "In the trenches": "Gettin' up on the One"/micropulse edition

I'm not much of a conductor: it was never part of my training, of the musics that I was involved in playing, or of many of the musics that I was studying. And, that is particularly the case of choral music. I can listen to choral music, study it, teach it, etc--but I was never much interested in either performing it or, especially, conducting it. I've been counting-in tunes for 40 years, but it's only in the last couple that I've had to try to find--and learn--the skills to lead either (a) a group of singers through a choral texture, when I never had the training myself; or (b) a group of young instrumentalists to play and feel a dance music in a way that, as classical musicians, they never have before. I'm better at the latter--having a better grasp of how it works myself--but am learning to get better at the former.

There is--or at least should be--an absolutely magical moment that occurs at that moment when someone leading a musical performance counts-off the tempo into the first downbeat. In the world of classical music--especially of Baroque and/or chamber music--that moment is very much truncated: for the Baroquies, it's a "sniff and go" (sniff loudly, in time, on the last upbeat before the played downbeat); for the classical/chamber people, it's often a single up-bow, in the same moment, giving the tempo and the last upbeat before the sounded downbeat.

In most lyric musics--those musics in which the arc of a melody, pre-composed or spontaneously improvised, is the focus of attention--one of the most effective and subtle ways to conceive the count-off is as "the Big One"--to hear the measure, which in most Western music is conceived as the basic, replicating pattern of time, not as "4 beats to the measure and the quarter note gets one beat" or "6 beats to the measure and the first and fourth 8th note each gets the emphasis", but as a single, arcing, resilient "One". In fact, when trying to show an ensemble how that "One" might look as a conducting pattern, I'll sometimes describe a big vertical circle with the right hand, with the hand decelerating as it lifts (e.g., "against" gravity) and then accelerating downward ("with" gravity) as it heads toward the downbeat. This is useful for showing young musicians the way a phrase, conceived not as a subdivided measure of 4 quarters or 8 eighths but as a single big "One", can contain within itself some flex and phrasing within the time. "It only really matters that you be together at 'One'".

In most dance musics, on the other hand, time is much better understood as a kind of micropulse: as a constant, ongoing, endless, "chugging" flow of interlocking pulses--a net beneath the sound, interlocking parts over which the rest of the musical texture--the sounding part of the musical texture can either float, or lock in. In such dance musics--particularly but not exclusively those dance musics in the irreplaceable, ubiquitous, and world-changing musics of Africa and her Diaspora--players sound or elide, lock-in-with or upset overlapping groupings of that fundamental micropulse.

In Afro-Cuban music, it's a realization in sound of the dancing implicit in the clave. When I was playing with the great drummer Andrew Lazaro--me and a bunch of other white boys in Indiana just beginning to learn to understand how the music had to feel in order for it to sound right--he would give us the count-off into the clave only after he'd stood up and danced a few steps: it was only then that he could know the right tempo. And that danced-in cycle of the clave let us not only hear, but also see, the way the tempo was about to feel--when it was RIGHT.

In jazz, it's understated, as is the jazz conception of the beat in the first place: like the groove itself, the count-off is the responsibility of everybody present, and you're supposed to hear it inside at the moment it is first sounded. This was the great breakthrough of bebop: the realization that the drummer or bassist shouldn't have to "hold down" the beat--everyone should have it so deeply internalized that everyone could hold a piece of it, together.

In rock 'n' roll, of course, that countoff is an intensely iconic, even shamanistic moment: that count-off that signals the festival that's to come: never captured better than in Springsteen's epic live version of "Rosalita", when the horn-section & rhythm section syncopated unison tumbles down into a fermata on a low dominant people, and, of the band's suspended time, The Boss screams, over the roar of the crowd, "One - Two - Three - FAH!"

But in traditional musics of all kinds, and especially traditional dance musics, and especially in the teaching of traditional Irish dance musics that I do, that count-off is an incredibly important moment when, if I'm paying attention with the heightened level of empathy a good teacher should employ, I can convey, just in the inflection, shape, attack, pitch, and duration of those counted syllables, the fundamental nature of the rhythmic world we're about to enter together. In dance musics, the time is always there--and our job as musicians is to "enter" the time--to recognize it, emplace ourselves within it, and bring it into audibility:

"ONE - two - three - foh-!"

The music--the micropulse--the inaudible but essential rhythm of the heartbeat, the lungs pumping swiftly or slowly, the blood soughing through the arteries, the leaves bursting with chlorophyll and withering with the changing season, the moon through its phases, the shifting of the tides, the planets in their orbit--those rhythms are always there. Our job as musicians is to recognize their presence .

And help others hear them. It's a holy thing, what we do.

Day 22 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Onion soup edition

As cheap as it gets. You can get ten pounds of onions for less than 3 dollars--more if on sale or at a farmer's market--and the latter is better for the local economy anyway.

When I was 20 years old I talked my way into a job as the first line cook they hired in a new restaurant startup. I had been building houses and I was fed up with getting home at 4pm too exhausted to practice. And I thought that learning to cook would be a portable workable trade--which it was--and didn't yet know that it's one of the more self-destructive lifestyles--that would take me a while to learn.

So I hoicked myself down to a small restaurant startup in my home town, to which I had moved back after burning out at the University of Chicago, and applied for a gig as their first employee. The only reasons I can think why they hired me--with little to zero professional cooking experience--would have been (a) they were both so exhausted: him from cooking 8am-12midnight, her from hostessing the same hours, and then doing the books, that they couldn't see straight, and (b) because they were unused to an applicant with such a polysyllabic vocabulary.

I learned a lot cooking there. I learned how to think like a cook, to understand the slow-motion ballet that is the interplay of cook, utensils, pans, foodstuffs, and heat, and to understand the heightened sense of accomplishment--and, let's face it, adrenaline--that came from cooking 115 meals over a 12 hour shift.

I also learned this version of onion soup.

Slicing the onions:

Rule #1: Chop way more onions than you think you'll need. Then chop the same volume again.

Hint: this is one of those "you've got to have a sharp knife" situations (or sitcheeayations, to quote O Brother). Cut the top and bottom stem off the onion. Then cut in half, DOWN from top to bottom (e.g., along the stem). You'll wind up with two half-hemispherical pieces, each half-sphere made up of the semicircular concentric half-rings of the onion's layers. Turn one of the halves flat-side-down on the cutting board. Slice once, twice, or three times across the axis of the stem--so that you wind up with a sideways stack of two, three, or four concentric half-circles. Then turn the knife 90 degrees, and cut down across the stack: you'll wind up with small, regular bits as the right-angle slices you've made, and the layers of the onion, yield three-dimensional rectangles.

Melt a good deal of butter over a not-too-hot flame in a large tureen. You're going to caramelize the onion: that is, you're going to cook the onion in the hot butter so that the onion turns brown ("caramel-colored") throughout, with crispy edges. This changes not only the texture of the onion, but also brings out its sweetness.

As the onion is cooking-down, keep stirring, scooping the hottest parts from the bottom of the tureen and "turning-over" the chopped onion, just as if you were turning soil. Continue this until the onion is completely caramelized.

As the onions cook down--and I'm talking maybe by 75%: 1 gallon of onions going down to 1 quart or less--add thyme, sage, garlic, black or white pepper, a bit of salt or tamari (the latter gives a nicer color), a good splash of white wine. Lower the flame to medium and stir in the spices, giving them a good 3-4:00 minutes to cook into the onions.

Once the spices have been heated through and absorbed by the onions, you can add 1 cup of stock per quart or so of onions. You can use any kind of stock: rendered or dry, chicken or vegetable. Be advised: if it's a commercial stock, especially the dry sort, you'll need to ramp down the added salt, as commercial stock contains a lot. When in doubt here, use less salt, more pepper, and more wine.

Allow to simmer on a low heat for at least 1 hour. Meantime, grate some hard-but-not-sharp cheese (Jack is good, sharp cheddar too); avoid the very salty romano's or parmesan, as there is already enough salt in the recipe. You're also going to restrict the cheese to a sprinkling on top of the bowl as you serve: people go wrong with onion soup when they use too much cheese, insufficiently toasted. Use less cheese and melt/toast further.

Meantime, slice a good whole-grain or sourdough bread and toast the rounds, enough so that they are crsip but not browned.

Spoon soup into bowls. Place a toasted bread-round on top of each bowl and sprinkle cheese over the top. Toast in a 450-degree oven for 3-4 minutes, until the cheese bubbles and melts.

Serve with a sharp white wine and a green salad, oil & vinegar dressing preferred.

Good peasant food.

Thanks, Steve Z.