Barrett Dorko
17-12-2006, 04:41 AM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I wakened at 2:30 on Friday morning and stayed that way until I began to speak to the class at 8AM, then I went back to sleep.
This week I began turning my computer’s iTunes program on before class and playing a long series of songs performed by Art Tatum (http://www.duke.edu/~njh3/biography.html). Students hear these when they enter the room. I first heard of this artist last month and have immersed myself in his music for a short period each day since. I’m listening as I write this. Many people when first hearing a recording of Tatum’s genius assume that there’s more than one piano being played, and the speed of his many ornamental glissandos actually generated a term used by musicologists to describe "the smallest perceptual time unit in music"; it’s called “a tatum.”
Maybe the inevitable fatigue of two long trips in succession to time zones other than the one I live in did it, maybe it’s the holiday season, maybe my relief at my son’s safe return from Iraq – I don’t know and don’t suppose the reason matters, but I’ve been dreaming vividly lately. Last night’s long and intricate dream had a patient at its center, a young woman with neck pain that I was trying like crazy to treat, literally chasing her around outdoors somewhere, and hanging on to her mastoid processes while she walked about unconcerned with my presence. Stan Paris was nearby observing all of this.
Just great.
I noticed on Thursday in Torrance California that my words were pouring out with less effort than usual and that I had to consciously slow them down a bit. On Friday in Anaheim my fatigue seemed to have slowed the speech a bit but the whole day had a dreamlike quality to it. I often found myself sort of “listening in” from a slightly distant perspective to some guy speak about things I already knew. I’m not joking.
Legally blind and virtually self-taught, Tatum appeared on the nightclub scene in the 30s with a technique so brilliant that Vladimir Horowitz was often seen in the audience intently watching a movement of the hands he himself could not master. He played jazz versions of other’s compositions, literally recomposing them in a style so wildly varied and polyrhythmic that Les Paul, the legendary musician and inventor of the electric guitar, had to leave the room when he first heard it, overwhelmed by what his acute senses had just heard. “It’s too much,” he said to his friends. He wasn’t upset, he was in awe. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Art Tatum was an Ohio Boy, born in Toledo in 1909. I don’t suppose many reading this will be surprised I mentioned that here either.
I just completed my 192nd program for Cross Country and those came after several hundred for other sponsors. There’s not a whole lot of difference in my basic message these days and there’s no end in sight. I’ll never pay the mortgage treating patients in the way I do so this teaching is an absolutely necessary supplement. Still, I enjoy most of it and I’m beginning to understand more about how I tolerate the repetition. Tatum’s music has helped me see how a recognizable tune can be slightly altered in an incredible variety of ways and still be imparted in a coherent fashion. The ornamental notes and unexpected rhythms in its delivery simply keep the audience intrigued and alert and the performer is often as surprised as the audience when new things appear. Of course, there’s a limit to where all of this can be taken. In jazz there are rules but these don’t form restrictions as much as they reveal a natural shape to the melody; a shape that is at once surprising and familiar.
Despite my many travels and the constant writing the vast majority of my students never heard of me before class begins. I’m comforted by the fact that many music aficionados have never heard of Art Tatum either. It doesn’t diminish what he did or the effect his recordings still have. They have certainly affected me.
A couple of weeks ago I had another brief correspondence with my old boss, Stan Paris. I had chided him gently about his lack of availability for discussions on a site like this. I told him his extensive travel wasn’t nearly normal enough for such a thing. He wrote back:
“Who would ever want to be normal or average? No one should accept average quality of patient care, of teaching of anything. You my friend surely are not average.”
I appreciate this, of course, and I’m pleased we are corresponding occasionally.
I just wish he would stay out of my dreams.
I wakened at 2:30 on Friday morning and stayed that way until I began to speak to the class at 8AM, then I went back to sleep.
This week I began turning my computer’s iTunes program on before class and playing a long series of songs performed by Art Tatum (http://www.duke.edu/~njh3/biography.html). Students hear these when they enter the room. I first heard of this artist last month and have immersed myself in his music for a short period each day since. I’m listening as I write this. Many people when first hearing a recording of Tatum’s genius assume that there’s more than one piano being played, and the speed of his many ornamental glissandos actually generated a term used by musicologists to describe "the smallest perceptual time unit in music"; it’s called “a tatum.”
Maybe the inevitable fatigue of two long trips in succession to time zones other than the one I live in did it, maybe it’s the holiday season, maybe my relief at my son’s safe return from Iraq – I don’t know and don’t suppose the reason matters, but I’ve been dreaming vividly lately. Last night’s long and intricate dream had a patient at its center, a young woman with neck pain that I was trying like crazy to treat, literally chasing her around outdoors somewhere, and hanging on to her mastoid processes while she walked about unconcerned with my presence. Stan Paris was nearby observing all of this.
Just great.
I noticed on Thursday in Torrance California that my words were pouring out with less effort than usual and that I had to consciously slow them down a bit. On Friday in Anaheim my fatigue seemed to have slowed the speech a bit but the whole day had a dreamlike quality to it. I often found myself sort of “listening in” from a slightly distant perspective to some guy speak about things I already knew. I’m not joking.
Legally blind and virtually self-taught, Tatum appeared on the nightclub scene in the 30s with a technique so brilliant that Vladimir Horowitz was often seen in the audience intently watching a movement of the hands he himself could not master. He played jazz versions of other’s compositions, literally recomposing them in a style so wildly varied and polyrhythmic that Les Paul, the legendary musician and inventor of the electric guitar, had to leave the room when he first heard it, overwhelmed by what his acute senses had just heard. “It’s too much,” he said to his friends. He wasn’t upset, he was in awe. It didn’t surprise me to learn that Art Tatum was an Ohio Boy, born in Toledo in 1909. I don’t suppose many reading this will be surprised I mentioned that here either.
I just completed my 192nd program for Cross Country and those came after several hundred for other sponsors. There’s not a whole lot of difference in my basic message these days and there’s no end in sight. I’ll never pay the mortgage treating patients in the way I do so this teaching is an absolutely necessary supplement. Still, I enjoy most of it and I’m beginning to understand more about how I tolerate the repetition. Tatum’s music has helped me see how a recognizable tune can be slightly altered in an incredible variety of ways and still be imparted in a coherent fashion. The ornamental notes and unexpected rhythms in its delivery simply keep the audience intrigued and alert and the performer is often as surprised as the audience when new things appear. Of course, there’s a limit to where all of this can be taken. In jazz there are rules but these don’t form restrictions as much as they reveal a natural shape to the melody; a shape that is at once surprising and familiar.
Despite my many travels and the constant writing the vast majority of my students never heard of me before class begins. I’m comforted by the fact that many music aficionados have never heard of Art Tatum either. It doesn’t diminish what he did or the effect his recordings still have. They have certainly affected me.
A couple of weeks ago I had another brief correspondence with my old boss, Stan Paris. I had chided him gently about his lack of availability for discussions on a site like this. I told him his extensive travel wasn’t nearly normal enough for such a thing. He wrote back:
“Who would ever want to be normal or average? No one should accept average quality of patient care, of teaching of anything. You my friend surely are not average.”
I appreciate this, of course, and I’m pleased we are corresponding occasionally.
I just wish he would stay out of my dreams.