I'm somewhat manic as you might have noticed. One solution that hasn't been working out too well is to have a few beers with dinner to slow myself down a bit in the p.m. It does *work*--but maybe a little bit too well. Anyway, since I didn't have those beers tonight, a little Spanish lesson.

Compare the words:

hembra / femenino

hijo / filial

maestro / magisterio, magistral

hierro / férreo

hacer / satisfacer

maduro / prematuro

fragua / fábrica

dueño, domar / dominar, dominio

Spanish evolved from Latin, and underwent certain phonetic changes. The first term in each pairing is the "evolved" form of the word (hembra from femina). The second, a cognate word or derivative adopted into Spanish at a later date, directly from the Latin, a cultismo, without the normal phonetic changes that the word should have undergone. The evolved words are similar to what we think of in English as "Anglo-Saxon" words, belonging fully to the vernacular. So "hierro," iron, is more colloquial than "férreo" (an adjective meaning iron-like). So phonology effects register: a more elevated vocabulary will be closer to Latin. If you study for a degree in "magisterio" you are studying to be a teacher, a maestra or maestro.

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Bobby Hutcherson. The Kicker.

This is a very middle of the road and swinging album in the hard bop idiom, with Joe Henderson, Duke Pearson, and Grant Green. I have never heard of Duke Pearson or the drummer here, Al Harewood. The tune "For Duke P" is a very swinging tune, as is the title track.

I'm in the mode of filling in the numerous gaps in my knowledge of jazz, and have subscribed to Rhapsody to deal with the quantity of music I want to assimilate. I try not to pretend to know things I really don't know. I thought I knew the names most of the major drummers of this period, but it turns out I don't. Duke sounds a bit like Sonny Clark or someone of that ilk, with a tasteful blues inflection. Somewhat similar, in fact, to the pianist on the Joe Chambers album reviewed below, George Cables.

(96)

Joe Chambers. Phantom of the City.


I learned about Joe Chambers from an article in Modern Drummer, and heard him first on a Bobby Hutcherson recording. This album features some very tasty piano work by George Cables, and the full bodied tenor sax of Bob Berg. I'm going to have to check out some other albums where Chambers is the leader, cause this one is excellent.

Chambers was a mainstay of the Blue Note scene in the early 60s. He's at the level of fame below Jack DeJohnette, but well worth investigating. He writes many originals.

Unlike other drummer-led albums, this one does not emphasize drum solos, or even a particularly busy drum part. I remember the interviewer for MD called JC's drumming "transparent." I would say it's translucent, dynamically sensitive and pulsating. He doesn't get into the temptation of modulating the beat every six seconds. If you didn't know who the leader was supposed to be you might think it's one of the other players.

(95)

Andrew Hill. Dreams Come True.

This was released in 2008. It has Chico Hamilton on drums with Hill on piano. (Just the two of them.) The first track, Ohho, is rhythmic but not too metrical. The drummer plays motifs rather than a beat. This kind of music can have the tendency to be a little too rambling and inconsequential, but I'm feeling it strong. Unfairly, perhaps, I'm comparing Hill to Cecil Taylor: my tendency to interpret the unknown in terms of the known. His touch is softer than CT; he is less busy and agressive.

The second cut is "Three Notes & a Brush." This one is a little quieter at the onset. Hamilton starts off with some hi hat work. The tune builds intensity gradually toward the half-way point; a pulse is established. Two minutes from the end, at about minute 5, the tempo slows, in a more meditative section.

"Watch that Dream." Another great combination of quiet intensity. He seems to favor that seven to eleven minute length.

"And the Drums Sing." Yes they do. Here Chico moves from cymbals to drums, emphasizing the toms and turning off the snares on the snare drums, while AH accompanies him on the piano.

"Clifford's Gone." A piano solo, with no drums, for about the first two minutes. Then the drums come in with no piano. Toward the end of the drum solo there are a few soft chords, then the drum drops out again. I don't know what to make of this track.

"Shaw Nuff." This one has a more bluesy, intense feeling, with a thicker texture on both drums and piano. An avant-garde tribute to soul jazz? I would have guessed Cecil Taylor on a blindfold test.

There are two other tracks, but I have to go teach.

Yesterday, I read three dissertation chapters, revisions of 7 short grad. student papers. About 15 files for an internal university research grant committee. I wrote a course description, a proposal for the MLA. A few blog entries. I began to listen seriously to the music of Andrew Hill.

I read a book of poetry, parts of a few articles on Stanley Cavell. An article by Philip Lewis on translating Derrida, for class today.

I met with the colleague with whom I'm co-teaching the class, to discuss the course description. Tried to find a proctor for the M.A. exam.

I answered a query about an article of mine that was in proofs.

I worked a bit on an outline of a book I want to write.

That's a lot more than I typically do on Wed, which is my catch-up-on-work day. Today, all I have to do is prepare one class, teach two, and maybe read two more dissertation chapters (I am on four committees). Then, I'll have all my dissertation work done, and the only big item will be the internal grant competition, which I have to have ranked by Monday. There are 35 files in all kinds of fields I know nothing about.

When the page proofs come for my other book, I want to have my desk more or less clear.

Here's an urban legend I haven't seen at snopes.com. It usually takes the form of "studies have shown" and states that an NFL career will take twenty years off your life expectancy. Usually it is stated that the NFLer can expect to live until 55, and a lineman to 52 years of age. Or that every season played takes 3.5 years off your life.

In 1994, the New York Times reported that

A Federal agency announced today that its study showed the death rate for former professional football players was 46 percent less than the rate for American men of similar age and race in the general population.

So that's the opposite. Football players live longer. To believe that the average ex-jock is going to die at 55 strains credulity. That would mean that there would have to be a lot of players passing in their 40s, or even 30s, to balance out those who survived to their 60s and 70s, and make the average come to 55. There are players who die that young, but it can't be half of them.

The bad news?

The study also showed, however, that offensive and defensive linemen, who are heavier than other players, had a 52 percent greater risk than nonplayers of dying from heart disease. And it showed that heart disease killed linemen at a rate 3.7 times higher than the rate for other players

That's bad. But notice the points of comparison: heavy players vs. "non-players," and heavy players vs. "other players." There's no comparison here of 350 lb. linemen to 350 lb guys who don't play football, because I suspect that the two groups might have more or less the same mortality rates from heart disease. So it's not playing football that kills you, it's weighing 350 lbs. I'd even guess that the obese non-jocks would be more unhealthy.

Note, too, that the way the story expresses these two comparisons is not parallel, making these numbers harder to understand for the average sports fan. One is "52%, greater" the other "3.7 times higher." 52% is much smaller, it is equivalent to saying "1.52 times greater" (I think). So it's better to be another type of player (non lineman) than a guy in the general population.

This is not to say that playing football has no negative health effects apart from those related to being too big. Brain injuries, arthritis, and other things come to mind. And you also have to assume that linemen wouldn't weigh that much if they didn't have to so that they could collide effectively with other linemen. So this is extra, gratuitous obesity that these people would not have to carry if they weren't football players.

But I don't think that those 55 and 52 numbers are even close to being accurate. At least i haven't found the study that supposedly proved that.

On another note, I think they must have given me regular expresso rather than decaf in my decaf latte this evening, because otherwise I wouldn't be blogging about something that I have no interest in at all at 11:30 p.m.

(94)

Andrew Hill. Passing Ships.

I'm beginning to get a sense of Hill's compositional and orchestral style. He liked those thicker textures of horns, brass and woodwinds, all together, in the Mingus / Ellington tradition. This wasn't released by Blue Note until 1969 but was recorded earlier. Check out Woody Shaw's trumpet work.

(93)

Andrew Hill. Point of Departure.

This has an absolutely classic line up, with Dolphy, Dorham, Henderson on horns and a rhythm section of Hill, Richard Davis, and Tony Williams. Davis, the bass player, is the least well known, maybe, but even he played with Coltrane so he's no slouch. I love the border region between hard bop and avant-garde, which is exactly where this album is located. Ca. 1964 Blue Note was putting out music that still sounds fresh.

(92)

Andrew Hill. The Day the World Stood Still.

A few people have mentioned Andrew Hill to me; Thomas Basboll. and possibly Andrew Shields or John. I'm listening to this one now. I still don't know an awful lot about Hill, but I am very eager to learn. This features him with bass and drums and several horns, in a free jazz mode, but one that would be very listenable to someone not necessarily enamored of free music.

I don't have much of a sense of Hill as a piano player yet, since most of what I've heard does not emphasize the piano per se. I could say that I don't have any IDEAS about him yet, aside from the obvious observation that he leaves space for other players to be heard.

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*Concha García. Acontecimiento. 2008. 130 pp.

I got this in the mail today, recently published by Tusquets in Barcelona, and so I read it right away. It is the same exploration of the tedium of everyday life we've seen in CG before. The title means "happening," "event." What does it mean for something to happen? For nothing to happen? I liked the poem "Como un decálogo," with its rejection of "el horario que avanza / en un universo cerrado" (the schedule {sequence of hours} advancing / in a closed universe]

I think about my scholarly competence as the trifecta of knowing one's shit, having ideas, and writing well.

The first is necessary. You can't even really have ideas without knowing something to have ideas about. There are people, though, who only have information and cannot really formulate ideas. We call them graduate students (that's a joke, for any of my graduate students who read this blog).

For information, there are various delivery systems. It doesn't much whether you learn something from a book or from somebody's lecture.

In the case of having ideas, however, the case is quite different. Ideas will not naturally occur with the acquisition of information. A lot of people need someone standing over them, saying: no, that's not even an IDEA yet. Or "That's the beginning of something, but needs to be fleshed out in the following ways."

The graduate seminar acts in exactly that way. There is enough information for the student to begin to know enough to begin formulating ideas.

Monk's advice to Lacy, with hat tip to Silliman's Blog. JM's comments in brackets.

Just because you're not a drummer, doesn't mean you don't have to keep time.

Pat your foot and play the melody in your head when you play.

[The improvising soloist has to keep track of where the melody of the song is supposed to be, even if nobody is playing that melody.]

Stop playing that bullshit, those weird notes. Play the melody!

Make the drummer sound good.

[Once again, an emphasis on keeping time. If the sax player is really in synch, it will make the drummer sound good.]

You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

All reet.

[???]

It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn't need the lights.

[???]

Don't play the piano part. I'm playing that. Don't listen to me. I'm supposed to be accompanying you!

[Lacy was probably following Monk too much, responding to the accompaniment]

The inside of the tune (the bridge) is that part that makes the outside sound good.

[Inside was Monk's slang for the bridge of a tune. That would be the B section of an AABA form. It's a nice metaphor]

Don't play everything (or every time). Let some things just go by. Some music just imagined. What you don't play can be more important than what you do. Always leave them wanting more.

[Nice show business cliché, but with a profound point.]

A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world. It depends on your imagination.

When you're swinging, swing some more.

[I love this one.]

Whatever you think can't be done, someone will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it.

Avoiding the "info dump."

One of the most common problems in dissertations--and consequently in barely revised dissertation chapters sent out as journal articles for review--is the info-dump. I define this technique the presentation of research findings directly, nakedly. Some examples might include:

Long summaries of the work of other critics and scholars who have written on your topic.

Information on historical background that is readily available elsewhere.

Textual analysis that seems excessive in relation to the points being made.

More or less complete results of your original research--when not everything you found is relevant.

Summaries of theoretical ideas that are well-known (e.g. Foucault on power).

These categories of information are all relevant and necessary to some extent. What makes something a "data dump" is

(1) A lack of awareness of audience. What does your audience already know? What do they need to know? What can they find easily for themselves? The info-dumper really hasn't thought through those questions.

(2) A certain "inertness." The information just kind of sits there on the page. It isn't integrated into an argument. It is hard for the reader to get through because it is inherently boring (not the information itself, but its function.) It's function seems to be to fulfill a requirement; it is perfunctory.

Can info-dumping be avoided? Think of a work of science fiction (I owe this example to Scott Eric Kaufman) (two tts in Scott, one enn in Kaufman; middle name Eric with a cee). A data-dump in this case would be a long exposition section in which all the background knowledge about the particular world where the plot takes place. Obviously, a skillful exposition in narrative is already narrative. In other words, narrating and expositioning are not two separate activities. In the same way, in scholarly argumentation and the presentation of research are not two separate things. The research, of whatever kind it is, is there to support the argument.

There might be kinds of writing where the presentation of information is the main point, or where the proportion and relative prominence between argumentation and information are different from what I'm presenting here. My remarks are valid mostly for my own field.

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*Coral Bracho. Cuarto de hotel. 2007. 61 pp.

This is a perfectly unitary book. Bracho's hotel room is a metaphor for human life itself. The style is more sober here than in earlier Bracho books; there is an apparent simplicity here. Everything is pianissimo.