Day 267, December 8, 2020
No Crystal Ball
Tonight's soundtrack: Tribute to Miles Davis by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, with Wallace Roney, 1992
I sat in tonight on a presentation by the Provost at UMass about the current state of the budget... except, because my standing desk arrived today at lunch, I stood for the meeting! In any case, it was interesting to try imagining how to plan for possible budget implications on such a large scale. There were several questions from audience members trying to parse out the implications for changes that might occur in the not too distant future.
But really, how can anyone anticipate what the future will bring in this kind of environment? Everything that we know as stable and predictable in our institutions of higher education, our grocery stores, and our households is uncertain. It is hard to tell what the impacts of the pandemic will have on the businesses we engage in, the institutions who employ us, the restaurants we frequent or avoid, and our own individual health. So, in response we tend to seek out stability in the areas where we do have some control. Often, these are the physical environs, whether it is setting up a new home office with a standing desk, or allowing a living room to become despicably comfortable (we have moved beyond that stage, mostly).
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| The Ibanez at Sewanee (incidentally, that's an East Heaven Hot Tub shirt, from the only time I'd visited the valley prior to moving to Amherst for graduate school). |
I've read that musical instrument sales are booming, guitars, keyboards, and such are backordered or in scarce supply, and used prices have been rising. I imagine that the latent budgets of every lawyer, doctor, and professor, who has been skipping vacations, concerts, and restaurants, are now investing in that fantastic and expensive instrument they have been wanting, but have never been able to justify... until now.
I have to admit, that I've been tempted too, despite the fact that all my gigs have long since been cancelled, and now that the cold weather has set in, the prospect of playing music with others seems distant, even with a HEPA air filter given the recent climbing rates of COVID-19. I will sometimes spend an evening perusing the used instrument lists online until something catches my eye, and then I dive down the rabbit hole of reading reviews and forum posts, until I manage to talk myself out of it. I have, ostensibly, been engaged in the opposite, letting go of instruments that have been mostly unused or neglected, and paring down to what is important, essential, or of utility. In fact, even now as I write this, I wait for someone to show up to look at a guitar amp to purchase.
I am not divesting in what we affectionately call, gear, because of uncertainty about the future. Most of my purchases are bad investments, or I am a bad salesman, so it is not for profit. It is more about a lightening of my load upon this Earth, or at least upon this house. To be sure, there is a degree of sadness in letting go of an instrument, the potential that instrument holds to play its part in a moment of transcendence. But I think, there is transformation and transcendence in letting go too.
A few years ago, I read an interview with Tom Petty and they included photographs from his practice space/warehouse. Tom Petty was an incredible aficionado of instruments and amplifiers, and his stardom enabled him to amass an incredible collection that filled racks with guitars in cases stacked row upon row. I marveled at that sheer wonder, how he must have walked among the racks before going to a recording session, or heading out on tour, and visited with each instrument, touched each case to ascertain what combination of guitar and amplifier might happen to call to him in that moment.
From childhood and teen years into adulthood, most guitar players go through a long process of buying and selling equipment, trying to buy, barter, and trade our way to something that we connect with and that tickles our particular fleeting fancy. Most of us are not like Tom Petty, and don't have the wherewithal to afford, or the space to keep, every instrument we've ever had, and so we all have moments of reverie where we long for an instrument that is long gone. For me, the loss of I a late '70s-early '80s Ibanez Artist electric guitar that I bought at Daddy's Junky Music in Boston, back before those old Ibanezs were appreciated, resonates in my memory. It was a marvelous instrument that embodied some of the best of that decade's Japanese craftsmanship and design.
Eventually, when I thought I had given up playing electric guitar after the birth of my twins, I sold it to the Amherst Music House for cash that I used to help fund an acoustic guitar, which I later sold to fund a bandsaw, which I used to build guitars. So, I guess even in the letting go of instruments, there is a transformation that happens, whether the funds are used for tuition or a bandsaw.
A former bandmate of mine talked about how he never sells anything anymore. Instead he makes sure that he only buys things he would never let go of, things he has always wanted as a musician. I hold his ethos as an exemplary model, even if I haven't always been able to hold to it. In this way, if he can't afford something, he doesn't trade in gear he will later regret letting go of, and he doesn't risk purchases of unknowns and possibilities, sticking instead to tried and true instruments and instruments he can personally try out.
I have always been a bit of a bottom feeder. I think that is my heritage from a mother who loved to drag me along to tag sales, antique shops, and flea markets. Or perhaps it is something inherent to the immigrant experience and trying to stretch each dollar in everything one does. In any case, I have been pretty good at spotting instruments with potential, something that, at least musically, was worth more than its sticker price. Sometimes it means it is something out of fashion, or refinished badly, or something with a bit of unsightly damage, but is otherwise sound. Of course, in that mix, there have been plenty of mis-steps, particularly in the online environment when you can't try out an instrument ahead of time. There were plenty of times when things didn't quite work out as I imagined. An instrument is a finicky thing and in addition to the multitude of structural things that can go awry, there are all the little factors that add up to the quality of musicality and how much any one individual will connect with an instrument. Sometimes, everything seems right, all the signs point to an instrument being something special, but when you finally have it in your hands, it fails to excite you and elicits only bland waves of emotion. But, the hunt for the great deal is part of the excitement. And when one is a bottom feeder, there is always the regret over instruments that could have been... if I had acted sooner or with more certainty.
However, shifting to a letting go mentality allows one to, mostly, let go of those fears of missing out and the disappointments from less than great gear. At least for now. Between the start of writing this blog post and now, the fellow came and, wearing a mask in my kitchen, played guitar through the amp. He played loud and soft, poked around in back, and mostly sold himself on the amp as I cooked dinner. (I hadn't really anticipated how long someone buying an amplifier would want to play in my house in the midst of a pandemic. That might make me rethink things for a bit.) He made the amp sound good, and if he hadn't bought it, I might have taken down the listing and held on to the thing. But in the end, he decided to take it and I watched another item pass out of my life. That amp played at the Montague Good Music Make Good Neighbors Festival, at The Rendezvous, and the last time we played at Hutghi's, the oyster bar in Westfield. That amp accompanied me in perhaps 10 years of gigs on and off over the years. But more recently it has fallen out of favor and I played smaller amps, or louder amps, or just different amps and it has spent more time stowed on a shelf than plugged in and turned on.
Since we can not predict the future, we can't know what tools we will need. Sometimes we need to let go of some of the standard degrees of certainty. Since I am not Tom Petty, I can't quite justify my little rack of gear. But it is also a little freeing to let go of some things, to create a little more space, another reason to work with the tools that I have, because that is what truly shapes us. We create possibility out of the limitations we are faced with. It is not the limitlessness that enables possibility... at least until you are at the Tom Petty level.
Take care and be well,
Leo
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| The Saw Mill River and Franklin |
From Our Friends:
From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine:
How are racism and bias affecting the educational and career paths of Black men and women in science, engineering, and medicine? A new publication, which summarizes a spring workshop, delves into racism’s harmful impacts.
From Inside Higher Ed:
If We Don't Push for a More Diverse Faculty Now, Then When?
Too often, diversity initiatives are the first to fall when times are tight, but we must stop making that mistake and use this moment for lasting change, writes Ansley Abraham. »
From the ACLS:
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From the Massachusetts History Alliance:
From the W.K. Kellogg Foundation:
This year, we welcome back Baratunde Thurston as our host, and we’ll be joined by leading advocates, musicians, artists and others, who are taking action to help heal our communities.
Learn more about WKKF’s YouTube premiere event for the National Day of Racial Healing and RSVP today at https://www2.wkkf.org/e/541352/2020-12-08/5t5x1x/599977177?h=MiIGLqNvgV6uMHy2qyJ2C9EuBVwP70Fe7z_CAwpx4hw.
From the Online Learning Consortium:
New Edition: Online Learning Journal
Volume 24, Issue 4 (2020)
Now announcing the release of volume 24, issue 4 of the Online Learning Journal (OLJ). This special issue features a selection of papers submitted to the American Educational Research Association annual meeting. Members include researchers and practitioners from a variety of fields, resulting in an eclectic and vibrant group of 25,000 professionals with the shared goal of bridging research and practice to advance the understanding of education.
We invite you to read and share this issue with colleagues and to consider submitting your own original work to Online Learning.
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