As I Was Saying…

Chatter, memories and rants. Please, don't stop me if you've heard this one before.





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Confessions from the new New Frontier

“Miss, are you gonna fold the slice?”

Sunday, September 4, 2011 - 5:45 am - I was standing in the pizza place near my school in the Bronx, having just accepted a paper plate full of bubbling cheese. The voice belonged to Astrid, one of my classroommate Vanessa’s advisees. Astrid is a recent NYC transplant from California, and I understood immediately the purpose of her question, which essentially asks, “Are [...]

A Mother’s Day tribute

Monday, May 9, 2011 - 2:43 am - I tend to think that these minor, dare I say manufactured, holidays–Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Days–are pretty arbitrary. Did I send my mom flowers this weekend? Of course I did, and I’m glad that there is a reminder on the calendar that I should do something like that. Mother’s Day could be any weekend, [...]

No Cure for “luf-longyng”

Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - 4:16 pm - [NB: This post is a scan of my brain that I don't expect will make sense to anyone who doesn't feel exactly the way I feel and like exactly the same things I like.] Unabashedly, I mostly turn to pop music when faced with life’s most emotional questions. Maybe that is only because my favorite authors [...]

Things my cover letter won’t tell you…

Sunday, September 19, 2010 - 3:49 pm - In the past few weeks, I have invested myself in finding a job worth having. To this end, I have, draft by draft, been fine-tuning the cover letter to an exact science. It goes something like this: Dear Courtesy Title, Expression of interest in specific position and experience in/passion for the general field. Rattle off [...]

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In Praise of Bobby McFerrin

August 3, 2009

There’s more to Bobby McFerrin than that inane pop tune Don’t Worry, Be Happy, although I have to be careful how much thought I give to that song. I suspect that it still helps him to pay the bills, but I don’t want to end up with it stuck in my head for the next 36 hours.

And there’s more to him than the wonderful a cappella reimagining of the
23rd Psalm that a group of my friends and I sang in church yesterday.

The guy is a genius about the way music works. Check him out here, using his audience as an instrument and “playing” them amazingly.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

I’ve watched this video again and again. The more I watch, the more amazed I become at how little direction the audience actually gets. It seems to be that this is stuff we, as human beings, just know. Bobby McFerrin is the guy who noticed that simple, compelling fact.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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