From the Introduction to my Breaking Bread with the Dead, published in 2021, though these words were written probably in 2019:
Often at the beginning of a class I will give my students a brief reading quiz — unannounced in advance; yes, I’m that kind of teacher — which has the salutary effect of making sure that everyone is in class on time. The room is always full when I walk in, and fairly regularly the first thing I see is every head bowed before a glowing screen. Sometimes they don’t even look up when I say hello. Often their brows are furrowed; they may look anxious or worried. They dutifully put their phones away as soon as class begins, whether it does so with a quiz or a question, but during the discussion I occasionally see hands twitch or reach toward bags. If I see phones left on the seminar-room table I lightly (but seriously) suggest that they be put away to minimize temptation. All my students have mastered the art of packing up their bags at the end of class with one hand while checking messages with the other. They leave the room with heads once more down, and brows once more furrowed, navigating like a blind person through a familiar room.
Such behavior is noticeably less common now than it was then. My current generation of students seem far less phone-addicted. This is of course merely anecdotal, but since (despite what you often hear) the plural of anecdote is data, I offer it for your edification.
Walter Martin hipped me to this awesome cover of “Subterranean Homseick Blues” by Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks. First got into Dan & co. via a college radio station, but then over the decades lost track of them.
My colleague Philip Jenkins on Groundhog Day: “I will explain just how that bizarre celebration came into existence. My story begins in the Jewish Temple, with stops en route in Dark Age Ireland, medieval Germany, and Victorian Pennsylvania.”
T. S. Eliot, writing during WW2: “I see a great many American sergeants and they all write poetry: nobody realises that I HATE poetry.”
No, I do not want to install your app.
No, I do not want that app to run on startup.
No, I do not want that app shortcut on my desktop.
No, I do not want to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, I do not want your site to send me notifications.
No, I do not want to tell you about my recent experience.
No, I do not want to sign up for an account.
No, I do not want to sign up using a different service and let the two of you know about each other.
No, I do not want to sign in for a more personalized experience.
No, I do not want to allow you to read my contacts.
No, I do not want you to scan my content.
No, I do not want you to track me.
No, I do not want to click “Later” or “Not now” when what I mean is NO.
Me: “From the fall of 2011, when I first stared watching the Premier League regularly and intently, I had what might truly be called an object in fandom: to see Arsenal become champions of the the league.”
It’s easy to believe that words have greater power than they have — to think that if someone writes powerfully enough those who are Wrong will suddenly realize their Wrongness and change their ways. But that rarely happens. Often we can only wait until people realize that they’re just eating grass.
Music producer Joe Boyd:
Most music recorded today is created by performers – or operators – sitting beside the engineer; it passes directly on to a hard disk rather than reverberating in the air to be captured by microphones. As a result, the ‘studio’ room itself is often shrunk to a modest space for vocalists or single instruments. The ideal acoustic is now a dead one: digital reverb can supposedly synthesize any atmosphere from Madison Square Garden to your bathroom. In the quest for the perfect track, each part is added separately so that any mistakes can be easily corrected; inflexible rhythms are generated by a machine. Musicians in the sixties were still recording a large part of each track playing together in the same room at the same time, maintaining at least some of the excitement of a live performance, with vocals and solos usually added later. Rhythm sections breathed with the other musicians, accenting and retarding the beat as mood dictated. The acoustics of different studios varied widely, as did the styles of engineering and production. Computers theoretically let musicians and producers choose from an endless palate of varied sounds, but modern digital recordings are far more monochromatically similar to each other than were older analogue tracks.
I’m thinking of blogging more, this term, about what I’m teaching. In my class on Fantasy we’re starting with MacDonald’s Phantastes, and here are first thoughts.