Sidney Awards

[Update 12/30/09: A second batch of Sidneys has been chosen.]

Every year, David Brooks, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, gives out Sidney Awards to the best magazine essays of the year. I spent at least an hour reading Matt Labash's "A Rake's Progress" yesterday and laughed out loud from the writer's expert analogies. Take, for example, this description of Washington D.C.'s Ward 8, the poorest ward in the district.

For decades, Ward 8 has been the crime and poverty and every-other-dubious-statistic headquarters of D.C. It is the land that the real estate bubble forgot. Amidst the check-cashing places and screw-top liquor stores, it contains such tourist meccas as the reeking Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment plant and St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital, where Ezra Pound sweated out his insanity plea for treason and John Hinckley Jr. can compose rock operas for Jodie Foster in peace. While only minutes from Capitol Hill, and from the more prosperous black suburbs in Maryland's Prince George's County, Ward 8 might as well be in Burkina Faso to the commuting class. The only reason to pull off there is if you needed to buy a quick fifth of Hennessey for the ride home, or possibly something less legal.

I had to look up all the references in that paragraph.

Most of the other articles are not so humorous. Regardless, it's a joy to simply be reading for pleasure again, [1] and especially quality writing. With only music humanities classes this semester, the extent of my literary exposure was xkcd comics and the occasional Tech article. I'm bundled up in pj's and a fleece in my room now with a mug of hot water at my side, the heat on and shades down (to hide the gray sky outside), reading good articles. This could make a great vacation.


[1] Admissions officer Ben Jones warned pleasure reading would die, in #26 on his classic list of advice for college. I re-read the "50 Things" maybe once a year for an injection of perspective.

Improv

"We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process…[We] have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing."
- Yehudi Menuhin

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." - Miles Davis


I took 21M.355: Musical Improvisation this term. Throughout the class each student kept a journal; here's mine: http://improvinabox.blogspot.com/

I'm posting the final entry, which sums up my experience.
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The class performed last night in Killian Hall, a straight two hours without intermission. Fortunately, our audience endured.

The concert was a surprising success, considering that we started rehearsing the bulk of it two weeks ago. For many pieces it was even less than that.

For me, it was a vastly enjoyable concert. I tapped my feet and bobbed my head while in the audience. I tapped my feet and bobbed my head while on stage. I was truly having fun, whereas normally I'm nervous on stage. Perhaps the greatest personal success for me was that I didn't feel nervous at all. Okay, so a bit of adrenaline - but nothing close to what I've encountered in the past, especially with solos. Maybe it helped that it was a group setting, not a solo recital. But if you had asked me a few months ago, I could not have imagined being on stage, playing without knowing the notes to play, and not being nervous.