Just fiddling around with guitar overdubs and in general enjoying getting some rough cuts of my playing/singing. Enjoy,.
Author: Michael Jackman
-
getting tarnish on the fingers
After playing the flute again yesterday I pitied my poor 1970 Guild D-35 sitting in our “guitar corner” gathering dust for a few weeks – this absolutely wonderful acoustic that I had rebuilt a few years ago, that I bought with Bar Mitzvah money 45 years ago when I was 13, with it’s great varied intonation…we missed each other, so while Sarah Dugan worked hard on her facebook updates in her livingroom corner office, I grabbed the guitar and sat on the couch tinkering around with it. Before any time had past I was lost in airy extended major chords, riffs, playing around with 5/4 time, which Sarah really dug. Then I closed the session with one of the first songs I learned for her, “Winter’s Come and Gone” by Gillian Welch. Always nice to get tarnish on my fingers and keep the calluses hard. It makes any day worthwhile. -
feeling down about my poetry
Been feeling down about two things lately – a year of poetry and poetry manuscript rejections, and the fact that the publications in print journals – this poetry I’ve written to be read and enjoyed, disappears into obscurity because, really, who reads journals? So, feeling for the first time in a long time that no one gives a shit about my poetry and not wanting to even go to one open mic lately, I decided to listen when Sarah encouraged me to blog more. Today I’m off from school and meetings, so you’re getting the outpouring of the tiny blog posts. Which is the best way to write on the Internet, I think.
-
the “free speech zone” is tough
In my class I’ve been working so hard to establish a “free speech zone,” but I think I goofed up when I pressed a student for evidence to back up some claims that police brutality is the same as it always has been. I believe I inhibited the students’ feeling of not being judged rather than making the “zone” a safe place. It’s a fine balance between free speech with rebuttal and “chilling” a conversation, which by definition has to allow dissent even when the topic is uncomfortable. I’m still trying to negotiate that fine line. Hopefully, this class of freshmen writers, which has been VERY enthusiastic, beyond all my expectations, will continue to feel the class is open and that they can explore their first attempts at reasoning on issues, no matter how tentative and perhaps uninformed, without feeling silenced. I’m committed to this pedagogy, but it’s hard to do sometimes.
