How Nice to Hear From You OH YOU NEED MONEY AGAIN?
I realize that the kinds of entities which accept donations of money
are caught in a cycle where the humans who decide things there believe
that they must send out frequent ever-more-strident solicitations for
money. But I think they're wrong. I'm sick of feeling like a chump because
I was once moved to donate money and continue to pay for it in pounds
of junk mail requests for even more money.
Organizations Which Continue to Hassle Me and Thus Get No More Money
- ACLU
- Amnesty International
- the Democratic National Committee
- Habitat for Humanity
- National Public Radio
- the Sierra Club
Organizations Which Rarely or Never Hassle Me and Thus Could Get More Money
I guess I'm not sorry about any of the donations I've made but I do regret
that every single communication from some of the entities is another
solicitation for yet more money and that I hear from them so frequently.
My ideal experience would be to receive maybe twenty or so communications
from an entity I've donated money to in a year's time and have one of them
ask me for more money with nineteen being about what they did with the money
people gave them.
If they've got nothing to say to me other than "Spare Change? Spare Change?"
I'd prefer they not show up every week.
posted at 10:59 PDT (-0700)
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Jazz
a rumination concerning improvisation.
...
Only people already familiar with the standard songs of jazz can completely
enjoy a live jazz performance.
...
The structure of jazz as performance is for performers to
improvise
against the backdrop of a known song. The applause moments are evoked
when the audience observes that the performer has diverged from the base
of the song and taken a different path.
astute listeners can recognize the base structure of a song the first time
that they hear it and realize when a variation is being played.
...
On December 11, 2004, I attended a performance at the
Jazzschool by
Carlos Oliveira. He's a guitarist
from Recife, Brazil. He was joined by
- Harvey Wainapel (sax)
- Weber Iago (piano)
- Claudio Bebianno (percussion)
The audience were lively and responsive and would burst into appreciative
applause in the middle of the song. Not having ever attended a live jazz
show, it didn't dawn on me until the second song that they were responding
to the points at which Carlos surprised them, by adding his own flourishes.
The point of his performance was not how accurately he could render songs
the audience knew but how much he could change them and still have them
recognized.
...
But what of new songs, songs which have never been heard before? How can
a variation be recognized when the standard form is unknown?
...
In practice, knowing when to applaud a live jazz performance is a function
of both one's own awareness of the song, either because it is a known song
or because it is a pattern that the listener perceives and apprehends the
structure of, and of one's own awareness of the audience around one. When
people around an audience member begin to applaud, it's nearly compulsory to
join in, even if one doesn't quite know why.
Insofar as new jazz creations follow structure of existing schools of jazz,
that structure can be easily learned quickly by a listener already familiar
with the existing body of jazz numbers.
...
So if one doesn't have the resources to become thoroughly acquainted with
existing jazz songs, by listening to several different performances of them
and thus discern the underlying song, the way to maximize one's enjoyment of
a live jazz performance is to sit near people who listen to a lot of jazz
and applaud when they do.
posted at 15:04 PST (-0800)
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