Man, this edumacating thing takes it out of me. I'm quickly settling into a routine with my lectures: first two hours are fine, but as I enter the home stretch of the third hour, I start to give out. My throat begins to ache, my legs feel like they are glued to the floor, and I forgo class discussion and painstaking analysis for stuttering quickie points on, say, how Keith Richard's guitar lick from "Satisfaction" isn't actually a blues riff, but an attempt to imitate the horn section of a Motown number. Write that down, kids.
Still, all and all, I'm pretty pleased. We're getting through the material, people occasionally laugh at my jokes. And I think this experience is really just about learning techniques for endurance: the importance of having water to drink, the importance of standing up straight and wearing comfortable shoes, the importance of good air conditioning.
Tomorrow I take a break from teaching for some honest to goodness dissertation research. The Getty Research Institute, located in a building on the grounds of the Getty Museum, has a wonderful library that holds the papers of several figures important to me: M.C. Richards, Allan Kaprow, Dick Higgins, and especially David Tudor. I've worked some with the Tudor papers already, especially his scores, but now I'm going to dive into his correspondence, and that of Richards. This is no substitute for getting to the Cage papers in Chicago, but it is a good start, and as far as I can tell, I don't think many Cage scholars have looked through the Richards papers. I have an all-day appointment tomorrow, so we'll see what I dig up!
No comments:
Post a Comment