Archives for March 2010

“It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one’s own absurdity.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Andrés Segovia teaches a master class on the guitar transcription of Bach’s Chaconne:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

In preparation for the Broadway debut of The Addams Family, I’ve been revisiting the wonderful New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams, which are infinitely more artful and sophisticated than any of their offspring.
I ran across this cartoon on the Web the other day, and the reason why it caught my eye is that the visual “joke” Addams was making arises from a now-dead technology, that of the phonograph. As I looked at it, a disquieting thought occurred to me: what percentage of people under the age of thirty are likely to get the point of the cartoon?
Speaking as a middle-aged music lover, I find myself reluctant to poll my younger friends. Some things are better left unknown….

“Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very modest.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Here’s the front cover of the forthcoming paperback edition of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which will be published in October. Sharp-eyed readers will note one major correction–the cover photo, which was reversed, has been made right–as well a dozen or so near-microscopic fixes to the text.
Mrs. T is delighted that my name will be on the cover this time around. That never bothered me, but I’m pleased to see a quote from Michiko Kakutani’s rave review of Pops on the cover of the paperback. I was, not surprisingly, quite proud of that review, and still am.
If you haven’t gotten around to buying Pops yet…well, what’s keeping you?

“I have been attached, deeply attached, to a few people; but I have been interested in men in general not for their own sakes but for the sake of my work.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

• A friend on the West Coast sent me an e-mail the other day that ended, “Give me a call. We never talk.” When I read this, it struck me that the only people I call simply to talk nowadays are Mrs. T (when we’re in different places), my mother, my brother, and Our Girl in Chicago. I communicate with the rest of the world via e-mail or some other form of direct messaging, and I can’t remember the last time that I sent a purely personal letter for any reason other than condolence or to say thanks for a gift or service of some kind.

For me, then, the revolution has happened. I’ve outlived snail mail, dial phones, answering machines, fax machines, and land lines, and have survived into the post-telephonic age. Yet I haven’t fully embraced the new regime, either: I don’t own an iPhone, a Kindle, or a BlackBerry, nor do I send more than one or two text messages a week. At least for the moment, I find that my battered MacBook satisfies all of my communicative needs, and I don’t feel even slightly tempted to embrace any of the aforementioned items. I do just fine with e-mail.

Might this mean that I’ve come to the end of my absorptive capacity for technology–in other words, that I am now officially an old fogy? I doubt it. I am, after all, one of the prophets of the e-book, and I’m sure that I’ll get around to buying one sooner or later. But as much as I appreciate new technologies, I’m not an early adopter. I prefer to let other people work out the bugs, and I’ve never been one to buy shiny toys for aging boys. The last gadgets of any significance to enter my life were my first (and only) iPod, which I bought five years ago, and Miranda, the trusty GPS that Mrs. T and I use when traveling. I bought my stereo and TV in 2002 and my cellphone in 2007.

I’m sure the day will come when I finally decide to purchase…well, probably not an iPad, but the platform after the platform after that. But until then, I expect that I’ll scrape along quite nicely as a transitional figure, a semi-old-fashioned fellow who has neither a land line nor an iPhone. In the meantime, though, don’t call me–I’ll call you. Or not.

“He was so young, he did not realise how much less is the sense of obligation in those who receive favours than in those who grant them.”
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage