Archives for March 2009

Blogger Book Club: T Minus Seven

March 9, 2009 by Molly Sheridan

We’re only one week away from Blogger Book Club! About a month ago, I asked a few busy music thinkers if they’d be into reading Lawrence Lessig’s latest tome Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, and then publicly discussing it here with me on Mind the Gap. They graciously agreed, we’ve done our homework, and next Monday we’ll get this party started. I think I know how Oprah feels. If you haven’t read the book/aren’t familiar with Lessig’s work, check out this clip from his recent appearance at the NY Public Library (or get full video and details here). At the very least, we’ll do our best to discuss economics with a bit more levity than last Sunday’s Simpsons episode.

Change We Can Believe In, Orchestra Edition

March 8, 2009 by Molly Sheridan

Crashing economy, you say? Shhh, don’t tell the folks at the new DC Philharmonic. They not only announced the launch of their ensemble last week (at a time when many such organizations were drafting applications for emergency NEA dollars to keep their operations running), but noted that they would be an orchestra that “will be self-supporting and that can reject the standard nonprofit model.” Conductor John Baltimore told the Washington Post:

You just don’t find this level of educated upper-middle-class African American income anywhere else in the United State…I am an African American myself. I believe wholeheartedly that Washington in particular has this unique demographic of educated, upper-class, recession-proof government wage-earners that, if this music was marketed to them and they could see that this music is for them, they would be supportive of it.

MTG will be watching this venture with great interest. Good luck to them!

1-2-3, Access Is Key

March 4, 2009 by Molly Sheridan

Not sure how I missed this news in October, but “click through to purchase” links on music videos posted to YouTube is just–wow–it just make so much sense. Is anyone protesting this yet? You laugh, but elsewhere…

Path of Least Resistance

March 3, 2009 by Molly Sheridan

On Sunday afternoons for the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a class at Baltimore Clayworks. Spinning bowls out of mud has turned out to be far more challenging than a person who has seen Ghost might expect it to be. When another young woman pulled out her much advanced vase work, I had that same exciting/overwhelming realization I had when I was 8 and about 6 months into violin lessons: If this was going to happen, it was going to be a long, hard road.

But at 31 years old, this felt like a much more daunting proposition. Committing years to educating myself on any topic seemed too audacious, and–Yikes!–did I just type that? Even if it took me 12 years to master clay as it did the violin (as much as I was going to personally master the instrument, I mean), at 43 I hope I’d still have quite a few years of coffee mug production in me to make it worth the while.

My college career was brief, and though sometimes I still wish I’d stuck around in academia longer, I really can’t see going back to formal study at this point. But I’d like to think I’m still hungry to learn and capable of committing myself to projects that require serous intellectual investment. If that’s going to happen, though, I’m probably going to have to start by learning to stop thinking that I’m too old for anything but short cuts.

**No Knead French bread: Most of the quality, 1/4 of the energy. Maybe this is where the bad influence comes from.