We finished the McLuhan video in New Media Studies today, and the students learned that MM had children (six, in fact) with a very charming and intelligent wife who both marveled at her husband and waxed rueful about his idiosyncracies. We learned that his son could not convince MM that in fact Brasilia was now the capital of Brazil. This TV special, hosted by Tom Wolfe, is quite the ride. Highly recommended for anyone with any interest in McLuhan. At this point, I’m going out on a limb and suggesting that nearly everyone should have some interest in McLuhan. I can’t believe that it’s been less than a year since I read him for the first time. So many gaps, so little time. Yet desire still cries, give me some more to read. (Secret handshake there for “Astrophel and Stella” lovers.)

Rock/Soul/Prog was a mixed bag today. Some folks are not yet on the bus. I know I shouldn’t worry so much; I know all will be well, and not all is up to me. Yet I also know that there’s energy, passion, commitment to burn in these students, and I know they and we will need it for the work now and the work ahead. I think last term’s class learned that a little later than was optimum, and I think there were some regrets. Every narrative has its own arc, and hope springs eternal–Thursday is another day….

I was shocked when two students from my Intro. to Literary Studies class brought me flowers. They said they were being nice to their teachers today. I confess: I melted. Am I weak, uncritical, unskeptical? Posterity will judge. The flowers are lovely and I was touched. I’ve tried hard this time to be as imaginative about the symbolism assignment as I can be. Perhaps the ideas of resonance I’m working on and with have helped push the effort a little farther along. Hard to say. So hard to get readers to pay attention to the texture and conceptual-tactile joys of language. Maybe it was the Twilight Zone episode that helped. “Walking Distance”–the carousel as symbol–try it at home and report back. What resonates?

Then at last to an orchestra rehearsal. I have a voice-over narration part in one of the pieces commissioned to celebrate Mary Washington’s Centennial. We were rehearsing in the band room tonight. It’s a small room, and the orchestra filled it. I stood next to the conductor. To my right, a young cello player drew dark-toned beauty from her instrument. Ahead, I could see the winds, and I focused on the flutes and bassoons, the two wind instruments I played back in the day. To my left, the violins. Back and to my right, the brass. A harp, a full percussion ensemble, a score spread on the conductor’s desk, a baton dividing time in the air. A room full of timbre, vibrato, popping articulation, melisma. I was taken back to those many late nights I spent rehearsing in my high school bands, in the Roanoke Youth Symphony, in my college’s wind ensemble and orchestra, to that huge sound that took me out of myself and into a much larger arena of being. I wish everyone who loves music could hear a performance from the middle of the orchestra. Surrounded by that sound, one cannot think of power as a merely cultural phenomenon….