Last week was the first week of my online history of jazz class at LBCC. It's more fun and less cheesy than I expected. Not being the world's greatest time manager, I kind of waited until the last minute to do the assignments that were due by 11:59 PM on Saturday.
Mostly it was easy: a couple of quizzes you can retake (twice, I think), an introduction to the rest of the class in a forum, and...
A 12 bar blues song, which we had to write and perform ourselves.
I found some random dude playing a pretty standard blues lick (yeah, I know the lingo, shut up) in a key that I could sing, let it play a few times, then opened my mouth and sang something that had been on my mind all day.
My lyrics were:
I'm just a little boy - what can I see
I'm just a little boy - what can I see
I see my mama, she's looking at me
Initially I was thinking about Jules, but then I started thinking about a story a friend had told me about something horrible he witnessed as a small boy, and now I'm thinking it's really about that. It's one of those stories, if true - no, even if it's not - that sticks with you. It sticks with me.
I didn't mean to imply that my friend is a liar, but he was a very young child when the event took place. I think it had an enormous effect on the rest of his life, but I'm not qualified to analyze him and he wouldn't want me to try. He's just a dude with a story. I was glad he told me. Maybe one day I'll tell you.
Anyway, my little blues thing turned out better than I expected, but since I turned it in so late (11:20 or something), I didn't get any feedback from my classmates. My teacher hasn't submitted grades for that assignment yet, which is actually KILLING ME. Since I needed some sort of confirmation that it didn't suck, I shared it on Facebook, where my friends were supportive and surprised ("That was YOU?" someone commented), but I'm not trying to be a singer. I'd like to have a story to tell, though. That would be cool, wouldn't it?
Saturday I had my meeting with the academic adviser, and I think I have a path to get started on (boy, that's a clumsy sentence). Open the door, I'm coming in! My therapist once told me that in order to make big changes, you just have to do one thing at a time. Pretend you're in the dark, with a pretty shitty flashlight, and concentrate on the one small thing you can see. So that's what I'm going to do. The whole thing is not going to be easy, and it's not going to happen overnight, and I may fail or hate it or find another goal to chase but here we go, I'm starting.
By the way, the Doheny campus is amazingly beautiful. I arrived early for my appointment and had to use the restroom, so I walked up to a building marked "Administration," opened these huge, elegant, glass doors, and stepped into.... an empty room. I found a bathroom and used it, but it was a weird feeling, being in that big pretty building, with all the lights on, alone. I walked outside and stood on the huge porch and felt like I had gone back in time.
Then I had to go back in because I'd left my phone on the toilet paper dispenser.
I meet with the financial adviser in two weeks to find out how I'm going to pay for all this.
The second week's big assignment in my jazz class involves writing a paper to compare and contrast Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong. I'm at the library now, catching up on the reading I was supposed to do, and looking for a couple more books about these dudes. The author of the book we're using in the course has a pretty style, but he kind of goes overboard sometimes. Take this sentence for example:
"At critical moments in the course of a solo, Hines's hands would nervously fly across the keyboard, letting loose with a jagged, off-balance phrase, a flurry of notes as agitated as a swarm of honeybees forced from their hive." - The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia
That's some crazy writing. I mean, they had to be HONEY bees, right?
What I really need to do more of is listening. I'm familiar with Louis Armstrong because everybody is familiar with Louis Armstrong (I like his "Hello Dolly") but I'm sure I've never heard the early stuff we're reading about now - when he was a young man, cheating on his piano-playing wife (her name was "Lil" and I think that's awesome), developing the style he'd be famous for later. The other guy, Beiderbecke, I've never even heard of, but he was there too, and he had a whole different kind of thing going on, and I need to familiarize myself with it so I can talk about it. I'm probably never going to write like ol' Ted up there, but that's okay, because this thing is due Saturday.
I should probably get back to work.