I have a few things that drive me to rush the hell home after work. I recently had two more reasons: hubby gave me a bass guitar for Christmas and I was reading a book I had trouble putting down.
When I go see bands, I tend to stand right in front of the bass player, watching his/her hands equally with watching the singer. I watch the hands and follow the rhythm. The bass line is what hooks me to my favourite songs. My favourite musician is probably John Taylor. I had an organ for decades but it was in disrepair and took up an awful lot of room in the house. Millie kept hiding inside it. We had to get rid of it. I missed playing an instrument. Hubby knew I missed it. He found a lefty bass, black, small enough for this short gal. He also got me a small practice amp - with Mike Watt on the box!!!! - so I don't have to play acoustic all the time.
I started to teach myself over the break. I found a video online with a darling British boy showing the bare bones basics. And so it began. I found a couple of sites with bass tablatures for lots of songs I like. I also found a site with lessons on stuff like fingering the frets, playing with a pick, plucking, etc. It's all so new to me because I never played a string instrument in all my life. And I am hopelessly hooked. I practice every single night starting right after dinner. I practice for 45-60 minutes. I practice so much that the first two fingers on my right hand are callousing and numb. Fabulous! What is even better is that there a points when I am playing that hubby recognizes the song. Pretty cool.
So if I am in a meeting and it is cutting into my practice time, I get antsy. My local Main Street Design Team meeting has a blowhard on the team. During our last meeting, it was dragging on and on. I believe she just likes to hear herself talk. She's yammering on and on about things we have no time or manpower to do, I am watching the clock tick-tick-tick, and I know that a couple of us wanted her to just shut the hell up.... But she is a church chum of the team leader. So I sat, glancing desperately at the clock, squirming. Once freedom came, I raced home, got in the pj's, and practiced. It felt so good.
And once practice was done, I settled in with a book I bought on the field trip to the Eastern State Penitentiary. I happen to be interested in the school-to-prison pipeline and all the other racist issues going n in this country. I was appalled by the racist environment here at my school when I started working here. The book was "On the Run" by Alice Goffman. I could not put it down. I have read a bit of the "controversy" about the book and I don't buy any of it. In order to completely obscure the identities of those in the book, things have to be scrambled in such a way as to not put any of them at risk. I viewed the book not as fact, but as a story of the general atmosphere and threats faced by those in situations such as those the authour lived with for six years. And while some people quibbled about facts and chronology, here's the thing: it was all familiar. I knew all of the situations based on what I have read from people who work in and with those communities and neighbourhoods.
The book was so upsetting, distressing, infuriating. The kids I teach seem to have no idea what it is like to be born in an area like that. When our kids here get pulled over for drunk driving or get caught with drugs on them at a party, mommy or daddy has a connection to get them off with a slap on the wrist. That privilege keeps them so isolated and ignorant. They make judgments about who goes to prison and why with no clear understanding of how the system works for some and works to suppress others.
That was evident by the answers some of the students gave during our tour of ESP. I really enjoyed the closer examination the guide and the site gives to the prison industrial complex in this country. I was happily surprised by the educated opinions of some of my students, sadly not surprised by some of the prejudicial opinions of others. So what am I doing to open their minds to other viewpoints? I am using my journal entry assignment. I am using prompts that come with a different background story that they might otherwise never be interested in reading. Maybe it will work for the rest of the year. But, I just know that once they get out of my room at the end of the year, they will most likely go back to the same way of thinking. It's a futile effort, but I keep trying.
No comments:
Post a Comment