In a Warm Room

[barger@ils.nwu.edu]

It's interesting to me to see thru email how deeply shared my views are, in
certain corners, and it encourages me to carry this on.  This argument is
not going to be resolved by sound-bites-- it's a heavy issue that we can
only get clear on by careful communication.  (Of course, the people we're
having problems with aren't careful readers, so this will all be going over
their heads, which will make them uncomfortable and
itchy-to-lash-back-dumbly.  That's some catch, that catch 22...)

I'm realizing this morning that probably the "cut" between the 'Rudis' and
the 'Homegrounders' is also the cut between fans who have no personal
artistic urges, and fans who are on the path of self-discovery thru
creative effort.  Everyone who has set out on the latter path will remember
how hollow *heckling* suddenly sounded, once you'd started imagining being
on the receiving end.

Nobody starts out great.  I don't imagine Cynthia would have applauded
enthusiastically at 11-year-old Cathy's first recital.  But if one works at
it, with sympathetic friends, one does get better, and that's a great
feeling-- better than settling back emptily with another brewski, or the
soaps.

But these kids who've never dared to make a personal artistic experiment,
to let out what's inside them, and then *listen to how it would sound to a
stranger*, trying to learn to say it so the stranger can hear it the way
they meant it...

I want a place to make these experiments and take those chances with
sympathetic fellow-journeyers.  Writing about what Kate's music does for us
would surely be the common thread.  It really seems a shame that r.m.g.
should be too much of a no-man's-land to permit this, but now that I think
about it: NO, we can't crosspost everything to rmg-- we'd lose 9/10ths of
our contributors!

So forget about the kill-file... the "Wedding List"! (see Rudis above ;^) 
I want to modify my request yesterday to this: if you want to join a
private mailing-list of Katefans-on-the-perilous-path, taking chances
trying to learn to do good works thru art, let's do it.  Crossposting to
gaffa, though, will be the choice of the contributors, and with regrets
I'll say I won't be crossposting anything but news flashes.

(Or, wait, how 'bout this?: We'll be working thru the songs,
chronologically, so why don't we plan to compile a group-edited
appreciation of each song as we go, for public distribution, but we'll have
plenty of chances to rethink and rework, hold things back, or make our
contributions anonymous?)

I expect many subscribers *will* continue to read r.m.g., and I hope they
will filter out from the boorish crap the sometimes *fine things* that
Richard and Cynthia and Missy and Stev0 do find to say, and repost them or
quote them for the rest of us.

Call us rec.music.gaffa.timid? ;^)

Or how about "WarmRoom"?!
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Jorn Barger, Northwestern U., Chicago, Midwest, USA      barger@ils.nwu.edu
   "And crazyheaded Jorn, the bulweh born?"   _Finnegans Wake_ 513.07
     (Ask me about the electronic Finnegans Wake reading project!)
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