Thelonious Monk was an eccentric jazz musician of the bebop area. He often played with John Coltrane, although I read once that he and Miles Davis did not get along too well. Monk’s eccentricities are legendary. Often he wore a different strange hat for an extendid period—I think after a tour in Japan he wore a “coolie hat” on stage for a while. He rarely spoke, and when he did he often mumbled. During a concert he would regularly cease playing and dance in a tight circle on stage.

A documentary featuring largely contemporary footage about Monk, Straight, No Chaser (from a title of one of his pieces) was produced by Clint Eastwood argued that he suffered from some form of mental illness. Interview’s in that film with Monk’s son show that he was often distant and was hospitalized a number of times. What amazes me as well is that he just one day refused to play anymore—after spending all of his time on the thing, he just retreated into himself too far to touch it anymore. Like his time with it was finished.

“Crepuscule with Nellie” is one of those works that makes you feel a ripple deep in your soul. For me, I think my soul sits at the bottom of my stomach, because it flops and turns with every repeated playing of this track. If you get the 15 disc Riverside Recordings you get like half a dozen various versions of this song.

Crepuscule means twilight, and Nellie was his wife who was with him his entire life. Being so unique and having very special needs, Nellie was on every tour and travelled with him extensively, particularly has his condition got harder for him. For me I’d like to think that this song was him giving back to her. I often feel the power of this song and upset because I have the same feelings for my partner in life, but I won’t be able to write her something this good to express it. This version I found is not the best one in my opinion: there are four different takes of the song on Disc 4 of Riverside, and they are masterpieces.

This one does have a short interview with him at the beginning, the actual song starts at 1:57. I love this song because you can here his heavy handed handed style, where he seems to wait until the very last second to place each note, and then throws his hand down on the keys. He sometimes seems to be unsure just where each note is supposed to go, but you know he always picks the exact right one. When he has a full band for this song, it begins slow with just him and a wire brush on a drum, but slowly the rest of the pieces come in at the end to burn slowly.

The first part of the book details that myth, from Marshal McLuhan to Alvin Toffler to Nicholas Negroponte. What I am enjoying right now is the second half, which goes on to show that other technological developments where lauded in their time with the exact same language that we use to describe the Internet.

Any of these quotes sound familiar:

The Telegraph

• “the nerve of international life, transmitting knowledge of events, removing causes of misunderstanding, and promoting peace and harmony throughout the world.”
• “Our whole human existence is being transformed.”

Electrification

• “It is no longer a matter of choice whether or not one shall become acquainted with the general facts and principles of electric science. Such an acquaintance has become a matter of necessity. So intimately does electricity enter into our everyday life that to know nothing of its peculiar properties or applications is, to say the least, to be severely handicapped in the struggle for existence.” (does this call for Electronic Literacy anyone?)

The Telephone

• the harbinger of “a new social order”
• “a moral obligation for a considerate husband and a good citizen.”
• This would lead to an acceleration of democracy in politics and social life since we are all equals on the telephone.
• others welcomed the likely breakdown in class and family boundaries.

Radio

• “the greatest force yet developed by man in his march down the slopes of time.
• “a means for general and perpetual peace on earth.”
• “it has restored the demos upon which republican government is founded.”
• “Every home has the potentiality of becoming an extension of Carnegie Hall or Harvard University.”

Television

• “a torch of hope in a troubled world” (seriously!)
• will make “the attendance of classes in any one place…as obsolete as the buggy of twenty-five years ago”
• “television will usher in a new era of friendly intercourse between the nations of the earth”
• The new medium was predicted to be so potent that writers began to speak of a “pre-television” era and admonished those who were foolish enough to cling to the “habits of thinking” that characterized this time as “trapped in another anachronism.” (Library 2.0?)
• “Television is no instrument of imperialism. It belongs to the people as does radio. It comes at a time in history when the world needs to have an eye kept upon it for the welfare of civilization.”
• Additional examples give new hope for community television in low-income areas, for direct contact with candidates for electoral office, and for a transformation in the quantity and quality of citizen communication with government officials.
• “an “information highway.”

What Mosco is arguing is that, sooner or later, all of these new technologies become banal. He notes at one point that the average home now has 8 radios. Where the telephone was once seen by people as some kind of mythological device, now we do not think twice about it. In the 1930’s television was to be this great democratic and educational tool–now we see it as exactly the opposite.

So too with the Internet. This honeymoon many of us are still having with the Internet, and certain sub-technologies on the Internet (Blogs/Tagging/Social Software will save the world!) will quickly come to the end as new youngsters cease seeing the technology around them as something sacred, but as something purely profane.

In retrospect I felt like I said a lot, and was able to put forward my philosophy of service and professional practice. They asked me about 10 or 12 questions–after that I was so worried, because we had scheduled 45 mins and it had only been about 25 or 30. But, I had a lot of questions and we talked a bit about them, so I actually think we went about 5 minutes over time.

I have this particular philosophy of teaching, and of reference service, and although I know I have certain beliefs, it is exciting to actually express them in words. One of the best questions in the interview was “Name a book which has changed your outlook in the last year” or something. I named Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is such a wonderful book, and it has change my outlook and my general interactions with students.

I am really looking forward to just getting out there and helping people, being active, working on projects. Let’s just hope this comes through in the next week and I can talk about how excited I am about this position.

Yesterday as well I spent the day reading a soon to be published book of philosophy, and wrote my little review in the late night. This morning I got an acknowledgment from my editor, and I had a chance to re-read what I had written.

It made me think how connected to this older kind of librarianship the act of writing book reviews continues to be. I admit that it is also connected to that aristocratic ideal that librarians would be the judge of good books, but I think I really enjoy looking over a book, considering why it would be good or useful, and giving my little judgment of its contents in order that other people can inform their decision.

I have always felt that I was more of a reader than a writer, or that I enjoyed the process of reading over the process of writing. But I do find it easy to write about books, regardless of how connected I am to the Internet or whatever is supposed to replace books.