The great Bill Evans on learning, improvisation, pedagogy, the importance of fundamentals… and so much more.
Category Archives: Videos
Learning takes time…
“It was absolutely impossible to play it at the age of twelve… because I didn’t know what to do with this half-page.”
—Valentina Igoshina
David Graeber on Bullsh*t Jobs
We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement. —DAVID GRAEBER, BULLSHIT JOBS: A THEORY
“A self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence”
“I could say that when I was a young man, an adolescent, and I hungered for a voice, I studied the English poets, and I knew their work well and I copied their styles, but I could not find a voice. It was only when I read—even in translation—the works of Lorca, that I understood that there was a voice. It is not that I copied his voice—I would not dare—but he gave me permission to find a voice, to locate a voice, that is, to locate a self—a self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence. And as I grew older, I understood that instructions came with this voice. What were these instructions? The instructions were never to lament casually. And if one is to express the great inevitable defeat that awaits us all, it must be done within the strict confines of dignity and beauty.”
—Leonard Cohen
“The guy who said, ‘no pain, no gain’ …he’s dead”
Bill “Superfoot” Wallace demonstrates how using constraints such as those imposed by a major knee injury can lead to learning and even mastery.
“Play with it, change it, modify it so that it becomes you.”
-Bill “Superfoot” Wallace
“Education For Whom and For What”
“The goal of education, to shift over to Bertrand Russell, is to give a sense of value to things other than domination, which means we regard a child as a gardener regards a young tree, as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form, given the proper soil, air, and light.”
—Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on Mis-Education
Terry Gilliam prefers asking questions to giving answers
“The success of most films in Hollywood these days, I think, is down to the fact [that] they’re comforting, they tie things into nice little bows, give you answers–even if the answers are stupid.” -Terry Gilliam
“Musicians make music because they feel the need to make music and they are expressing their feelings through music…”
“…But at the end of the process, what really creates the sounds that comes out of the instruments is the movement that they make.”
-Uri Vardi (from the video)
Charles Eisenstein on Sacred Economics
Charles Eisenstein‘s seminal work, Sacred Economics, played a pivotal role in inspiring both Slowing Down to Run Faster and The Mass Psychology of Fittism. In the following video by Ian McKenzie, Charles talks about the role that a debt-based money economy has played in fundamentally promoting political oppression, poverty, inequality, war, environmental destruction, anomie, and the severing of deep social ties.
Boxing and Parkinson’s
The motor skills of those with neurological conditions can be improved, sometimes to a remarkable extent, with help of somatic practices like Feldenkrais, Anat Baniel Method, Jeremy Krauss Approach, Hanna Somatics and Alexander Technique, as well as by engaging in sports, dance, martial arts, qigong, and/or yoga. This video produced by CBS’s Leslie Stahl reveals the benefits of boxing training for Parkinson’s patients.