This Week in Music

Greetings from the McMurdo band room, where your heart and voice will soar, break, and soar again.  Overall, I’m pretty drama-averse.  When my pals brought in a new guitarist,  I tried to be welcoming, open to his suggestions, and not roll my eyes too openly when he couldn’t consistently alternate between the three chords in a blues…but when he incorrectly identified a song’s progression as Rhythm changes, he had to be put in his place.  I swear, it wasn’t just me; apparently he got the vibe and bowed out, and we’ve returned to a tighter, funner little group.  Likewise, with the jazz group, we were finally all there – guitar, drums, bass, me – and sailing along; then, at a performance, the tune I most looked forward to went completely off the rails.  At least we didn’t stop; I kept smiling dopily, and eventually we stuttered back to the head for one last time through.  Luckily, that was the first tune, so I hope everyone forgot about that by the end.  And then comes the moment you pick just the right song where everybody clicks in and it seems to play itself.  Anyway, all this jazz stuff is leading up to a week from now, at the Crary Lab Science Social, where beakers (scientists) will swirl glasses of wine and regale each other with witty anecdotes as we noodle in the background.

A perfectly clear understanding of the parameters of my job remains elusive, but at least I make fewer data entry errors.  Mystified people ring me several times a day, and I take a stab at answering their questions, often thickening the fog.  My boss is like an all-knowing oracle, but with sass: he purses his lips, sharply inhales, and says, “Let me speak with them, please,” and sets us all straight.

It finally snowed a good few inches, and we took advantage of the relative humidity to have a snowball fight.  My aim is terrible, but a sort of drive-by shooting technique helps me score direct hits at close range.  I hope it sticks around long enough to ski on Thanksgiving, which we’ll celebrate on Saturday in order to have a two-day weekend.  Now, I want everyone to go out and eat a nice pastry for me, and eat lots of butter, as it’s difficult to come by down here.