source file: mills2.txt Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 08:44:39 -0700 Subject: Have an elite day From: gtaylor@heurikon.com (One Cointreau, on ice....) Of course, the folks here would never use the term "elite," since it conjures the image of only *12* type characters per inch! But seriously - while I remain profoundly suspicious about those folks who would uncritically claim some sort of hegemony across all kinds of temporal and cultural and stylistic borders [which is what I think that Neil may have been sketching out for us], there *is* a sense in which it seems reasonable to think that there will always be *some* folks who participate in social negotiations of value from a position of greater exposure or experience than others. In some measure, larger questions of taste or judgement are often in the hands of those persons in a given culture who either spend more time *doing* the thing we're trying to evaluate or have a broader background in knowing its origins and structures. I've personally got little problem in thinking that I'd be better at evaluating a performance of central Javanese gamelan than some of you, and that there are any number of you who'd have a great deal more to say about 31-tone stuff. Within the sphere of "local" knowledge, we're being elitists [the word's origin signifying nothing more than "choice" in old French ("eslit")]. Similarly, I don't think that Neil (or I) might have much problem with a clarinet player who could tear holes in anything with 12 bars *and* engage with some serious Babbittry with equal ease telling us something like, "I prefer 'I Can't Sit Still' to 'Philomel.'" We might listen to him pretty seriously, I expect - I'd at least want to know *why* he prefers one version. But the normative language of "X is good" is different from speech that explicitly acknowledges the provisionality of opinion. I think I've mentioned that I tend to find this a particular problem with Brian when his Intemperate bit is stuck high. It's also been my experience that proof by assertion (Because! I! Say! So!) is a usual resort of the sort of elitism that Neil dislikes. Your mileage may vary. With regards, Gregory _ I would go to her, lay it all out, unedited. The plot was a simple one, paraphrasable by the most ingenuous of nets. The life we lead is our only maybe. The tale we tell is the must that we make by living it. [Richard Powers, "Galatea 2.2"] Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 17:50 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id IAA23092; Wed, 31 Jul 1996 08:49:59 -0700 Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 08:49:59 -0700 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu