Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Pyramid scheme

Wednesday, Apr. 2, 2008
8:51 p.m.
Lately I have been thinking about the pyramid as an illustration of intelligence or culture or any other sort of sociological trait. At the very top of the pyramid you have the very intelligent, the intellectual elite, the vanguard for art, culture, science. Below that you have the educated, those who can appreciate and put to use those discoveries and innovations. Below that you have a crowd who are not so particular, but who still appreciate some of what goes on in the upper parts of the pyramid, although the very tip baffles them. Then the rest, the mediocre, the easily pleased, the masses, lie below.

I tend to place myself somewhere in the upper part of the pyramid. I am not really an innovator, I don’t produce great art and I don’t have a particularly gifted imagination. But I am an artist of a sort, am able to realize the art of others as a performing musician, and can pass on my insights. My husband is definitely in the upper tip of the pyramid, as is my daughter. I can appreciate their brilliance, but I cannot ever strive to join them there.

Tonight Hubby and I went to a short recital which was the culmination of the efforts of one of our students, a jazz guitarist from New Brunswick. He had spent much of the year composing jazz tunes, five of which he performed with Grandpa Mike, his guitar and composition teacher, on bass, Kevin O on drums, and a fellow student on guitar. They were very fine. Before they played the final piece, Mike spoke to the audience and said that we were only hearing five tunes, but the student had in fact composed 35 over the year, and each one was excellent.

However, in the audience were exactly nine people, one of them Ollie doing tech and another Kevin O’s girlfriend. The Duke was there, as were Hubby and I, and four students. And that was it. The recital had originally been scheduled for 8:00 p.m., but it turned out that whoever was doing the hall bookings had erred and put another ensemble in there at that time, and poor Phil was forced to change it. That doesn’t account for the paucity of audience. Personally I don’t get it. The two choir shows will be completely sold out in a hall that seats 600. There is no comparison between the quality of that presentation and the one that was so poorly attended tonight, which strengthens my pyramid theory. Mediocrity is for the masses; excellence is only for the elite.

Sad but seemingly true.

In other news, the Diaryland chat room seems to be operational again. How lovely!

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