Music Teachers and the Internet and Bitter Irony

NylonDave

I used to go fishing once in a while (I didn't), I had a friend who drove us to interesting places and I payed for the petrol as I didn't have a car at the time. He was a master fisherman.

Boy was it fun to go fishing. He always had lots of good advice and he was right there to answer my questions.

We don't go fishing anymore as he can no longer afford to run a car as things have gotten tough for master fishermen.

I don't go fishing any more but luckily I have found special sites where I can look at what other people have caught.

What do you guys think, should I keep on going fishing on my own or just go to special sites where I can claim the fish that the new ultra exclusive club of celebrity superfishermen have caught ? The advantage of the latter is of course that I never have to clean or gut the fish, or do any fishing, or leave the house. Or study independently with a book or any of that old fashioned stuff.

And I have more pictures of bigger and more impressive fish now than I could possibly have caught myself. And in a way they are mine now too.

Aren't they ?

D.

NylonDave

I remember when I bought my first fishing rod. I had been borrowing one of his old ones. It was real basic but I guess it worked just fine.

One day I brought him a copy of Fish For the Practicing Angler magazine, maybe some of you will remember it. And I showed him the page with my dream 'rod', Eddie Whitebait the king of shred fishing was standing next to a skip full of worms and there was a bevvy of lovelies threading them onto its twin semiautomatic six shot hook cartridges. Boy, I wanted it so, so many features, an emergency flair gun and crocodile harpoon and available in both black and crimson metallic paint.

My friend said,
'Today is a sad day because before when you knew nothing there was nothing to unlearn. It will be harder now.'

I was livid, I went home and looked at the walls of my humble bedroom, walls covered, with barely an inch to spare, with the pictures of exotic fish I had culled from the magazines pages. And I felt the determination grow within me.... I would show him, I would be the teacher.

To cut a long story short I saved up all my money and six months later the package arrived.

That weekend we took it on our trip. It felt great to pull it out, I was excited. But it was so loud that the fish just swam away. And even he, master though he was, caught no fish that day..... it was a long day.

When he dropped me home after many hours without a word he looked at me in the eye and asked.

'What's it to be, catching fish, or having the biggest rod ?'

I said I'd think about it.

I was only 58.

D.

Jojo

For a moment I thought you were talking about guitars then realised it was all about masturbation

NylonDave

I thought I was fishing.

lostjohn

Nylon Dave, you are indeed strange, but at least you're tedious

Jehu

I once knew a man who spent his time on the Internet writing allegories. Whereas he thought they were clever and instructive, in reality they were thinly veiled insults toward people who he thought were less insightful than him.

I guess I'll never really know what happened to him, as he made me not want to visit the same websites.

NylonDave

Thank you for posting you loyalty oath Jehu. I look forward wearing my cape from now on.

D.

kevingcox

NylonDave wrote: »

I thought I was fishing.

It's more commonly called "trolling."

NylonDave

You feel that I should be more honest with myself regarding my motivations in posting Kevin ?

I'll give it some thought.

D.

kevingcox

I'll say this, because I feel like some ugly things have been bubbling just barely beneath the surface on this forum for weeks now:

I have been a member of this community for years, from before this site became the de facto host for it. This is not to brag about some sort of veteran status but to help you understand that I know many of the people on this forum personally (like 2AM-mouth-agape-clinging-to-consciousness-don't-want-to-miss-a-note personally, or oh-jesus-I-should-just-give-up-NO-WAY-keep-going-you-inspire-me personally) and I am 1 or 2 degrees separated from most others. I fully expect that I will cross paths with the lion's share of those folks at some point down the road.

If you want to talk about some sort of "loyalty" then this is neither an insult nor an abstraction for me because the people behind the names here have faces, voices, styles and personal struggles that we have shared.

This is not to make you feel unwelcome or like an outsider, this is to help you understand what has been quite conscientiously built here. We are not all friends, and we are not always friendly, but as tempers flare a deep civility helps us abide.

Jim Kaznosky

Well said, Kevin.