The Bigger Picture
a few nights ago i got an email from a old friend and former student about how i helped him over 20 years ago. it reminded me how it’s too easy to get caught up in the day to day successes and failures of teaching and forget about the bigger picture
“Just read your Derek Sivers post and it made me think… This guy from Kansas named Paul Bailey was my high school marching band coach my senior year, and from that he was able to get me a job at Poway HS (which he got because he marched Madison (Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps), and I ended-up working with HS marching bands for 7 years before it got to be too much while starting my now 15 year career at Accenture… Great experiences, great memories, and definitely a great part of my life. Thank you again, Paul.”
HBO’s Treme Revives Jazz On National TV – chicagotribune.com
If you haven’t been watching Treme yet, here is your introduction. so far it’s not quite matured into “the wire” i’m still very hooked into following david simon’s very unique altmanesque storytelling.
“Not everything in “Treme” serves its noble cause. Portraying one of the show’s leading characters, the fictional jazz trombonist Antoine Batiste (played by Wendell Pierce), as a chronic philanderer who’s always swindling someone taps the sorriest stereotypes about jazz life. “
“Then, again, Simon and friends aren’t trying to produce a treatise on jazz but, rather, a dramatic series about the near-death of a city. And not just any city, but one that has exported more musical culture to the rest of the country — and the world — than anyplace else on this continent.
“Treme” is sending a message about the incalculable musical value of New Orleans, why this city must be saved and what will be lost if its citizens can’t regain their footing.”
link: HBO’s Treme revives jazz on national TV – chicagotribune.com
“Despite All His Humanoid Robots…”
“But the reason Bradbury’s stories still sing on the page is that, despite all his humanoid robots, automated houses, and rocket men, his interest is not in future technologies but in people as they live now—and how the proliferation of convenient technology alters the way we think and the way we treat each other.”
link: The stories of Ray Bradbury. – By Nathaniel Rich – Slate Magazine
“Music is about the Mind and Imagination…”
“But from a friendly, loved pop face, it constitutes a thoughtful proposal that this kind of contemplation of sound, involving the pure isolation of its surface, depth and mysterious presence, can be a discreet reminder of the experimentally achieved occult electro-sonic qualities that are a key part of pop’s appeal. It’s a polite reminder that music, however it is assembled, whatever it consists of, however it is classified, is about the mind and the imagination as much as it’s about buying, swapping, listing and grading music and reminding you of your past.”
link: Paul Morley on music: why Jarvis Cocker represents the future | Music | The Observer
Music Theory: Answering “The Why”
i was at rehearsal the other night when the question came about where should somebody start who wants to know more about music theory.
fair enough, but talk about an unintentionally loaded question. if you picked up a few books from the library they would start out with the fundamentals (notes, clefs, keys, scales, intervals, chords…), but after you learned that information what would you really have learned and what could you do with it?
i think when somebody says they want to learn music theory what they really are wanting to know is really “how does music work”. on that hand i don’t think many books do a great job (although i’d encourage others to happily prove me wrong and i’ll share that info).
along the lines of my previous theory post (making the simple more complex) is that learning ‘theory’ should be synonymous with teaching how music works; the skills needed how to create music i.e. composition (and implicitly imitation) rather than teaching students how to only analyze and dissect music.
thinking about this in practical terms this would mean making some big changes on how I would teach lower level theory fundamentals, asking students to transcribe and analyze a melody and/or chord progression that they liked (pain in the ass to grade). the big point here is to figure out how intervals and chords work in the context of a real piece of music (unlike the traditional way of teaching them divorced from the actual music making experience)
to skip ahead a bit the big point I’m continually trying to make is that:
- the best way to learn music theory is to analyze music that is ‘interesting’ (to us)
- this analysis should focus on answering the question ‘why?’
- learning music fundamentals (and music theory) should be connected to answering ‘the why?’
Is there an Bubble in Higher Education? (via DIY U)
“We don’t often hear higher education talked about in such baldly commercial terms. Most faculty and campus administrators have visceral negative reactions to this kind of language. But that doesn’t mean that colleges—even not-for-profit colleges—aren’t essentially run as businesses. It just means that (a) they’re often run as businesses badly because it is considered distasteful to draw on the lessons and vocabulary of the business world, and (b) educators often fail to identify the tensions between their school’s mission and its operating model, thus making it less likely that they will be able to confront some of the system’s ethical challenges successfully. But since the heart of DIY U is an economic argument, it is worthwhile to try framing issues in the language of economics. As the title of this post suggests, the specific question I want to address is whether there is a bubble in the college education market.”
link: DIY U: Is There a Bubble in the Higher Education Market?
“the rest will take care of itself”
“don’t worry about who you are, get rid of who your not, and the rest will take care of itself”
link: Tumblr
jim earl via marc maron’s WTF Podcast, Episode 73 May 17th 2010
it looks like it’s going to work out (2010)
i have been making music on my train commute each morning to CSUF improvising and creating songs using my new iPad and looping music programs like PatternMusic. So far i’m really enjoying the fact that there is a finally a robust portable music device that you can create/improvise/compose on without a laptop/desktop/studio. yeah the sounds are cheezy, but when it comes to working on computers i have always liked it that way. i’d rather imagine what it could sound like on acoustic instruments than create something that is almost (but not quite)
for the first time it’s nice to take it with you. one one hand i like that it’s kinesthetic, and on the other i’m glad i have good ears cause playing by ear on a grid based pattern/step sequencer can be pretty awkward.
it looks like it’s going to work out: (2010)
It looks like it’s going to work out by paul bailey
improvised and performed using an iPad and PatternMusic (051810)
also pardon the sound quality. for now the only way to record is with a miniplug line out which adds a bit of noise
“Capitalism is Eating Itself”
a great summary of “Makers” one of my favorite books that i have recently read by Corey Doctorow
“The opening pages of Makers attacks the very idea of corporatism: Capitalism is eating itself. The market works, and when it works, it commodifies or obsoletes everything… money won’t come from a single, monolithic product line… the money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people. The rest of the book imagines what that post-corporate-behemoth world would look like, a world where the Disney corporation—the last flailing mammoth on the plain—will do anything, even kill, to keep from going extinct. Doctorow fires off new ideas at a staggering pace: Inventors find a way to make packs of surplus Elmo dolls salvaged from the garbage (dolls that, to meet the demands of increasingly elaborate Christmastime fads, have evolved into simplistic robots) drive cars and perform other complex tasks; tiny robots build even tinier robots that can skitter around and improvise the construction of a useful tool. In the middle of an argument about obesity, one character reframes an entire modern-day debate: “We didn’t get less willful in the last fifty years. Might as well say that all those people who died of the plague lacked the willpower to keep their houses free of rats. Fat isn’t moral, it’s epidemiological.”
link: Living in a Sci-Fi Novel by Paul Constant – Books – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper
How the Apple iPad Was Dreamed Up — in 1988 – PCWorld
“The device was about the size of a paper notebook, and it packed a high-resolution color touchscreen with a virtual keyboard, gigabytes of solid-state storage, cellular connectivity, GPS, and a built-in microphone and speaker. Sophisticated software based on UNIX let you tap icons on a desktop and use pop-down menus to use it for note-taking, connecting to online services, driving directions, e-mail (complete with junk-mail filtering), social networking, 3D games, and both network TV shows and wacky user-generated video. Accessories included a wireless keyboard for those who preferred to touch type, and if you lost your tablet, a clever service even let you use the GPS to track it down.”
How the Apple iPad Was Dreamed Up — in 1988 – PCWorld
My Early iPad Review
so far the iPad has been a pretty interesting and although i’ve had only for a week i think it’s still to early to tell on how useful a mobile device it will become. instead of trying to read the tea leaves of what it might become, i’m going to break it down in some smaller chunks:
Things I Like
- great to read magazine length multimedia content on the interwebs
- i also prefer it as a newsreader and really a perfect couch computer
- great for viewing photo slideshows and movies
- at the end of the day it shines as a media consumption device
Limitations
- not really great for content creation
- iWork is buggy, editing rich text documents without a mouse is a pain (although it’s been shown you can easily hack a Bluetooth mouse)
- it’s a pain in the ass to type on (in relation i prefer to type much more on my iphone) i have pretty big hands and i have to peck out words one letter at a time
- using it with a bluetooth keyboard makes you miss the mouse even more
- no good Twitter client yet (twitterific is ok, wish they had echofon)
- to heavy to read comforably in bed or on the couch
- iBooks are too expensive. no reason not to continue using amazon and their very good kindle app for the Ipad
- multitasking would make many programs much more useful (textexpander, pastebot, 1password)
- screen glare is a problem, although works better in landscape
- not many must have iPad specific app yet (i assume this will change by the end of the summer once developers have adequate time to create and test their iPad specific apps)
iPad vs. iPhone
- after using it for a week i was surprised to discover that my iPhone is better for messaging and typing short notes and email. i think the form factor of the IPad makes it really a tweener mobile device. to big to do the basic mobile tasks, and not robust enough to do more than basic word processing.
- on the other hand i have found when teathering to my iPhone it makes the iPhone/iPad combination very compelling. one device for the mobile bits and a more robust device for the larger more complex tasks (reading, basic word processing, basic music composition/improvisation)
- like i said above i prefer to day most text entry on the iPhone. the iPad is too big and heavy to even write a long email.
My Favorite iPad Apps
- Instapaper i use basically as a tool to read most of the content i find interesting on the interwebs. it’s fundamental function is to strip out all the excess pictures and adverts to leave you with a text only version of whatever article/blog you were wanting to read
- simplenote is my basic plain-text word processor on the iPad and iPhone. i’m using it right now to write this article. the best thing about it is that it easily syncs between any mobile device your desktops. kinda like what google docs and pages should eventually be doing. although i used to be a big evernote user, the ease of use and the quick syncing has made simplenote my main tool to keep jot down quick notes on the go
- comiczeal is a very simple and effective pdf/comic reader. and have finally been able to enjoy reading graphic novels on my ipad
- Todo i have been using todo on the iphone for quite a while and it’s Ipad cousin is well worth the upgrade. i wish they would eventually have an OSX version (like things), but i’m very happy with the iPad and Iphone versions
iPad Case
Netflix
Kindle iPad app
- i really like that you can easily sync books and share your bookmarks and annotations publicly. i find that it’s to heavy for reading for long periods of time and think my kindle 2 overall is a better bookreader. i also noticed today that it doesn’t have the % read line at the bottom of each page, which for some strange reason i seem to prefer.
iPad apps that show promise
SkyGrid
- it’s kind of a curated newsreader. i don’t have any clear idea how it works, but if i just want to catch up on the news it’s great place to start. i wish it had instapaper support or would let me open another browser to save an article for later, but for now all you can really do is email a link to yourself.
textexpander, pastebot, and 1password
- i’m starting to use these more and more between my macbook/iphone/ipad and i can see them becoming more useful when multitasking comes to OS 4 later this summer (and they release an iPad specific app)
iPad as a Music Controller
PatternMusic
- so far it’s the most interesting music performance app. it’s a pattern based looper (similar to the session view side of ableton live) one of the great things about it is that it starts to show the possibilities of using the ipad as a stand alone musical instrument (instead of just a controller) right now its sound pallete is limited and would be great if it offered midi out and the ability to internally record it’s own performances
ChipPad
- mp3 based sequencer in which you launch your own loops. it offers an interesting alternative to the session view and arrangement views in ableton live
Electrify
- seems like a ipad specific version of the Electribe/Groovebox, andcould be useful, but still haven’t figured out how to make it sing
Eliss
- really not a music controller, but a interesting generative music game that was pretty cool on the iphone, but is much cooler (b/c of the bigger size) on the iPad
also if you haven’t tried this out for your iphone/ipad, your really should.
Everybody Can Hear It
Q. Armando Bayolo asked: What about John Adams recent cry of “the emperor has no clothes” towards Eliot Carter on his blog? Is that okay because they’re two grand old men of contemporary American music?
A. No. It’s okay because Elliott Cook Carter Jr. clearly and self-evidently lacks even the most rudimentary scintilla of musical talent. Everyone knows it. Everyone can hear it. It’s long past time someone just said it.
Comment #54 via mclaren at Rude Question of the Week–Is Nico Overrated? at Sequenza21.com
sometimes the commentary about the commentary is much more interesting. in the future if i were a musicologist i would spend my time reading the blog comments
The Future of Controllerism?
i like that the setup is more like a guitar than a keyboard.
Create Digital Music » Roger Linn Imagines a New, Multi-touch Instrument, And — HELP!
Lily Pond Grows Up?
i have been keeping an eye out on lily pod since i first heard about it 10 yeasr ago. overall ooks like a great open source solution to create and publish very professional looking musical scores. now that summer is finally here i’ll have to try it on one of my modular improv pieces to [...]
making the simple more complex?
I’m starting to think we should teach theory by performance practice. pieces by bach, beethoven, and handel can be so different that without context these pieces can be incompressible to most students.
- is it possible to learn it all? (western canon of art music)
- if not what should we study?
- the ‘best’ pieces?
- the most commonly performed? and what do we leave out?
no matter which pieces we decide to study i really think the sooner we can start looking at music from the it’s elements (form, melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre) the more relevant our teaching will be of the skills needed to decode and perform music.
at the end of the day we need to find better ways to make the complex more simple instead of the simple more complex
Tune This
interesting article by jan swafford in slate.com about tuning and temperament that makes the case for using period tunings for “historically informed performances“.
“How do the travails of keyboard temperament apply to instruments without fixed tuning, like violins, trombones, flugelhorns, and the human voice? They don’t apply at all. Most of the time violinists, et al., tune by ear, on the fly, note by note, and chord by chord. That’s why a string quartet or an a cappella choir can be better in tune with nature than a guitar or a piano can. As a high-school trombonist playing with a piano for the first time, I found adjusting to keyboard tuning a pain in the neck—without knowing why. String recitalists know that pain intimately. Meanwhile, an orchestra is made of a bunch of instruments, some of which tune naturally by ear—strings, woodwinds, brass—but also instruments in fixed, equal temperament: harp, marimbas and xylophones, harpsichord and piano, etc. What do orchestras do to harmonize all those conflicting demands? They do the best they can and try not to think about it too much. It can make you crazy.”
i had to chuckle reading this b/c i came to the same conclusion with the PBE b/c and was the only way you can get guitars, violins, keyboards and wind instruments to “play well together”
via slate.com
iWish
Dale Dougherty, (editor and publisher of MAKE) makes the point that the Ipad could eventually be a great interactive multimedia consumption device (think educational CD’s from the late 90′s) if only there were the software to create it.
“So, when I think of the iPad, I wonder if a new opportunity will exist for interactive applications, which will find a space somewhere between a computer and the TV. They’ll need to do more than convey information, as most ordinary websites do. They’ll need to be more user-driven than television but they’ll need to integrate all forms of media. iPhone apps certainly look more like simple CD-ROM apps than they do websites.
What’s missing today is HyperCard, or an equivalent tool that can be used to create a new wave of applications for the iPad. And if Apple isn’t thinking about it, you’d expect that Adobe would be, especially since its acquisition of Macromedia brought in-house the other professional tool used by CD-ROM creators, Macromind Director. It’s not that HyperCard or Director is the answer, but I am just pointing out the lack of really good tools available for amateurs and professionals to use to create new kinds of applications for the iPad. HyperCard was not only used by The Voyager Company; it was used by teachers to create coursework; or students to prepare a report; it was used by individuals to develop novelty applications like recipe databases. We had highly produced, professional applications and mostly free shareware apps.
Making it easy to create content and increasing the number of people who can create applications for the iPad could be very important to its long-term success. The web has made producers of us all. If the iPad is just another consumer platform for consuming and not creating content, then it will just be another way to watch TV or listen to music or download information. Convenient, yes, but just another device. To be something different, the iPad must not be just a delivery platform but a creative one, offering professionals and amateurs an opportunity to create a unique experience with interactive media“
300th anniversary of copyright
To commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, (the first modern copyright law) the British Council asked a lot of people with strong ideas about copyright, from the CEO of Random House to the founder of Wikipedia, to remark on what copyright is for and how it might be improved.
her are some of the great quotes
“If there’s one lie more corrosive to creativity above all others, it is the lie of romantic individual originality. Today, ‘copyright curriculum’ warns schoolchildren not to be ‘copycats’ – to come up with their own original notions.
We are that which copies. Three or four billion years ago, by some process that we don’t understand, molecules began to copy themselves. We are the distant descendants of those early copyists – copying is in our genes. We have a word for things that don’t copy: ‘dead’.
Walk the streets of Florence and you’ll find a ‘David’ on every corner: because for half a millennium, Florentine sculptors have learned their trade by copying (but try to take a picture of ‘David’ on his plinth and you’ll be tossed out by a security guard who wants to end this great tradition in order to encourage you to buy a penny postcard)
If copyright law is to truly nurture art and creativity, rather than merely lining the pockets of the last generation of copyists who now declare themselves to be pure of all replication and wholly original from the first word to the last, it ‘must’ recognize and celebrate the wonderful thing that is copying.”
via cory doctorow (is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger)
“After all, nothing is created in isolation, and nothing comes of nothing. The products of the creative imagination do not stand alone, unique products of one mind or one company. Perhaps the fact of creation should not, in itself, allow the effective expropriation of the intellectual common ground as a reward for adding something new to the rich and complex stew of culture.
If those advising Queen Anne had seen how copyright has stymied creative expression, placed barriers around so much modern culture and distorted our use of the Internet, the most powerful machine for sharing ever devised, then they might have thought differently.
So let us then recast copyright as a grant of stewardship over an element of our common inheritance, offered to a person or institution‚ for a limited period, but see it not as a privilege but a burden, one that charges its holders with an onerous responsibility which they can best discharge by ensuring the widest possible dissemination, full access by all means possible, and the maximum feasible use and reuse‚ of any copyright material they hold.
In this world anyone granted a ‘copyright’ is obliged to use it to fertilise the fields of creative endeavour, knowing that history – and not the market – will be their judge.”
via bill thompson (technology critic and blogs at andfinally.com)
What if the Piece Ends on the Dominant?
NY Philharmonic to install new speedy exit ramp for patrons
“…The new ramp, which resembles an extremely fast escalator, will run from the middle of the hall, between Rows M and N, and ascend to an exit door at the loge level. Patrons will now be able to find themselves on Broadway and West 65th Street in record time. “They should be able to exit the building in a matter of seconds, outta there even before the first idiot yells “brava,” said a Philharmonic spokesperson.
“This ramp will automatically start up during the final chords of the last piece of every program, and it will be running and ready for use even before the music has stopped” said the spokesperson. “It’s connected to a state-of-the-art computerized ‘Schenker Sensor’, which collects all the pitch data in previous passages, collates it and then can accurately identify the arrival of the true tonic. It then sends an electric impulse that throws a switch—on goes the escalator and, presto-change-o—out goes your patron….”
Frogtown Revealed
who knew amoeba records has a blog in which they cover los angeles neighborhoods? more power to them for getting to the bottom of why elysian valley is called “frogtown”
“The community was first known as Gopher Flats around 1900, when it was established for railroad workers. It got its nickname of Frogtown in the 1930s. Back before the river was flood controlled, there were thousand of toads (not frogs) that invaded the neighborhood, with the last wave occuring in the 1970s. In the same decade, the name Frogtown ended up becoming associated with the local gang, Frogtown, who then numbered 3,000 members. The graffiti suggests they’re much diminished now, with most of the heavy tagging done by Echo Park gangs.”
they say gangs, i think it’s mostly tagging crews
via ameoblog
A Possible Future for Multi-Touch Music Controllers
why the future of multi-touch music controllers might be created outside of apple (using windows 7, linux, or google’s android)
via create digital music talking to stantum (lemur/jazzmutant cofounder Guillaume Largillier)
“In other words, we’re waiting for someone to ship a product that incorporates their technology. Windows 7 already includes multi-touch APIs out of the box in all but its Starter edition, so the Windows platform is a major candidate. Windows, while proprietary, has none of the developer, language, software, or hardware restrictions that the iPad platform does, so if your application doesn’t fit the iPad model or needs pen input, Windows’ stock just rose. Free software is possible too. Linux already supports the Stantum Slate PC and a number of other digitizers, support that will be baked into the kernels shipping in this year’s major Linux distros. We’re not just talking drivers, either: the whole Linux community is working on everything from libraries for environments like Java to support in the windowing system to touch-centric distros. (More on the Linux situation later this week.) Google’s Android has a multitouch API, too. I’ve used it, and got frustrated quickly not because of the OS, but because the hardware on current phone handsets just doesn’t work well with more than one finger. That could change if Stantum’s tech starts to appear in licensee products; Android as a touch OS could take off.”
Homework
the next time you come across some uninspired, boring art have them do this as “homework”
I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art
1971, 13:06 min, b&w, sound“In 1971, Baldessari was commissioned by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada to create an original, on-site work. Unable to make the journey himself, he suggested that the students voluntarily write the phrase “I will not make any more boring art” on the gallery walls. Inspired by the work’s completion – the students covered the walls with the phrase – Baldessari committed his own version of the piece to videotape. Like an errant schoolboy, he dutifully writes, “I will not make any more boring art” over and over again in a notebook for the duration of the tape. In an ironic disjunction of form and content, Baldessari’s methodical, repetitive exercise deliberately contradicts the point of the lesson – to refrain from creating “boring” art. i will not make boring art
via ubuweb
To Live and Eat in Highland Park
NELA yorkblvd points out that 5 NELA resturaunts made jonathan gold‘s/LA weekly’s 99 Things to Eat in LA Before You Die list. not to be a hater, but the list gets smaller if you remove that highland park adjacent tourist trap for the westsiders and the our own hipster vietnamese restaurant with incredibly poor service and a $9 veggie pho (i’m not bitter). so i will leave you with three selections that both mr gold and i can agree.
”
Huarache de Cabeza
A huarache, the definitive unit of Mexico City street food, is a flattish, concave trough of masa shaped like a size-12 sandal, pan-fried or deep-fried, then smeared with beans, sprinkled with meat and layered with lettuce, grated cheese and cream. Part of the fun is eating the thing — a huarache is too brawny to attack with a flimsy plastic fork, and you will either burn your fingers or wait for your lunch to cool into corn-flavored cement. Emily Post provides no guidelines for eating a huarache. You can have a huarache topped with almost anything, from the black corn fungus called huitlacoche to standard-issue steak, but I like it best with cabeza — rich, gelatinous meat pulled from a cow’s head and cooked down into an ultraconcentrated essence of beef. El Huarache Azteca #1, 5225 York Blvd., Highland Park. (323) 478-9572.
El Atacor #11’s Potato Tacos
You will encounter many schools of thought when it comes to these tacos, some of which call for coarsely mashed spuds, others for herbs, and still others for a wallop of chorizo. But all pale before El Atacor #11’s tacos de papa: thin corn tortillas folded around gooey spoonfuls of puree and fried to an indelicate, shattering crunch. The barely seasoned potatoes ooze out of the tacos with the deliberate grace of molten lava. The glorious stink of hot grease and toasted corn subsumes any subtle, earthy hint of potato, and guacamole-drenched tacos de papasevaporate so quickly from the table that you understand why they come 10 to an order. El Atacor #11, 2622 N. Figueroa St., L.A. (323) 441-8477.
Eibis Restaurant’s Arabes: (via york blvd)
I wrote a pretty sophomoric post a few months ago about hunting down an Arabes truck in East LA, comparing it to Ahab’s White Whale from Moby Dick. The irony of course is that I drive within two blocks of Eibis Restaurant , which specializes in Poblano food, every day. As a prerequisite for writing a food post I have to sprinkle a little knowledge on the dish at hand: Allegedly, Arabes trace their origins to Lebanese immigrants to central Mexico who brought spices from their homelands and applied them to pork, instead of the beef and lamb that was more common in Lebanon. (For two other examples of successful Lebanese-Mexican fusion, see Salma Hayek, and Carlos Slim.) At Eibis, the pork is roasted on a veritcal spit on the street (so as to maximize the exposure to exhaust emissions), filled with some salsa, and rolled into pan arabe, essentially a slightly thick flour tortilla, that has been warmed in corn oil. One word of warning: I don’t think anyone at this restaurant speaks English beyond “hello”. If you don’t speak Spanish, bring a friend, or prepare a script in advance.
Eibis Restaurant 231 North Avenue 50 (323) 999-0109
The Subtext of Class
it’s been fascinating to watch the british electoral system slide ever closer to toward a hung parliament and after reading this analysis of their recent debates gives an interesting insight into how the subtext of class still plays into politics in britain.
“David Cameron did better in yesterday’s debate compared to last week. But he still can’t break through. What’s the poor chap doing wrong?
First, the obvious point. He’s involved in a Big Lie: covering up what the nasty wing of his party would do to Britain should the Tories to win power.
To Cameron’s credit, he’s not very good at it. Talk to any trial lawyer and they’ll tell you lying’s hard. You can usually spot a liar in the witness stand at twenty paces.
Lairs must be clever, fast on their feet, have a brass neck, and a good memory. Why a good memory? Because liars must remember the lies they’ve told and not contradict themselves later on. Truth-tellers – most normal people – don’t have that problem. They just do their best to tell the truth. Liars, conversely, must constantly look over their shoulders. They need to be tough and clever to carry it off.
Cameron’s not in that league (Peter Mandelson probably is). Cameron has an okay brain - silver spoon, good breeding stock, excellent schooling – but he’s no genius. He’d make a fine marketing man or top-end Chelsea estate agent. But he’s no Einstein. Ergo he looks uncomfortable when telling lies. People pick up on it, especially now with politicians hated so fiercely.”
