Sometimes I sense that to put real confidence in my memory I have to get to the end of all rememberings. That seems to say that I forego remembering. And now that strikes me as an accurate description of what it is to have confidence in one's memory.
          --Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason

I remember Seth Baumrin, who sometimes sat in on harmonica with our high school rock band (which also had Mark Tramo, who sang, and Lou Rosseman, on drums. Mark and Lou were also on the football team. Mark broke the league record for tackles that year.) David Heilbroner was not in the band, as I recall. He was a fantastic classical guitarist, and studied with Segovia (which was the first time I'd heard of Segovia). Jonathan Easton wasn't in the band either; he played exclusively jazz, and studied with Lennie Tristano (which was the first time I'd heard of Lennie Tristano. I often thought of him later when thinking about the Tristero system in Pynchon.) People complained mightily about what a bad drummer Lou was -- loud and off-beat, I guess, though I couldn't tell. I'd known Seth from years before, from Riverside Park. He was a friend of the kid with the baseball team windbreaker (2/22/2002)). I was amazed by what a good harmonica player he was, and also by the fact that he hung out with the musicians and druggies, and was very good with girls. I didn't know that William Galison, a year or two behind me, was on his way to becoming a world class harmonica player (now to be heard in many a movie and on many a cd), and I regret that I never heard him (I think), although there was some mention of him made in some graduation program or homecoming or something. Fairly recently I ran into Mark Tramo, who now studies neurophysiology of music as a research MD. He told me, to my considerable surprise, that Lou Rosseman was a great drummer -- seriously good. (Luckily I'd outgrown my reflex parroting of other people's opinions when it came to things I wasn't really competent to judge and I hadn't filled in the conversational segue with knowing disparagement of Lou's drumming.) So I missed a lot. But I still loved watching Seth get up on stage and wail on the harmonica.

posted by william 7:09 AM
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