The 'oh no not another thread' thread

[Firebird]

But it's not just about "running around" or doing 8 hours practice daily when not running around or actually performing - it's about what goes on in the mind at many other times; try composing as I do and shoehorn all your work and your thoughts about it into neat little packages!

I'm well aware that work doesn't always fit into the spaces on a time sheet, since a significant part of my work is writing. At one level, yes, the ideas I'm currently working on are always churning, but that's a very different kind of weight on one's mind from the burden of figuring out how to ensure there'll be enough money at the end of the month to buy groceries. Moreover, I find I write better when I take on less, produce fewer words and allow more time for what I do finally get on the page. I also find I write better when I make space in my life for things that have nothing directly to do with what I write about. That's one reason I'm glad I went back to playing music in middle age: when I practise, I have to focus on something other than my work, and I believe (rightly or wrongly) that I have more interesting things to say when I return to writing, having entered into a completely different mode for a while. You could call this 'maintaining a work-life balance' or you could call it living within your means, financially and psychologically. When colleagues say 'I don't know how you find the time', I hold my tongue (pointless arguing with people whose worldview is shaped by cocktail parties), but the answer is that we are all given exactly the same 24 hours in a day. Those of us who have some degree of choice over how we use those hours are privileged.

The performers whose lives are portrayed as hard because they are always on the go are at the high end of the professional spectrum, by definition (the people hacking out a living from marginally-paying gigs aren't the ones getting prestigious interviews, by and large). If these performers are racing around the world doing 300 concerts a year, it's by their own choice, not because their children will go without shoes if they did 150 concerts a year.

[jayne lee wilson]

But Jayne, my dear, there is new research which shows how we men have been oppressed for centuries too.... This second sexism, I'm sorry to say, even seeps into comments on these very boards about CDR and its presenter, objections to the photo of a male presenter on the TTN web pages - and here I am, awake at 2.30, worrying about my fellow men and standing up for their rights. I'm mentally drafting a petition in support of Sean Rafferty - Irish! doubly oppressed!! - even as I write these words.

Aux barricades mes amis!

Oh for heavens' sake, I've no objection to photos (!?), or which gender presents TTN or CDR, and wouldn't even have mentioned it if Draco hadn't been upset about the screaming hordes of female presenters (diddums). What, you want precise mathematical parity?

As for Ahinton, I'm surprised at your, I'm sure very brief, departure from balanced thought; the men of Liverpool, NOW, are as varied as any other group of men... or women. My comment " men all oppressed and suppressed us for centuries" is so clearly in the past tense, and so clearly TRUE
(women were hardly allowed any physical or sexual autonomy, let alone an education, or GASP! - a vote, until the 20th Century. For God's Sake!) it can't really be gainsaid.

Yes, men and fathers have a rough time of it at paternity leave & allowances, mother and baby groups, the school gates, conscription, wardrobe choices (not that it seems to bother you much...), macho stereotypes and behavioural expectations... but the imbalance of economic and political power is still so overwhelming you'll (sorry for the crude collective) have to give rather more of that up before anything can really change, or some of us (implication of Sex War alert!) lose what you are probably calling our stridency.

Believe it or not (believe it!), I often feel quite vulnerable posting here (diddums me too), and don't really like the male (stereotype alert!) knockabout humour involved, or the aggression in some discussions. As in a noisy pub, you try to get in to it and then think, oh, I've had enough of this. It still feels a little "out there" to be doing this (how many women post here, I wonder..?) and EVEN NOW I find I tend to disguise how much I know about football on the Round Ball game Thread...

Sorry, what was this thread about again...?

Er, NO MORE SEX WAR...etc.

[Extended Play]

[QUOTE=jayne lee wilson;165783] I often feel quite vulnerable posting here

It's honest and brave of you to say so (that sounds horribly patronising; please accept that it is not intended in the slightest to be so.) In your post early today, you said how much pleasure this thread was giving you. It's a shame that things seem to have gone sour during the course of the day.

[Word]

In your post early today, you said how much pleasure this thread was giving you

Yes, what with all the bile and spite. That did seem a rather odd observation.

[ahinton]

I'm well aware that work doesn't always fit into the spaces on a time sheet, since a significant part of my work is writing. At one level, yes, the ideas I'm currently working on are always churning, but that's a very different kind of weight on one's mind from the burden of figuring out how to ensure there'll be enough money at the end of the month to buy groceries. Moreover, I find I write better when I take on less, produce fewer words and allow more time for what I do finally get on the page. I also find I write better when I make space in my life for things that have nothing directly to do with what I write about. That's one reason I'm glad I went back to playing music in middle age: when I practise, I have to focus on something other than my work, and I believe (rightly or wrongly) that I have more interesting things to say when I return to writing, having entered into a completely different mode for a while. You could call this 'maintaining a work-life balance' or you could call it living within your means, financially and psychologically. When colleagues say 'I don't know how you find the time', I hold my tongue (pointless arguing with people whose worldview is shaped by cocktail parties), but the answer is that we are all given exactly the same 24 hours in a day. Those of us who have some degree of choice over how we use those hours are privileged.

The performers whose lives are portrayed as hard because they are always on the go are at the high end of the professional spectrum, by definition (the people hacking out a living from marginally-paying gigs aren't the ones getting prestigious interviews, by and large). If these performers are racing around the world doing 300 concerts a year, it's by their own choice, not because their children will go without shoes if they did 150 concerts a year.

Again, I take your points, but I cannot help but notice at the same time that you persistently equate your thoughts about "work/life balances" with mattessr of finance alone; I'm not undermining this (far from it, indeed, especially since I once felt obliged to say to someone that the notion of living beyond one's means when one has no means might be take to imply something about whether or not one should be living at all), but it's a diversion from my response to that subject nevertheless.

[ahinton]

As for Ahinton, I'm surprised at your, I'm sure very brief, departure from balanced thought; the men of Liverpool, NOW, are as varied as any other group of men... or women. My comment " men all oppressed and suppressed us for centuries" is so clearly in the past tense, and so clearly TRUE (women were hardly allowed any physical or sexual autonomy, let alone an education, or GASP! - a vote, until the 20th Century. For God's Sake!) it can't really be gainsaid.

No, of couse what you say can't be gainsaid can't be gainsaid - but you surely realise that I was being facetious about Liverpool and the men of that city! My observation was that ALL men have done nothing like what you suggest that they have (not guilty, m'lud, for example); yes, of course what you write about was vastly more prevalent (and what an indictment to half of humanity that was!) in days gone by and, of couse, matters are admittedly far from perfect today in that regard, but to write about ALL men as though it would be impossible even to BE a man without harbouring some desire to oppress women is surely as untenable as were my remarks about the men of Liverpool!

Yes, men and fathers have a rough time of it at paternity leave & allowances, mother and baby groups, the school gates, conscription, wardrobe choices (not that it seems to bother you much...), macho stereotypes and behavioural expectations... but the imbalance of economic and political power is still so overwhelming you'll (sorry for the crude collective) have to give rather more of that up before anything can really change, or some of us (implication of Sex War alert!) lose what you are probably calling our stridency.

Sure, but who needs all this stuff? It just makes so many aspects of daily life so very much harder for both men and women, especially men and women with children (which I don't have).

Believe it or not (believe it!), I often feel quite vulnerable posting here (diddums me too), and don't really like the male (stereotype alert!) knockabout humour involved, or the aggression in some discussions. As in a noisy pub, you try to get in to it and then think, oh, I've had enough of this. It still feels a little "out there" to be doing this (how many women post here, I wonder..?) and EVEN NOW I find I tend to disguise how much I know about football on the Round Ball game Thread...

Then just be - and write as - yourself, both here and elsewhere; we expect no more from you and we certainly have a right to expect no less! I know nothing about football, by the way, even though I have heard that Liverpool has a team and, I believe, there's another one called Everton or something...

Sorry, what was this thread about again...?

Er, NO MORE SEX WAR...etc.

Well, whatever it may have been about originally, "NO MORE SEX WAR" might be a good thing for it to be about now, although that subject would perhaps be better as a new thread, so perhaps you'd like to initiate it, JLW?...

[Flosshilde]

Second, speaking as someone who does the kind of work that could easily expand to fit every waking moment of my time, I've grown suspicious of people who say their career absorbs their life. If high-level professional musicians are spending such vast amounts of time performing and travelling that they don't have time for a personal life, then they are doing that by choice: one can pick and choose assignments. In my own field, those who claim to be the busiest are those who choose never to say no. They are the people for whom it is existentially necessary to be ever on the run and who boast about how full their diaries are: the constant activity becomes an end in itself, proof that one really is important. That's their choice. If it makes them happy, good; but I don't feel sorry for them, given that the lives they lead are precisely the lives they've chosen to lead. Moreover, at least in my field, those who endlessly run around are not those who produce the best work.

Not sure if this is a response to the above, but it seems to fit in with, or reflect, what Firebird is suggesting; Bryn Terfel was heavily criticised, here & in other places, when he cancelled performances at Covent Garden so that he could be with his son who had sustained an injury. Presumably he was trying not to let his work be so all-consuming that he didn't have time for his family. A large part of his 'public' felt that his work was far more important than his family.

[ahinton]

Not sure if this is a response to the above, but it seems to fit in with, or reflect, what Firebird is suggesting; Bryn Terfel was heavily criticised, here & in other places, when he cancelled performances at Covent Garden so that he could be with his son who had sustained an injury. Presumably he was trying not to let his work be so all-consuming that he didn't have time for his family. A large part of his 'public' felt that his work was far more important than his family.

Yes, I remember that - and whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it's not the kind of dilemma that many people would face. Even David Cameron (a rather less widely respected singer than Mr Terfel) has made obsrvations on this ind of thing lately and, let's face it (and casting aside any kind of political bias or none when so doing), most people expect the prime minister to be prime minister all the time, not just for 12 hours per day.

Anyway, this has all taken us a very long way from the world of Ms D, has it not? Does anyone suppose that she's so heavily committed to her R3 career that a life outside it is accordingly compromised?

[Norfolk Born]

I can assure you that there are some of us out here who find Rob Cowan's entire presentational manner unbearable - knowledgeable as he may be.

I totally agree with you. His knowledge is for me seriously devalued by his presentation style and comments.

John

Same here - but it ceased to be a problem when I largely stopped listening to the sort of programme the poor chap's become associated with. His style and comments are a function of the programme format. It's a bit like asking Sebastian Vettel to spend the day driving a Number 25 bus.

[Bryn]

... It's a bit like asking Sebastian Vettel to spend the day driving a Number 25 bus.

It is indeed entirely possible that he would not be up to the task.

[french frank]

Not sure if this is a response to the above, but it seems to fit in with, or reflect, what Firebird is suggesting; Bryn Terfel was heavily criticised, here & in other places, when he cancelled performances at Covent Garden so that he could be with his son who had sustained an injury. Presumably he was trying not to let his work be so all-consuming that he didn't have time for his family. A large part of his 'public' felt that his work was far more important than his family.

I think the criticism mainly stemmed from the public perception that his son's injury was not of sufficient seriousness to warrant reneging on a contracted performance. Deciding on family priorities (like holidays or important exams) and building commitments round them would at least be possible, even if it meant having to turn down work that you would love to do. That's where the choice comes in.

[Flosshilde]

asking Sebastian Vettel to spend the day driving a Number 25 bus.

Who's Sebastian Vettel?

I wouldn't want anyone driving a bus if they hadn't learnt how.

[Norfolk Born]

Who's Sebastian Vettel?

I wouldn't want anyone driving a bus if they hadn't learnt how.

What is a Number 25 bus?

[ahinton]

What is a Number 25 bus?

What is a bus? I've never seen any such objects hereabouts...

[Osborn]

What is KD?