{"id":20777,"date":"2019-02-05T21:44:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T02:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=20777"},"modified":"2019-02-05T21:44:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T02:44:46","slug":"standing-on-the-edge-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=20777","title":{"rendered":"Standing on the edge of time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, walking along the streets of Greenwich Village, I was overtaken by the strangest whim. Taking out my SmartPhone I opened up YouTube, and started playing Mandy<\/i>, sung by the inimitable Barry Manilow. The lyrics blasted out for all the world to hear:<\/p>\n

\nI remember all my life
\nRaining down as cold as ice
\nA shadow of a man
\nA face through a window
\nCrying in the night
\nThe night goes into
\nMorning, just another day…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was, perhaps, the single most culturally rebellious act of my life. Here I was, surrounded by cool, up-to-the-moment students from NYU and The New School, and I was blasting out the single most uncool song of all time.<\/p>\n

There was something beautiful about the moment, the sheer overwhelming inappropriateness of my musical choice. What I was playing was so off the cultural radar that it might as well have been from another planet.<\/p>\n

Although that moment did not occur in a vacuum. Earlier in the day, during my class lecture, I had checked the sound level by playing an excerpt from Schoenberg’s piano etudes.<\/p>\n

The music that emerged was dissonant, atonal and heavenly. The students seemed disoriented. What was this weird noise I was subjecting them to?<\/p>\n

“Isn’t it great?” I exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Who else here is a fan of Schoenberg?”<\/p>\n

Dead silence. I could feel ninety pairs of young eyes just staring at me, clearly confused that I would choose to send such a strange and disquieting sound out into the universe.<\/p>\n

Maybe I should have played them Manilow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, walking along the streets of Greenwich Village, I was overtaken by the strangest whim. Taking out my SmartPhone I opened up YouTube, and started playing Mandy, sung by the inimitable Barry Manilow. The lyrics blasted out for all the world to hear: I remember all my life Raining down as cold as ice A … Continue reading “Standing on the edge of time”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20777"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20778,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20777\/revisions\/20778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}