Seriously though, sometimes a bent way of seeing things is more useful than you’d expect. Just yesterday my wife and I were at a meeting of the Japanese retirees club in Chiang Mai, and a group of Thai musicians from the university were demonstrating the old traditional instruments and their folk music. A professor was explaining that the themes they played were short, but that they’d play through them again and again, taking off on endless variations, so no two performances were ever the same twice. Sounded like a description of jazz to me, so I raised my hand.

“Do you play any newer music,” I asked. “For instance Beatles tunes or the like?” Of course everybody thought that was funny, but the professor actually gave a sensible answer.

“The instruments are made for non-western scales, which don’t include sharps and flats, so really they can’t.”

Thus we all ended up learning something interesting and useful. And that – I keep telling myself – is why I do it… because it’s so educational. Who says education has to be boring?

And yes, you do have a warped sense of humor, my friend. I loved this post!

All the best from Toronto,
Russ