define yr. terms

In my own foray into the world of blogging - publicly and unabashedly - I wanted to have some sort of gimmick, a request blog, a specific subject, something else crazy.

I've written semi-pro blogs for specific purposes, things that have belonged to my friends that I've worked as a hired gun for, but never anything that I've really come up with and for on my own.

And specific information is really what people read things on the internet for. Unless, of course, they're your friends.

So if I want anyone else to read what I have to say, I have to find a niche.

But what exactly would that be?

I have a niche in my career. I am a middle school band director, and I love my job. I get to run around and play with kids, but not have to clean up after kids who pee their pants. I can work with musicians who are starting to get into complex music, but without the attitude of high school and the ridiculousness of the marching band world. I am a perfect fit for my job, and I am also getting to be awfully damn good at it.

But I don't want to write all about that. In order to be really great at what you do, sometimes, you have to have some distance from it. Sure, there are some jobs and some people who can 100% just do what they do, and be good at it, but I'm not one of them. I need some distraction to be any good at anything I'm doing. Does that make sense?

I had a social niche back in my hometown of Orlando. I miss my backward little southern outpost in the midst of a swamp. I grew up around Orlando and I went to college there, and I have a ton of friends, ranging from Giuliani-backing republican engineers to d.i.y. indie rock local gods to married high school sweethearts with kids of their own.

I live in South Florida and it's not so easy, for a number of reasons. My social niche been thrown all askew. Despite the fact that SoFla is not nearly as cool as New York or San Fransisco (I've never been to the latter but I'm still sure of this fact), people my age move away for all the same reasons: unless you have some sort of amazing job or an equally amazing reason to be there, it's too expensive, and it takes too much from you on too many levels to live there. There's a lot of suburban-y places here that aren't so bad, where people my age come back to nest with their parents and teach and what not.

And as far as what I have to say, in regards to culture and politics and what I do? What I love? What I know? I'm all over the place. Music is everything to me, and while I know a lot about various genres, historical periods, a few obscure bands, woodwind instruments, but I'm far from an expert on anything. I can't describe what I love or what I care about in a neat little package, but it'll show in what I write about in general.

Although I do teach seventh graders, I love fart jokes, I watch a lot of bad movies, I feel as though I live in the area where high and low art tend to meet. Maybe I'm one of the quasi-psuedo-intellectuals of my generation who takes a highbrow interest in that which is lowbrow.

But while I'm teaching those seventh graders, I talk about programmatic music and why they should care about idee fixe in early 19th century symphonies. I explain that boys can play the flute because one of the foremost fluists in the world is a guy, with a full on beard and a wife he loves and who's a knight and so they shouldn't worry about being called lame if they're guys who play the flute.

So for me to bridge the gap between "high" and "low" art, in the way that Bernard Gendron, a sociologist/philosopher and researcher on 1970s NYC punk rock and avant garde defines it, is an important thing that I do.

Maybe that's my niche? Intellectualism meets Adam Sandler movies (at least 1993-1998; post-Wedding Singer is just crap)? Academia meets rewarding pre-teens with gold stars on their name cards? Haydn meets Happy Happy Birthday to Me Records? Walter Benjamin meets Ben Folds?

We'll see. I figure when all else fails, just to do like that Polonius dude:

"This above all — to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

I also really love the movie Clueless. I don't care what anyone else says. And I wish blogger had the option to underline instead of italicize.