A teen plans to write novels

 “I’m going to be a writer, Dad. Miss Bowler says she wouldn’t wonder if I’d got it in me.”

”Oh?  What are you going to write? Poetry?”

“Well, perhaps. But I don’t suppose that pays very well. I’ll write novels. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like The Constant Nymph.”

“You’ll want a bit of experience before you can write novels, old girl.”

“Rot, Daddy. You don’t want experience for writing novels. People write them at Oxford and they sell like billy-ho. All about how awful everything was at school.

“I see. And when you leave Oxford, you write one about how awful everything was at college.”

“That’s the idea. I  can do that on my head.”

“Well, dear, I hope it’ll work. . . .”

Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors (orig, pub. 1934)

Freddy Arbuthnot on Christmas

 ‘Great bore, Christmas, isn’t it? All the people one hates most gathered together in the name of goodwill and all that.’

Freddy Arbuthnot to Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison (orig, pub. 1930), ch. 12

Increasing range is slow work

Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory method for acquiring a good upper register without actually playing in that range. Such practice can be made considerably less hazardous and frustrating, however, if the player understands several points. First the acquisition of a solid upper register takes time, considerable time—years, not days or weeks. Any player who can add a genuinely usable whole step or two a year to his range is doing very well indeed. Second, the rate of increase will slow down over the years. As with almost any highly developed skill, each successive level of accomplishment requires more time and effort to achieve. Every additional step gained will likely take longer to reach than its predecessors. For this reason, players often think they are making no progress when, in reality, they are merely encountering more sophisticated playing conditions that will take more time to master. Third, some players have a greater natural affinity for the high range than other players. Not all singers, for example, are born to be sopranos aor tenors, and even within these voice categories ranges may vary greatly. The goal should be to develop to the fullest whatever potential exists within each player, and time spent comparing one's abilities with someone else's is simply time wasted.

Keith Johnson, The Art of Trumpet Playing (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1981), p. 103-04

Filing cabinets and "information"

The use of cabinets to store linked cards and papers highlights the obsession with particularity that instrumentalized knowledge in the name of "information" and "data."

Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information (St. Paul, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2021), p.145

Information as a concept

 [I]nformation as a category is a historically specific concept, and the emergence of the tabbed manila folder provides an object through which to understand the development (not the origin) of a distinctly modern conception of information as a thing that exists in the world, as something that is impersonal, discrete, and easily extracted."

Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information (St. Paul, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2021), p. 127-28

Participating in a creative act

To play the trumpet is to participate in a creative act, since without the performer music would have no life. To be aware that one is participating in such an act, however small the role may seem, is to recognize the responsibility each person has to produce his particular contribution at the highest possible level.

Keith Johnson, The Art of Trumpet Playing (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1981), pp. 50-51

The meaning of dust

According to an early twentieth-century British clerk, dust and other "matter out of place" on the walls and ceilings of an office had once suggested "solidity, respectability, and age." However, where dust had previously been seen as evidence of a firm's long-term existence, such that clients "breathed an air of financial stability," in the modern office, the concern was that through dust and dirt people breathed in something much less desirable; this was especially problematic for those people who were expected to work efficiently in an office.

Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information (St. Paul, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2021), p.82

Lots of authors thank their families, but who thanks their optician?

In a book that is about the infrastructure critical to paperwork, to how paper works, I want to thank the people and institutions that provided specific infrastructural support for the writing of this book: . . . the staff at Eye Q in Harvard Square, who convinced me to get another set of progressive lenses specifically designed so I could look at a screen for hours on end without getting headaches; . . .

Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information (St. Paul, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2021), p. 263

Persevering with the trumpet (or perhaps other hard tasks)

In order to sustain the desire to persevere, first the student must believe that making good music is important, that it makes the world a better place. This notion may seem unrealistic, but all people need to feel that their work makes a difference, that if they were not here some component, however small, would be missing and, more important, would be missed.

Keith Johnson, The Art of Trumpet Playing (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State University Press, 1981), p. 11

Yep, you're a racist

[Y]ou have been racist, and you have been anti-racist. Yes, you may now be insisting that you do not have a racist bone in your body, but that is simply not true. You have been racist, and will be in the future, even if less so.

You are racist because you were born and bred in a racist, white supremacist society. White Supremacy is, as I've said earlier, insidious by design. The racism required to uphold White Supremacy is woven into every area of our lives. There is no way you can inherit white privilege from birth, learn racist white supremacist history in schools, consume racist and white supremacist movies and films, work in a racist and white supremacist workforce, and vote for racist and white supremacist governments and not be racist.

This does not mean that you have hate in your heart. You may intend to treat everyone equally. But it does mean that you have absorbed some fucked-up shit regarding race, and it will show itself in some fucked-up ways.

Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Want to Talk About Race (Seattle, WA: Seal Press, 2019) (orig. pub. 2018), p. 218