Tennis Elbow
Yesterday I bought some stands to put speakers on my desk with. I also bought a bag for one of my guitars. In a move to make things “easier” for me, the sales associate handling the order for curbside pickup decided to put handles on the box that had my speaker stands inside.
He somehow taped two loops of plastic bag to it and handed it to me. I thought this was very nice until almost immediately my arm shot downwards like a broken elevator. Being Jewish, I am already prone to injury and tennis elbow in general, but this heavy box certainly exacerbated whatever is going on in my ageing arm.
It made me think about the idea of design. The people who made the speaker stands saw how heavy their product is, and made a choice at some point to not put handles on their box to enable people to carry it in one hand. Yet the sales associate, in an act of generosity, designed a solution for me to carry both items at the same time. And that solution was simply incorrect.
And you might say, “Well why don’t you complain to the store about that?”. And the truth is since the advent of the pandemic, I don’t think I can complain to anyone about anything, certainly not a store that is forced to conduct all their business on a street corner. Sure if there’s a problem with the product I will return it, but I find it difficult to single out individuals right now.
And then you might say, “Well aren’t you simply offloading your complaint on to me right now instead?”. And the answer to this is correct. That by avoiding a complaint to the person who caused me the inconvenience, I am now outsourcing my emotional pain on to you, the reader.
And that poor sales associate, who is now being written up in a newsletter, by god what a mess I have created. If I could’ve just kept my mouth shut on this one, I would’ve avoided this travesty that has already been created on a Sunday morning. Someone get in here and clean this up with a shmatah (cleaning rag).
I started reading Living with Music: Ralph Ellison’s Jazz Writings. I was originally looking to buy his book Invisible Man but this was on the shelf instead. It’s a good choice so far, even to extract this nugget alone: For Ellison, jazz music was simply a way of life for its early creators in the American south.
As a result of this being a cultural activity rather than a business one, much of jazz’s true work is undocumented and uncredited, but as a matter of convenience, we are able to praise the people who made jazz as popular as it is now.
So when we say jazz, we often think of the Blue Note club in New York City (or more accurately a different bar named Minton’s), but this is simply what made it to the surface after all that hard work went in. According to Ellison, the stars like Miles and Bird were built on the backs of these anonymous creators who invented the music in its early days.
One of those early legends who he names is a guitarist named Charlie Christian who came up through the Oklahoma scene and is thought to be one of the true creators of be-bop, but he happened to die at just the age of 25 of tuberculosis. I added a tune by him to this week’s Four Track Snack Pack playlist below.
New Track: Der Shmutz
This one is another dirty disco original engineered for a dancefloor in the future by yours truly.
Every week I upload new music as a way of trying to keep myself sharp, but in the end I feel like I’m inventing my own music world here. One that doesn’t really care about the conventions for doing things properly. If I know a track is good I will repackage it later, but for now I record sound waves and I post them. I hope you enjoy it.
Four Track Snack Pack Playlist
Tracklist:
Boys, You’re Welcome - Mississipi John Hurt
Wholly Cats - Charlie Christian
For Seconds at a Time - Skúli Sverrisson & Óskar Guðjónsson
Adrift Migration - Mehdi Jalali
I send my best wishes that your week ahead is free of needless arm injuries.
Ask yourself what conventions can you challenge, and which industry rules can you rewrite?
Elliott “Crumbs” Fienberg
Hope your hand gets healed quickly!