Arlo on Teaching Methods

From the album Precious Friend, by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Arlo introduces "Garden Song" with some thoughts on how we learn. I wish I'd had Arlo to fall back on in grad school, because by the time I got there, they figured the "boring method" (i.e., some rote memorization from which you can draw new conclusions, create new ideas) was very much looked down upon. I think there's some middle ground.

This’s a kinda easy song, let’s hold one second, let’s learn this song, ‘cause this is, I mean, I know everybody likes singin’ with Pete, but I learnt this song from Pete, an’ it’d be almost the same thing. So, now I know, I mean, the difference, I know, I’ve been watchin’ Pete now for a few years, and he does somethin’ I can’t do, which is, he sings the songs twice at the same time. That’s what we were talking about before, celery consciousness, an’ Pete can do it. It’s the same –it’s – he sings the song once in front of the song and then once with everybody. That’s hard. So, I’m gonna try it, but first, let’s do it the normal way, which is the way we all learnt stuff in school. Now I know, people wanna forget about that, because you don’t figure you can learn anything that way, but it’s wrong; you’ve been learnin’ new ways to learn stuff an’ it don’t work. Right? So. Go back to the old way. It’s the old, what they call the “borin’ method.”

Tom Paxton and Groovitude

Ah ha!  I think I have figured out how I was holding the guitar wrong by looking at pictures of folk guitarists at work.  The bottom of it (as in if you stood it up on the floor with the tuning pegs at the top) needed to be more under my right armpit than it was.  I was still feeling as if I were breaking all the rules by not standing the thing up on my left leg.  And I can change from an A back to a D7 without looking if you’re forgiving.  I’m getting there.  Kaye came in from the kitchen and said, “Oh, it’s you.  I thought you were playing Tom Paxton.”  I think that was meant as a compliment from the ultimate tone-deaf fan (must be my groovitude, I’m thinking), but why Tom Paxton?  Why not, I don’t know, any female singer?  I mean, I mean, I mean . . . 

I have to acknowledge that I do not remotely sound like Tom Paxton.