Getting Attention

Too Big to Bail

Everybody is looking for and in need of attention. But it’s much easier to get attention for wrong things than for the right things. Claiming victim-hood is easier than doing the work it takes to excel.

I am immersed in the daily drama in ways broadly similar to everyone’s experience. One can try to keep some distance, but must admit that many events and people are attention getting. To my mind, giving attention to these events re-enforces their tendency to continue happening. It seems that we all participate as audience members of some gladiatorial spectacle.

I needed to change focus for a bit and decided, after an illness that served to cure a few bad habits, to be indulgent and reward myself by searching for and finding a high quality violin. I figured this was more likely to happen if I played better fiddle, so set about practicing more than in the past. A few weeks later I was introduced to a talented violin maker and his work through a kitchen jam friend. I visited his shop and was quite impressed and also realized that it was not likely that I could ever afford a fiddle of his quality. Out of desperation or boredom I had a look at E-bay and Chinese fiddles in particular. My new friend had suggested that I might act as source for some small music store in order to move along some fiddles that I have. So I decided to purchase a few Chinese made fiddles for comparison. It turns out that there is very little demand with fiddles essentially being sold for the cost of shipping. The economy must really suck. Shortly before I was going to make my first bid, a European fiddle came up for bid from a distressed music store. Violins from this maker sell for a lot of money. I made a low offer, they took it and I had the fiddle in hand a few days later. My offer equaled the money made from selling two instruments the same week. So the ‘asset’ value in my ‘bank’ increased while the ‘cost basis’ stayed the same.

The feeling from pulling one measure or three beats of one note, with a steady bow while playing a waltz is exquisite on this violin. Now I can compare my other fiddles with this as a baseline, so as to put a more accurate value on them. Meanwhile, the Chinese fiddles were still tempting me, so I bought five. From different workshops, looking for a good shop. Govt. Policy and subsidies must lower general quality of products, but some small shops that require good hand skills still produce high quality musical instruments.

Now a process for comparison and pricing starts whereby one tune is played sequentially on a dozen fiddles. The new fiddles also need to be ‘played in’ with some amount of overly aggressive playing. The process encourages practice, listening and even feeling for each particular violin. It also helps me connect to community and leave aside, at least for some moments, other elements seeking to grab my attention.

It seems that the robustness of our systems are to be tested these coming few weeks. I pray that they hold up, corrupt and rickety though they may be. I am no money man, but see deflation rather than inflation in our future. How can things inflate when nobody has any spare cash?

It is somewhat ironic to be having Mr. Exceptional destroy the myth of US exceptionalism in real time. Now, if we could do something to take out the exceptionalist feelings of the strata of folk above Mr. Not quite as exceptional as he thinks he is. Hey, I have an idea.

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