Deaccessioned philosopher. Occasional Musician. Academic librarian, in original dust jacket. Working to keep my dogs in the lavish manner to which they have become accustomed.
I write a whole lot of nonsense, really. Mostly, I babble here about music, philosophy, film, photography, books and library stuff, education (mine and other people’s), food that I’ve managed not to ruin completely, and my dogs. I have a tendency to swear a bit more than perhaps is strictly ladylike.
The Side Hustle: Recorded Music
When I’m not hard at work at my day job, I mess around with music. There are (as you’ll discover when you listen to any of the stuff below) Good Reasons why I’m not trying to make a living as a musician. It’s fun to play, though, and I couldn’t imagine life without it!
For myself:
In the spirit of Florence Foster Jenkins, I have finally gotten around to inflicting the products of my songwriting and performing (non)genius on the world, in the form of an EP that some dear friends helped me to make:
It’s available to download for free on both SoundCloud (above) and BandCamp (below). My SoundCloud also features some other songs (not on the EP) and earlier drafts of what ended up on Scarlet.
Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas, as all of the cool kids used to say.
For other people
- I’ve put violin and vocal tracks on three different Andy Juhl records. Andy is a swell guy, and I like playing his music. :)
- I also recorded violin, viola, and vox for Bridget Durst’s first EP, From Thought to Sound
- I put some violinish bits on Charlie Leissler’s most recent record, January Journey (although I listen now and don’t like what I did as much as I like the songs Charlie wrote).
- An amazing student band where I used to teach wrote, performed, recorded, mastered, spun, spindled, folded, and mutilated their own first full record, and I got to lay down violin and viola tracks on a tune. The band is Liberty Hall Collective, the record is Harmonica Sounds, and the tune is called “Stars & Galaxies”. The members of the band have moved on to bigger and better things post-graduation, and they remain awesome.
The Deaccessioned Philosopher 
We have a lot in common—philosophy and music. I play guitar and sing, but not at all professionally. By that I mean I’ve recorded a few cover songs on my iPod in the kitchen. Nice track here…the singer reminds me a bit of the older Joni Mitchell.
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A very kind compliment (says the singer)! I have to admit that the older I get, the more I come to believe that doing philosophy and doing music are inseparable activities for me. I like your post about stumbling blocks to reading philosophy — I think your experience and the experience of my own students match up pretty closely! For myself, I have to admit an unseemly love for Kant and an ongoing Wittgenstein hangover, as well as a habit of assigning Nietzsche in order to teach people how to read. :)
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Kant is one of my all time favorites, even though I don’t agree with everything. One of my first philosophy classes was ethics, in which we discussed Kant’s. The professor made fun of his Categorical Imperative and this really irked me. I can see why there are problems with it, but to make fun of it is absurd! I had a deep appreciation for his goals. I ended up transferring to a different school and on the class sign-up sheet, I wrote down only one class: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. From there on, my mind was blown. Instinct told me there was a lot more going on there than the professor at the other school was admitting.
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