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Dear musick: only pride makes a student study, to avoid the humiliation of exposure to ridicule.


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only pride makes a student study
you mean it wasn't just love of the art? wanting to be better so I could better express myself?



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How many people do you know who enjoy being called a dummy?


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being called a dummy

Everyone who plays bridge eventually gets that honor.


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Who plays bridge nowadays? And I never knew a good bridge player who wanted to be dummy, unless there was something
in his partner's bidding that made it essential. I had a neighbor who got dealt thirteen Spades, bid a no trump and didn't take a trick. How's that for dummy?


#116849 01/04/04 05:26 PM
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How many people do you know who enjoy being called a dummy?

Since I grew up with a brother who was educationally mentally handicaped (EMH) we learned, early on, that there are very few (if any) appropriate uses of that word. To this day, I tend to learn more about the person who speaks it than the person to whom it is applied.


#116850 01/04/04 05:45 PM
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wwh Offline OP
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Dear musick: I assure you I would not use the word to refer
to any one afflicted with a congenital intellectual deficit.



#116851 01/04/04 06:08 PM
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Nor do I think you would, Dr Bill.

My above statements were issued to point out that a child that was worried about being called a dummy wasn't very likely to become an artist... possibly a machine that exceeds when competition time comes along.

Your use of the words "makes a student study" are quite accurate, yet, what I'm *talking about is self-motivation out of intrigue.


#116852 01/04/04 07:50 PM
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Dear musick: what I was responding to was the memory of my two MIT graduate uncles quizzing my older brother, challenging him with tricky math problems. I knew that in a couple years they would be quizzing me, and I did not want to be judged less bright than my older brother. My older brother had a low opinion of me, and I didn't want to reinforce it. I was never able to make him change his mind, but I did better at math than I would have otherwise.
Sweet are the uses of adversity.


#116853 01/19/04 07:37 PM
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Why poke an argument with a spear when a trident will give you more points?

Many would be the motivations for developing levels of performance in music... and certainly working for the purely aesthetic goals is most honorable.

However, I do suspect that there is a great deal of competition--and all of competition's dark brothers and sisters jealousy, pride, shame, fear, and anger--among artists when they are both preparing to perform and actually perform.

There is the performer who insists on having private rehearsals with the musicians before rehearsing with the larger group out of fear that her rehearsals are not to be heard before she has reached an excellent performance level. In other words, she keeps the larger group from moving forward together because she has an inflated sense of how wonderful she needs to sound before she is publically heard, even if only in performance rehearsals. Her personal mythmaking about self she continually manipulates. Pain in the butt to work with because this kind of perfectionism wishes to make one who is not godlike appear to be more godlike. And it causes the musicians to carve out (just for her) still more rehearsal time in an already crowded schedule. Some people are more equal than others.


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