They write: I should have started earlier, I should write better, I should have read the syllabus better. As though each requires a self help book. I was surprised how many students, in this final reflection paper, speak negatively about themselves. The final batch of papers are waiting to be marked for the music history course. A hundred years ago becomes not so far, three hundred, nine hundred and the death you could forget about when young, is now in the room like a mouse scratching under the floorboard. When you’re a kid, next year takes forever, when you’re fifteen you see twenty as mystically far away but as you age it goes backwards. The more I study artists from a hundred years ago the more amazing it is how big they were and how unknown they are now. Probably it will go the same way for most celebrated in recent decades. The opposite is also interesting, how the works of some are catapulted to fame after death Bach, Van Gogh, Diane Arbus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"