4488: A Ridge Blog

If one writes a wine blog (as I do), then one ought to be quite grateful that there is a Tom Wark in the world (as I am).

Why?

Because it’s actually quite difficult sometimes, to come up with new subject matter each and every day, and while I’m not above simply entering the day’s date in Wikipedia in hopes that something will jar my imagination loose (who knew that Leo Tolstoy and Otis Redding shared a birthday?), or that some strange and tangential bit of semi-wine-related arcana will emerge (did you know that today is the day California was admitted as the 31st state?), it is often much easier to simply go to Tom’s blog (Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog), and just spin off of whatever he’s gotten up to.

In this particular case, I actually have the pleasure and honor of spinning off a spin-off that was a spin-off to a spin-off! Meaning, he wrote something, and later I wrote in response to it, and then he did me the great honor of referencing what I wrote about, and I’m now going to write about his referencing!

Make sense?

It all has to do with Art & Jazz & Wine.

And should you wish to do so, you can follow the threads of thoughts by clicking the following links:

http://fermentation.typepad.com/fermentation/2011/12/charlie-parker-and-the-notion-of-wine-as-art.html

http://blog.ridgewine.com/2012/08/29/is-wine-is-or-is-wine-aint-art-charlie-parker-tom-wark-and-the-question-of-intentionality/

http://fermentationwineblog.com/2012/09/brittany-bird-simple-wine/

In Tom’s second post above, he concludes by writing the following:

The moral of the story is that like with music, with wine it is sometimes best to simply give somebody what they want, no matter what it is they want and no matter what your opinion is of what they want. In the end, you’ll be less exasperated and they will be much happier.

To which I’ll respond by quoting, and then paraphrasing, jazz musician Branford Marsalis, who spoke recently on NPR about the rumor that he only plays classical and jazz music for his children. Here is what he had to say:

When my kids were younger, one of the mothers of one of the kids in the school came up and said, “I heard that you only play jazz and classical music for [your] daughters.” And it was clear that she only played pop music for her kids. And I said “Well, yeah.” And she said “Why?” I said, “When you listen to a song like a Raffi song — a song about alligators or kangaroos or whatever it is — it’s about that, it’s about kangaroos. But, if you play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik for your kid, the music is whatever your kid wants it to be about. It’s instrumental music. The kids’ imaginations can run wild.

He then goes on to note that he knows his kids will be exposed to pop music by their peers, and so he feels it to be important that he expose them to that which they might not get via other channels. Meaning, if he doesn’t play them classical and jazz, who will?

Meaning, perhaps the moral of the story is that sometimes it’s best not to give people what they want, but to give them something they might not get otherwise.

Something special. Something that will allow their imaginations to run wild.

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Should you be interested, a transcription of the full Branford Marsalis NPR interview referenced above can be found here.

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Deep bows to Tom Wark. An inspiration, a gentleman, a writer.