Connections

Images, Technology, and Music: The Ballets Suedois and Les maries ...Robley Munger Hood's dissertation, "The Ballets Suédois: Modernism and the Painterly Stage," convincingly argues that the company was a "kind of ...
mq.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/gdk003v1

Searching the Internet for something quite different the other day, I came upon the above reference. The shock of recognition was immediate, and my surprise even greater. Someone has actually read my dissertation and apparently had something complimentary to say about it. When I followed the link above, I discovered that the writer's article was published in The Musical Quarterly, for which I'd have to pay a fee if I wanted to read the rest of her comment.

Over the past several days, I have had other Internet lagniappes: communication with a distant over-the-sheets cousin about our ancestors and emails with another person who shares my unusual first name. I have enjoyed both virtual connections more than I might have expected and look forward to more of the same.

Plenty of folks complain about the depersonalization and isolation brought on by the Internet. My experience has been the opposite. I have been connected to relatives and possible relatives (a descendant of slaves with a family name), to former students in their 50s and still in their teens, and to friendly (carefully selected) strangers. Now, I have even been reconnected -- however marginally -- to the persona and scholar I once was.

How these unexpected miracles cheer me!

Image to follow when Blogger is working correctly.