Katharine wrote:I wonder if there was anxiety involved? That is, believing she could trust what was on the paper (okay, we'll ignore the sorta-irony of that in the context of this story...) but not necessarily her ears? That's the only thing I can think of. I guess I could see that being something I might worry about in some situations.
I couldn't really say. One might speculate about her beliefs and fears, and whether her goals gave rise to them or the other way around, but we can't know. What was clear was that the session ethos wasn't important enough to her to motivate her to modify her approach, so as far as I was concerned, she was really just slumming. And I wasn't the only one with that opinion; there was no question that she thought her own musicianship entitled her to sit in, even though it was an uncomfortable fit at best. But everyone was polite in spite of all, for she'd been something of a recurring feature for many years; we felt a bit sorry for her, and in spite of ourselves we had a touch of grudging respect for her in coming back again and again as she did, only to fruitlessly bang her head against the wall as ever. That was our perspective, anyway; who knows what hers was. It might have been "Another job well done," for all I know - not that I'd agree. I think we were hoping that one day she'd tire of what wasn't working, and relent.
She displayed a sort of base-level confidence that comes with competence, but her competency came with self-imposed limits that didn't equip her for the more freewheeling, Johnny-on-the-spot nature of the Trad session environment. When we changed tunes mid-set she'd have to stop, maybe ask someone the name of the tune, in any case have to look through her satchel for the right page of dots so she could play along, and sometimes by the time she found it we'd almost be done and about to go on to the next. Sometimes she'd complain, but sitting in as an advanced player in her own way, she knew the rules of the game weren't going to be suspended just for her convenience. And in the end, none of it made any difference to her. If we knew the names of the tunes, sometimes we'd remember to give her advance notice so she could get her ducks in a row, but more often we just let fly, as we expected to. Her only chance to call the shots was to start a set herself, and we were happy to oblige, and did our best to make the result rise above the hidebound. But why such an arrangement made her happy enough to keep coming back eludes me still.
What's really interesting is that she recognized a lot of these tunes as soon as she heard them, which of course expedited her dots-search;
But since you already know that much, I mused,
why wouldn't you give dot-free playing at least a try? It just wasn't in her equation, whatever the reasons for it.
All else being speculation, outcomes are the only thing we can work with in any concrete way; even knowing causes, prevention is easier than repair, and as an armchair quarterback I do no earthly good at all. All we know is that she'd made it clear that she had cast her lot with notation lock, stock, and barrel, and was dedicated to being what I'll call an "academic" player (for lack of a better, more accurate word); that much is certain, and I doubt she'd disagree. I felt a bit bad for her when her unwavering belief in notation had to be shattered, but it was bound to happen some day. But TBH, I believe that rigid as she was about it all, the faulty copy was less a liberating revelation to her than an embarrassing inconvenience.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to make a case against notation. I'm making a case against dependency on it, and the lady in question was as extreme an example as I've ever encountered.