Electronic Justice

As usual, Ed has the facts right, but is not giving the complete story. The events that led to the destruction of his computer are straightforward enough. Some months ago, my piece for Euphonium Duodecad Perfect Counterpoint had its premier before an audience of forty-four middle-school students at PS117. I assure you, the response was nothing if not rapturous to the extreme. I have seen it written that today's young people are unable to appreciate the subtleties of modern serious music, but these bright students were hanging on every retrograde inversion. In fact, some of them were so transported by the music, that they pulled out those tiny telephones people carry with them these days and spent the entire concert taking down notes about the music.

However, all truly revolutionary music finds resistance among the ranks of small-minded critics, and this piece was no exception. The next day's edition of the The Green Gopher Gazette, included a slanderous hit piece by that thirteen-year old harpy, Jenny Blankstein, who described it as "a chromatically saturated mess of a piece that pretends to great profundities -- while in fact revealing itself as the desperate ramblings of a composer who has long since depleted his limited stable of ideas."

Shouldn't she be writing about boys, or clothes, or unicorns?

Now, I am no stranger to short-sighted criticism. I have, in fact, been the recipient of such treatment more times than any other composer in recorded history, living or dead. However, in this case, the real insult was not the review itself, but the means by which I received it. Mr. Blusterton, the well-meaning but unbelievably dim-witted principal of PS117, sent me the following electronic mail message, which included a "link" to the above-mentioned review:

Mr. Willis,


I would like to personally thank you for the interesting music you wrote for the euphonium ensemble. I really liked how loud it was. It certainly was very loud. Our students do not get enough cultural experiences these days, what with all the budget cuts, and this was a very cultural experience indeed.


We have one very bright young woman in the eighth grade, and she even took the time to write a review of your song for our school newspaper, The Green Gopher Gazette. It even made the front page, right under our article about the asbestos removal in the gymnasium (which we're very excited about)! She's quite a precocious writer -- I don't even really understand all the musical mumbo-jumbo she uses, but I'm sure you will!


Thanks, and keep composing!


Horace J. Blusterton
Principal/Pickleball Coach
Master of Educational/Business/Wastewater Administration, DeVry University Online

Now, I would invite you to consider what the appropriate response to such a misguided missive is. Although I subscribe to the non-violent, morally refined teachings of Reformed Egypto-Syriac Utopian-Zoroastrianism, I reacted so quickly to this sickening turn events that before I was even aware of what had happened, Ed's computer was sixty feet below me, and scattered randomly over a twenty square-yard area. My only regret is that I failed to record the sound it made upon impact, which I would have then preserved as a musical composition titled "Iustitia in celeri exsecutioni."


However, I will persistently deny any claims that I was somehow involved in the violent destruction of the PS117 printing press and its ill-fated final issue.

No forced entry; probably an inside job