Brian

I think it's important to understand - especially for those of you who are
new to the list - that it's very easy to get Brian McLaren all wrong. I have
worked with him a fair amount since Ivor Darreg's death united some of our
efforts.

Here are my personal impressions of Brian with regard to how to read his
commentaries:
1. Brian is definitely a bit cynical, but he's not USUALLY vindictive.
2. Brian often gets too closely focused in on one tiny aspect of a bigger,
more complex topic, and will talk about that one topic in extreme words.
And it's not always negative either, although unfortunately it often is.
I have heard him do a similar "ranting" style, but in almost worshipful
superlatives. That is also why Brian can change from trashing out David
Doty's views of tuning as a whole, to superlative praise of his book on
JI in less than a month: When he zooms down to the 100x-magnification
question of whether the theory behind JI is infallible, a handful of
seemingly minor flaws come out as horrible warts on that scale, and he'll
procede to describe how ugly those warts look at 100-times magnification.
And then he'll zoom at 100x magnification on the issue of how well Doty
explains the ideas behind JI (regardless of whether they are flawlessly
true or not), and raves in in superlatives about how clearly Doty
explains the concepts.
3. He's very insightful despite the fact that his words read kind of like a
TV image with the color-intensity knob turned up to about thirteen times
as high as you would see with your eyes! MOST of the time, although
certainly FAR from invariably, his colorful language is INTENDED to amuse
rather than torment. Once I look beyond his prose lit up like flourescent
colors under a blacklight, he often has a lot of very valuable insights.

So what I'm saying is, if Brian's words get too colorful for you, try to play
them back on a black-and-white TV first before you conclude that he hates you.


Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 11:04 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA11385; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 11:05:45 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA11467
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id CAA18356; Fri, 15 Nov 1996 02:05:42 -0800
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1996 02:05:42 -0800
Message-Id: <961115100113_71670.2576_HHB42-5@CompuServe.COM>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu