New Blog - Frontera

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I started a new blog as I have been working on writing longer essays. I decided to call it Frontera because it is Spanish for border and more and more I want to write to explore borders of all kinds. The obvious one that comes immediately to mind is our Southern border. My friend Samuel asked me once United States citizens talk about being American when what they mean is United Statian. (Obviously we need to work on that term). Where else do countries pretend to represent the entire continent (two continents) while clearly excluding other nations on that continent?

But, the are borders everywhere and there is borderland around those borders. What is it like to enter the borderland?

Borderlands are also the places where new things are born. Many explanations of Jazz say it was when classically trained Creole musicians joined Delta blues ...

Yo Yo Ma in a recent interview said this about the borders (boundaries):
Pablo Casals used to talk about — the great cellist from Spain, from Catalan — talked about infinite variety. ... within the notes that he plays, he’s looking for infinite variety, to Isaac Stern saying the music happens between the notes. OK, well, what, then, do you mean when you say music happens between the notes? Well, how do you get from A to B? Is it a smooth transfer — it’s automatic, it feels easy, you glide into the next note? Or do you have to reach to get to the — you have to physically or mentally or effortfully reach to go from one note to another? Could the next note be part of the first note? Or could the next note be a different universe? Have you just crossed into some amazing boundary, and suddenly the second note is a revelation?

Anyway, if you want to check out my first essay on DuBois concept of Double-Consciousness go to:

Frontera

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