Buttstix

I have, for many years now, been pulling the sticks out of my butt that I let my composition teachers, colleagues studying composition, and influential composers that I admired, stick up there when I was a student. Given that I was a highly impressionable young lad from the sticks studying in the Northeast in the 70s, there are lots of them, some of which stayed there for 25 years.

I have managed to identify some of them and label them. Admittedly many sticks are still firmly lodged there, but I have been tugging on them. Here is a shot of the ones I have extracted, identified and labeled so far. I have cleaned most of them quite thoroughly, but the more recent extractions still have a little brown on them.

A SAMPLING OF REACTIONS TO THIS PAGE SO FAR

Hilarious. (AD, California)

Is there a stick for "no singable melodies"? (DS, Maryland)

I got rid of most of those sticks twelve years ago and replaced them with other sticks of my own making. They're starting to hurt. (MB, England)

Congratulations on your colonoscopies. Maybe this is why I'm so constipated. (EJ, North Carolina)

I fell out of my chair laughing when I first saw this. (AM, New York)

My roommate though I was having a conniption. I almost soiled my pants. (NM, New York)

A hilarious and harrowing picture of the pedantic gobbledygook that still infuses composition classes at some American universities. (AR, New York)

...your buttstix always give me the cojones to write what I will (ER, Florida)