Earlier today, I posted this video on FB. I knew it would troll my liberal friends, and sure enough, a good buddy asked, “Jeff, will you be teaching one-on-one with no mask, and no social distancing? I believe this is a fair question to ask of you since you believe it’s safe to open schools.”
He’s absolutely right, it’s a fair question. I had a ready answer:
Unequivocally, I would have zero problem and no fear whatsoever of meeting with students as before, up close and personal, and without these stupid, ineffectual facial diapers. Why? Because the China bug is a hoax? No it isn’t a hoax, obviously… nor is it the black frigging death the propagators are claiming it to be. It’s basically the flu on cocaine. Gimme a break.
This entire plandemic has been seized upon, appropriated, politicized and leveraged for reasons most wouldn’t believe if I told them. I’ll try not to digress into all that right now, I don’t have enough time tonight to lay it all out.
As for the efficacy of using Zoom, it’s better than being unable to teach at all, but that’s about it. Besides the obvious technical obstacles (“Could you raise the camera a bit… a little to the right… no, the other right… is there more lighting you can turn on… sorry, we can’t do this duet because of the latency issue… can you hear me now?”), I can’t take the eraser of my pencil and pry stubborn fingers into the right stance, nor tap on notes on their guitar neck to show them where to place their fingers. For how I teach, it’s damn frustrating most of the time.
There are multiple levels of a proper lesson that are severely hamstrung, if not entirely impossible, via a remote session. I won’t say I detest having an alternative avenue for teaching, but it’s a piss-poor substitute for a real-life, real-time learning experience.
I hope to hell this China bug hysteria ends soon. If it doesn’t, I’ll probably retire from the music biz entirely and devote the rest of my life to growing tomatoes and prayer. God knows this world needs prayer, and God knows I love me some fresh, juicy tomatoes.
