Now that I’m a student…

Having worked with and been a leader of many students in all sorts of different areas, I have had many opportunities to criticise them for the various ways they tend to do things. Therefore I now have no excuses, and must demonstrate a wiser way.

• I must never pull an “all-nighter”.
• I must never get to the point of finishing an essay minutes before it is due.
• I must maintain my excellent record of being where I say I’m going to be (when I say I’m going to be there) and doing what I say I’m going to do.
• I must never use Wikipedia as a source.
• I must not expect the world to revolve around me during exam times.

You may all hold me to account.

The Jester goes to University

The last week has been an incredible time for me. I’d use the cliché “emotional roller-coaster” if there had been any downs as well as ups, but it’s just been up and up. I am so ridiculously happy.

You see, I am now a student at the University of St Andrews. This is a big deal. You might say I’m a mature student. Or that I’ve had 15 gap years.

The sequence of events over the last week have been nothing short of miraculous. Here are the highlights:

• Contacted the University admissions dept. to ask advice on becoming an undergraduate. Was told to complete an access course at a local college, to include at least one “Higher”.
• Contacted Dundee College to initiate access course. This would start Sep ’12 and I could apply via UCAS to begin a degree in Sep ’13.
• Wednesday: Tweeted that this Jester was going back to school. Was immediately contacted by an admissions officer in the Divinity Faculty and after an exciting phone call, decided to apply for a degree at St Andrews via an alternative route.
• Thursday: Filled in and posted application form. Asked friend/colleague to email a reference.
• Friday: Reference received before application form, and was contacted to set up an interview.
• Wednesday: Had “interview” which consisted of shaking hands and being offered a place at the University. Was also told that the Advanced Diploma in Jazz that I took a few years ago is worth 40 credits towards my degree.

So that you understand quite how wonderful this is, here is the personal statement I wrote on my application form:

Studying at university is something I have always aspired to do. At the time when all my school colleagues were excitedly sending off their UCAS forms, I had suddenly and unexpectedly become wrapped up in two very new and exciting things: the first was that I converted to Christianity from a completely unreligious background, became deeply involved in the life of a local church and began looking for programmes where I could serve in some voluntary capacity; the second was that I met the woman who would become my wife. Those events combined to make university a low priority for that particular time of my life.

15 years on, I am still a committed Christian and a committed husband. In 2005 my wife and I moved out of London, where I had always lived, to serve in a new church planted in St Andrews, called the Kingdom Vineyard. For the 6 years I have been here, I have led and developed a thriving team of musicians who lead the church’s worship. That role, and my involvement in the local music scene of St Andrews, has brought me into close and continual contact with students at the University.

As well as countless informal interactions with the University, mainly through musical and theatrical societies, I have had a couple of more formal points of contact. The first was to complete an Advanced Diploma in Jazz at the Music Centre, and the second was to give a lecture in the Divinity department for the module on the theology of musicals. The latter came about because I was Musical Director for a show with prominent biblical themes, combined with the knowledge of the Bible expected of most Christians but particularly of those in leadership positions.

Having spent the last few years getting a taste for academia in any way I could (including proof reading as many essays as I could get my hands on), the timing now seems perfect to start studying. My work life is secure and flexible, my family and friends supportive, and I feel I have reached a stage where I will get the most out of university education, and have the most to give. My interests are wide ranging and my appetite for knowledge insatiable. The University of St Andrews already feels like home, and there’s nothing I would love more than to study here.

Blogging

A potentially life-changing set of developments has caused me to reconsider my New Year’s resolution to blog every day with reflections on Oswald Chambers. Lifelong resolutions trump new year resolutions! I will of course update everybody if these developments should come to anything. Thanks readers, whoever you are!

My own changing opinions

I didn’t start this blog that long ago, but it’s already interesting to see how it is a document of my own changing opinions about things!

On August 16th 2011, I wrote a post called “The Death of Physical Media” in which I wrote this:

I will go kicking and screaming into the direction that music distribution has taken.

On January 3rd 2012, I wrote a post called “My Music on BandCamp for £NameYourPrice“.

What can I say, except that I am still a work in progress .

A “cut out and keep” moment.

This is a “cut out and keep” moment of a Toby Foster sermon at the Kingdom Vineyard on 4/12/11.

We Christians are rubbish at identifying the enemy.

In ethics, we pick on homosexuality before we pick on poverty.

In theology, we pick on universalism before we pick on cessationism.

In ecclesiology, we pick on other churches before we pick on those who attack the whole church.

In our own lives, we pick on anything that threatens our comfort zone before we pick on our own laziness, stinginess and cowardice.

Twelfth Night

It’s the Twelfth Night of Christmas! About 12 years ago I composed and performed some instrumental acoustic guitar music for a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, where I was first given the moniker “Jester”.

The opening lines of the play are well known and in the aforementioned production were addressed to me as an unnamed minstrel of the court just offstage:

If music be the food of love, play on.

This line, normally quoted only so far as this, is better understood when connected to the phrase that follows:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.

The Duke Orsino is so sickened by his unrequited love for the Lady Olivia that he is desperate to be so engorged by the readily available substitute of music that it should thus become less attractive, less of an obsession.

It is striking that he should point to music, even if only metaphorically, as a form of emotional/spiritual sustenance that may substitute for love. I know this feeling well, and point to my experience as a musician as the only time I accepted some spiritual reality prior to being awakened to the presence of God. There is a spiritual sensitivity brought about by music, so much so that the restless interval of a tritone once became known as diabolus in musica – the devil in music – given its ominous, dark suggestion.

I think that the sensitivity created by music is a gift from God, through which we can sense His presence and hear His voice. The satisfaction music gives of itself, though, is like water that you drink and still leaves you thirsty, whereas the source of all creativity Himself will never leave you wanting.

My Music on BandCamp for £NameYourPrice

My thanks to bassist extraordinaire Steve Lawson for inspiring me to make all my music on BandCamp available for £NameYourPrice. Here is a “Buy Music with BandCamp Primer” that he has written and I fully agree with.

• You get to choose your file type. With Bandcamp I can release 24bit audiophile FLAC versions and the highest possible quality MP3 versions (we well as AAC/ALAC and OGG) all in the same place. No faffing about for you searching out the best format, just choose the one you want.
• Sleevenotes, artwork, extras. I can add PDFs of sleevenotes, photos, lyrics, individual art for each track. and I can change it. As often as I want. Freedom 
• The ‘Pay What You Want’ thing. It just makes sense – not only does it let you put in the price that represents both what you can afford, and what you think it’s worth, but it means that people who are in parts of the world where they otherwise can’t get ‘legal’ digital music can download it without paying, and if you ever lose your copy in a harddrive crash, you can just come and download it again for free. Or if you decide you want to give FLAC a go and see what all the hi-res fuss is about – again, you can replace it for free.
• Payment is easy. OK, so not quite as easy as buying on iTunes if you’ve got an iTunes account, but it’s way more friendly. If you’ve got a PayPal account, it’s 3 clicks and a password confirmation. If you haven’t, you can pay with a credit/debit card.
• Full previews. Let’s be honest, in the grand scheme of things HARDLY ANYONE HAS HEARD OF ME. Even fewer have heard my music. Hiding it away behind 30 second previews on iTunes/Amazon is utterly insane. As would be hosting it all on a listening service that’s separate from the buying/download bit. It’s utterly vital for indie musicians to remember, you don’t get an audience by selling music, you have the chance to sell music ONCE YOU HAVE AN AUDIENCE. The unlimited listening makes people hearing what I do as easy as possible. You can listen on the site, on Facebook, other people can blog it. It’s just great! A lot of the people who may hear my stuff are likely to need quite a while to decide they want it enough to buy it. It may take years. I don’t want to stop them listening in those intervening years. I’m in this for the long game, not some get rich quick plan. You can listen on the site as much as you want. That’s great. …it’s also worth noting that the pages will also play on an iPhone/iPad, thanks to them being HTML5, not Flash-driven – you can’t download from Bandcamp to either of those, but that’s because Apple are idiots, nothing Bandcamp can do about that.
• Sharing via social media. Bandcamp is SO friendly. the URL turns into an embedded player on Facebook, anyone can blog it and have it playable to their friends, every page (album or track) has facebook and twitter share buttons, when you’ve bought it and it’s downloading, there are sharing buttons there too. It’s made for sharing.
• Sharing the love via Creative Commons. iTunes and Amazon don’t give me the option to change the license terms on my music. It’s All Rights Reserved or nothing. But I don’t want to make it illegal for you to share the music with your friends. I don’t want to make it illegal for you to add the music to your videos, to remix it, to sample it… If you’re not making money from it, you can do what you want with it. If you want to make money off it, we negotiate the terms as normal. That’s friendly, right?

Convinced? Here you go: