#was how often i'd hear or read people talking about the importance of teaching math in a way that nurtured mathematical creativity

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

For better and for worse, [Sondheim's] is the most systematic and unsentimental mind that has ever addressed itself to the American musical—the sort of mind one might more easily imagine designing particle accelerators, or computer viruses too wily to destroy. “The first music teacher I had at Williams College was a man named Robert Barrow,” he says. “And everybody hated him because he was very dry, and I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry. And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear ‘dah-dah-dah-dum.’ Never occurred to me that art was something worked out. And suddenly it was the skies opening up. As soon as you find out what a leading tone is, you think, Oh my God. What a diatonic scale is—Oh my God! The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Because you just don’t know. You think it’s a talent, you think you’re born with this thing. What I’ve found and what I believe is that everybody is talented. It’s just that some people get it developed and some don’t.”

(x) on the one hand, it's unbelievably funny that sondheim is like, "everyone would be thrilled to learn about leading tones and diatonic scales. the fact that i felt this way about them has nothing to do with me having any kind of talent. this is just the normal way for people to respond." but on the other hand i truly love so much knowing that one of the great creative luminaries of his century agreed with me that Teaching People Stuff Is Good Actually.