Fiddler in the Fall Line

So many of us think we know where our lives are headed, but the only certain thing is that uncertainty rules all. This blog is about coping with that uncertainty to achieve peak performance in all we do; as an ancient Chinese proverb states, "Go straight to the heart of danger...for there, you will find safety."

Erik Schlopy, 2008 World Cup, Beaver Creek, CO

Absolute commitment of mind and body down the fall line--the only way to ski...the only way, when it boils right down to it, to do anything one sets out to do

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Benedict Music Tent, Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen, CO

"I was too aware to do this, and had done it anyway. What could touch me now? For what were the people on Penn Avenue to me, or what was I to myself, really, but a witness to any boldness I could muster, or any cowardice if it came to that, any giving up on heaven for the sake of dignity on earth? I had not seen a great deal accomplished in the name of dignity, ever." ~Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

The Bowl, Aspen Highlands, Aspen, CO

"How on earth," I wondered 13 years ago, staring up at Highlands from a bus stop, on my way to a rehearsal at the music tent, "do people actually SKI down something that steep?"

About Me

Carroll, Violinguist: I love school. But I am also aware of and often pained by the shortcomings of university education in the humanities. No university, for example, can "give" you knowledge; knowledge is an uncertain acquisition. How do you ever know when you KNOW something--and what does it mean to know? To meliorate these uncertainties, I work to make EVERY experience a site of learning. The study of literature is key in this quest, because it represents the refinement into art of what characterizes all human endeavor: narrative. Even the most basic narratives, I think, contain the seeds of a novel. This idea is the core of my approach to literature: literature is not ornament; it is not pasttime; it IS life itself--an essential extract of the best and worst in the human condition, or something like that. Thus to read, in my opinion, is a rich, potent way to LIVE. One is a reader of "literature" as well as one's own experience and surroundings. In this way, we do not "go" to university, but instead create the university within ourselves. Such is the thinking and intent behind the title of this blog.

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