Bowling With a Genius: Who Taught You?

So, if you DON’T know, not only do I make bitchin’ music as Dr. Pants and Weird Files, but I also teach full time as a Lecturer at the Academy of Contemporary Music, which is part of the University of Central Oklahoma. I teach music theory, ear training, and songwriting.

I value my work as a teacher a lot. I love my job. I have no reservations about saying that I’m good at it, and I strongly believe the reason I’m a good teacher is that I had good teachers. And good parents. Because parents are our teachers, too.

I don’t THINK I have ever blogged about this, so forgive me if I’m wrong. I know I’ve told the story from stage a few times. I had a number of great teachers in college…in some ways, the song Bowling With a Genius is about all of them. But one particular moment with one particular teacher informed the song a great deal. My teacher David Dunn was a really interesting guy. (He still is…go to DavidDDunn.com to learn more.) An absolute brilliant human and brilliant musician and scientist. One time we were in class, and he spied the case for a mixtape a friend had sent me that I was listening to in my walkman that day. My friend had affixed a frame from a comic strip on the front in which one character was saying to the other, “The cogitations of Ecclesiastes were bestowed on me the first time I went bowling.” David read that, chuckled a bit, and said, “I’ve never been bowling.”

It still fascinates me that this brilliant human had somehow avoided having that experience. I’m not even sure what to read into it. You could posit it’s because he’s so intelligent and concerned with more high brow pursuits that it was beneath him. You could speculate that he just never had the chance to go. Who knows?

David and several other college professors of mine felt like more than just teachers; they felt like mentors. People who made an investment of time and effort into my education. My dad (another “genius” in his own right) always stressed the importance of having a mentor. So the song is somewhat about him, too. My dad was a great teacher, also…not just to the many students that passed through his classroom and lab during his long career as a medical school professor, but also to me and my brother.

Who taught you? Like, REALLY taught you? Things that matter in terms of the person you are, or the job that you do every day?