Ow.
Still, it wasn't anything surprising. I'd anticipated almost the exact same scenario--she isn't over him, we are in different places in life. It's not like I didn't expect things to turn out this way.
Now that I've found it, it's gone...maybe this is the final sign that I need to get out of this city. The last crushed hope in a series of crushed hopes. Maybe where I am in life right now is just go, go, go, no time for looking back, or regrets, or tears, or sympathy for those things. No time for comfort, or tether, or solace; but what's one more place to be cast out of with these things still unfound? For now it seems I'm condemned to drift, but as I previously established, I can take it. I think. It's going to be a long winter.
Most girls don't get the privilege of shooting me down twice. But sometimes there are exceptions. And if there can be exceptions after a whole year...who knows, maybe this is really the end of my efforts. If a whole year couldn't stop me from caring, what difference could the next seven months possibly make?
Does it hurt? Yes, it does, and I'm amazed I can even admit that, though I can't blame it on myself, because it didn't really have anything to do with anything under my control--though, somehow, that makes it worse
Now that that's out of the way, though, the only things I have to worry about are how to keep myself from collapsing into bed right this moment, and how to get out of it tomorrow morning.
Later: no more Stars of Track and Field or the first Mojave 3 album for a while, I've decided.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Abbey of...?
Some of the tomatoes I bought from farmer's market last time turned out to be split open or bruised. Consequently, when I was digging through my vegetable stash for dinner today, I realized to my dismay that half of my tomato supply had putrefied far before their due, forcing me to throw out 4 or so fruits and wash the smell off the others before putting them in a new, clean bag.
Barely an hour later I crack open a Leffe Belgian ale to go with my (tomato-free) dinner, and it distresses me somewhat that it tastes more than a little like those bad tomatoes smelled at the time of their eviction. I remember thinking, back when I first started drinking beer (all those years ago), that "beer tastes like dead and rotting things." A bit of negative nostalgia to go with all the high school retrospective poetry I've been writing lately, I suppose.
In other news...tonight, I douse my friendly venture. That's a promise.
Barely an hour later I crack open a Leffe Belgian ale to go with my (tomato-free) dinner, and it distresses me somewhat that it tastes more than a little like those bad tomatoes smelled at the time of their eviction. I remember thinking, back when I first started drinking beer (all those years ago), that "beer tastes like dead and rotting things." A bit of negative nostalgia to go with all the high school retrospective poetry I've been writing lately, I suppose.
In other news...tonight, I douse my friendly venture. That's a promise.
When They Say Great White Sharks
It's official: The Hold Steady are the only thing getting me through this poetry class. Fun for everyone!
Monday, October 29, 2007
Let Tomorrow Bee
I came to realize and accept some time ago the fact that I will never be able to make up my mind about select things. None of the decide-once, forget-about-forever kind of thing. A gamble is a gamble and there's only so much calculation you can do, and even after I've seemingly arrived at a decision, there's still an eternity between that and acting upon it that's brimming with doubt and reconsideration, and after action (or lack thereof), yet another eternity to wonder whether or not it was the right thing to do (or not do).
In these situations, I've found it is usually best to watch for one passing moment of momentum, catch it, hang on for dear life like jumping freight trains, and hope it gets me somewhere. After all, the biggest decisions usually end up making themselves, whether I like it or not, and as Kierkegaard (the bastard) said, "you will regret it either way."
John's invited me up to Pittsburgh along with most of the usual Environmental Aesthetics suspects (Diamond, Maura, Jessie, Mitra, et al) this coming weekend. I told him that I'd decide on Wednesday and let him know. That puts a time limit on me to decide what it will be I'll be wanting this weekend: whether I'll feel like staying contentedly at home, hopefully working, maybe hanging out with the Nagans, or whether I'll be needing the hedonistic (for me, that is) full-system purge that comes with most extended outings with these guys, despite the fact that I can't take them very well in large doses.
Over and over again in my life, I am amazed by how mundane the big moments are when they finally come to pass. Time doesn't stop, or even slow, when shit's hitting the fan. The clock ticks as fast as it normally does; the world doesn't slow down for the gravity of the event, only your mind does, and before I know it, it's over, and even when I was an active participant in the event it feels like I wasn't, and though I might expect the world to end, it doesn't. Really, at the end of such things, I end up feeling more absurd than anything else.
In these situations, I've found it is usually best to watch for one passing moment of momentum, catch it, hang on for dear life like jumping freight trains, and hope it gets me somewhere. After all, the biggest decisions usually end up making themselves, whether I like it or not, and as Kierkegaard (the bastard) said, "you will regret it either way."
John's invited me up to Pittsburgh along with most of the usual Environmental Aesthetics suspects (Diamond, Maura, Jessie, Mitra, et al) this coming weekend. I told him that I'd decide on Wednesday and let him know. That puts a time limit on me to decide what it will be I'll be wanting this weekend: whether I'll feel like staying contentedly at home, hopefully working, maybe hanging out with the Nagans, or whether I'll be needing the hedonistic (for me, that is) full-system purge that comes with most extended outings with these guys, despite the fact that I can't take them very well in large doses.
Over and over again in my life, I am amazed by how mundane the big moments are when they finally come to pass. Time doesn't stop, or even slow, when shit's hitting the fan. The clock ticks as fast as it normally does; the world doesn't slow down for the gravity of the event, only your mind does, and before I know it, it's over, and even when I was an active participant in the event it feels like I wasn't, and though I might expect the world to end, it doesn't. Really, at the end of such things, I end up feeling more absurd than anything else.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Wish, Wish, Wish, All of This
Ever since 10th grade, my mind's been on a sort of strange trajectory. In high school I was very emotionally indulgent; I idealized girls (especially those whom I liked, but really, all of them), wrote poems half of which lines didn't even mean anything. I underlined sentimentality with verbosity. Sometime during the latter half of 12th grade, I started to roll this back, most likely because my escapades with the Barrett-Huber party were burning me out on human interaction; I'd become more deeply involved with them than I had with the Perkins-Han crew, and was older and wiser as well, and could see when supposed best friends did things to each other that made little sense.
But then I left New Jersey, and the thrill of starting anew in college, the rush of feeling open to and welcoming everything washed away the reservations I'd built up. And then 2005 of course...after that, though, I really got knocked off the pedestal I'd unknowingly put myself upon by taking all my own emotions and philosophies as pure and absolute things, at least relative to myself, to the point where I couldn't deal with it when I realized I was contradicting myself. So began a two-year long descent into perverse amounts of pseudo-rational criticism, refusing to admit to thinking about things to myself (a lot of those entries from 2006 aren't going to mean shit to me in just a couple years), and self-restraint, which peaked (or bottomed out, I suppose, would be more topologically accurate) around last fall when I spent a semester studying Frankurt School critical theory and simultaneously got smacked by a double-whammy of won't-get-fooled-again bitterness.
This past summer, though, and the dispersion of everybody, I have to say did work in my favor, in a way. The more I'm buffeted by human interaction after a certain threshold, the more numbed I get, result being I'll continue hanging out, but mostly out of automation. Being forced to not talk to or hang out with people every day allowed me to choose my battles. Some would say the cure for being burnt out by the world is to go out; for me, I suspect the opposite to be true. I've spent a lot of idle time untangling knots in my head, and believe I'm coming closer to tipping the scale back in the direction it recently came from.
That last entry, however, may have been a warning sign that recovery is being taken too far into regression. Seriously, trying to communicate through music choice is something that should've been over for me in high school. Referential mania as Jess said, or maybe just plain silly. Got to watch my own steps from this point on.
Let it not be said that I've not learned anything, though. My inner critic is still on my side. As much as he can be on anyone's side, I suppose. The aforementioned Big Life Decisions shall be made...sometime, but sometime soon. Actual Plans are being formulated and Real Action will be taken. I finished recording a song today. That's progress, isn't it?
Went to see Stars of Track and Field with the Sarahs (we came to the conclusion that Sarahs are mass-produced with factory-installed telepathy links) tonight. Thrushes got dropped from their opening slot, which was a shame. Anna and Brad happened to be there too. Brad talked about his newfound vinyl habit (records, don't get any kinky ideas) and terabyte of mp3s...I could never glut out on music like some people do. It was a good show, although unbelievably only a dozen or so people showed up to Sonar (drunk UMBC kids in skimpy costumes attending the Halloween party don't count). Although they have a pretty expansive sound, the songs themselves somehow feel like they'd be best enjoyed in a small room...anyway, I liked the show--it made me very happy for some reason--at least I have the CD-R, even if I don't have anything else. Check it.
But then I left New Jersey, and the thrill of starting anew in college, the rush of feeling open to and welcoming everything washed away the reservations I'd built up. And then 2005 of course...after that, though, I really got knocked off the pedestal I'd unknowingly put myself upon by taking all my own emotions and philosophies as pure and absolute things, at least relative to myself, to the point where I couldn't deal with it when I realized I was contradicting myself. So began a two-year long descent into perverse amounts of pseudo-rational criticism, refusing to admit to thinking about things to myself (a lot of those entries from 2006 aren't going to mean shit to me in just a couple years), and self-restraint, which peaked (or bottomed out, I suppose, would be more topologically accurate) around last fall when I spent a semester studying Frankurt School critical theory and simultaneously got smacked by a double-whammy of won't-get-fooled-again bitterness.
This past summer, though, and the dispersion of everybody, I have to say did work in my favor, in a way. The more I'm buffeted by human interaction after a certain threshold, the more numbed I get, result being I'll continue hanging out, but mostly out of automation. Being forced to not talk to or hang out with people every day allowed me to choose my battles. Some would say the cure for being burnt out by the world is to go out; for me, I suspect the opposite to be true. I've spent a lot of idle time untangling knots in my head, and believe I'm coming closer to tipping the scale back in the direction it recently came from.
That last entry, however, may have been a warning sign that recovery is being taken too far into regression. Seriously, trying to communicate through music choice is something that should've been over for me in high school. Referential mania as Jess said, or maybe just plain silly. Got to watch my own steps from this point on.
Let it not be said that I've not learned anything, though. My inner critic is still on my side. As much as he can be on anyone's side, I suppose. The aforementioned Big Life Decisions shall be made...sometime, but sometime soon. Actual Plans are being formulated and Real Action will be taken. I finished recording a song today. That's progress, isn't it?
Went to see Stars of Track and Field with the Sarahs (we came to the conclusion that Sarahs are mass-produced with factory-installed telepathy links) tonight. Thrushes got dropped from their opening slot, which was a shame. Anna and Brad happened to be there too. Brad talked about his newfound vinyl habit (records, don't get any kinky ideas) and terabyte of mp3s...I could never glut out on music like some people do. It was a good show, although unbelievably only a dozen or so people showed up to Sonar (drunk UMBC kids in skimpy costumes attending the Halloween party don't count). Although they have a pretty expansive sound, the songs themselves somehow feel like they'd be best enjoyed in a small room...anyway, I liked the show--it made me very happy for some reason--at least I have the CD-R, even if I don't have anything else. Check it.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Two's Day
Reduced to trying to read minds through playlists. Feel like I'm being taunted somehow. Never going to make anyone do that again now that I realize what a pain in the ass it is.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Steel a Moment
Staring down the barrel of another week. But in this phase of my life, the recurrent up-downers of weeks takes a backseat to the Big Life Decisions looming on the ever-nearing horizon. (Which, by the way, I've not really come any closer to making.) This makes it a little hard to take day-to-day life seriously, and sometimes I stop thinking about existing in the present, and just drift. Not the most pleasing situation for someone who insists upon authenticity of living.
Took my guitar and computer up to Hampden to jam with Sterling on Saturday night. We were going to record, but then we just ended up fucking around. I don't make a whole lot of music these days; it's been a few weeks since I even tried. I suppose the reason for that is I just don't feel inspired or compelled to do it, ergo doing it doesn't make me happy, ergo I don't. I don't feel like there's enough in me to make music that I myself would consider listening to; it might work out if there were someone else around I could bounce ideas off of, but I don't have such a cohort at the moment. Still, it'd be nice to be in some sort of atmospheric dream-pop band right now, I believe. But there's no point in starting a band when I'm bailing town in less than a year. And so we return to the futility of living for the present.
Or maybe not; I'm thinking about Meursault from The Stranger's mother, who if I remember correctly was described as having found a lover mere weeks before her death. Maybe it's never too late to change something about your life, even if it's the second to the last day of it. But it seems to me that trying to start a band would take more effort than it would pay off, given the limited time frame I'm working with here. I don't know.
John's trying to set me up for a collaboration with A Born Idler. I really don't know what's going through his head. I can barely motivate myself to make any music these days; I don't really want to try and play bass with some band in DC that, while I agree that they are good at what they do, have obviously listened to way too much Grizzly Bear/Spencer Krug-affiliated bands/other of-the-moment indie rock that I really don't like very much. John insists that we'd make some kind of good combination, but I just don't know how to say that it really doesn't matter what he--or anybody--thinks, I'm only going to make music if it makes me happy to do so. If it turns out making total boring cripe makes me happy (it doesn't), then I'll do it. Even if he's right about there being some motivation greater than personal fulfillment for making music (and I don't believe him), it's unlikely that'll make me decide to do something I wasn't already going to do. There will always be good musicians and good bands; whether I'm fulfilling my (questionable) potential as a music-maker should really matter little. I just want to tell him that I won't ask him to promote anything he doesn't want to and he shouldn't ask me to make anything I don't want to; I'll keep him out of my big plans as long as he keeps me out of his.
I suppose this is somewhat hypocritical of me, seeing as I'm letting down the so-called Environmental Aesthetics for my own personal initiative (or lack thereof), while having a history of advocating strength in numbers, empathy, and self-sacrifice. But the fact is, I don't commit very well to group endeavors that I feel deviate from my personal agenda; that's why I secretly breathed a sigh of relief when John started talking more and more about A Born Idler and Diamond's music and less and less about (admittedly, the by then defunct) Trafalgar and my personal stuff, even as I felt somewhat bitter for having been validated for believing that our friendship would become tenuous as soon as I stopped making music that he approved of. The whole EA thing, for me, really comes down to being bound to some people I don't have full-time empathy with, and so I'm always on the verge of cutting and running, although for the time being I remain too polite to do so.
But I'm talking like I'm actually some sort of musician here. I'm not. I don't want to change the face of music as we know it. I don't want to start some sort of movement or subculture. I don't want to create some sort of utopian pocket universe for my artistic colleagues (what artistic colleagues). I just want to get my paper published, get into an exciting graduate program, get a few friends together for beers and conversation, and maybe get the girl on my way there.
Which would all be fine and dandy, if I could stop questioning whether I am being pragmatic and mature, or just running around willy-nilly massacring all my wispier, more idealistic ambitions because I have finally lost all hope.
I've been having visions of Boston, even though I've never been there. I think right now I picture it as some sort of remote Arctic outpost subject to long winters and icy daylight. That is probably not even distantly accurate, but I can't account for it right now.
Took my guitar and computer up to Hampden to jam with Sterling on Saturday night. We were going to record, but then we just ended up fucking around. I don't make a whole lot of music these days; it's been a few weeks since I even tried. I suppose the reason for that is I just don't feel inspired or compelled to do it, ergo doing it doesn't make me happy, ergo I don't. I don't feel like there's enough in me to make music that I myself would consider listening to; it might work out if there were someone else around I could bounce ideas off of, but I don't have such a cohort at the moment. Still, it'd be nice to be in some sort of atmospheric dream-pop band right now, I believe. But there's no point in starting a band when I'm bailing town in less than a year. And so we return to the futility of living for the present.
Or maybe not; I'm thinking about Meursault from The Stranger's mother, who if I remember correctly was described as having found a lover mere weeks before her death. Maybe it's never too late to change something about your life, even if it's the second to the last day of it. But it seems to me that trying to start a band would take more effort than it would pay off, given the limited time frame I'm working with here. I don't know.
John's trying to set me up for a collaboration with A Born Idler. I really don't know what's going through his head. I can barely motivate myself to make any music these days; I don't really want to try and play bass with some band in DC that, while I agree that they are good at what they do, have obviously listened to way too much Grizzly Bear/Spencer Krug-affiliated bands/other of-the-moment indie rock that I really don't like very much. John insists that we'd make some kind of good combination, but I just don't know how to say that it really doesn't matter what he--or anybody--thinks, I'm only going to make music if it makes me happy to do so. If it turns out making total boring cripe makes me happy (it doesn't), then I'll do it. Even if he's right about there being some motivation greater than personal fulfillment for making music (and I don't believe him), it's unlikely that'll make me decide to do something I wasn't already going to do. There will always be good musicians and good bands; whether I'm fulfilling my (questionable) potential as a music-maker should really matter little. I just want to tell him that I won't ask him to promote anything he doesn't want to and he shouldn't ask me to make anything I don't want to; I'll keep him out of my big plans as long as he keeps me out of his.
I suppose this is somewhat hypocritical of me, seeing as I'm letting down the so-called Environmental Aesthetics for my own personal initiative (or lack thereof), while having a history of advocating strength in numbers, empathy, and self-sacrifice. But the fact is, I don't commit very well to group endeavors that I feel deviate from my personal agenda; that's why I secretly breathed a sigh of relief when John started talking more and more about A Born Idler and Diamond's music and less and less about (admittedly, the by then defunct) Trafalgar and my personal stuff, even as I felt somewhat bitter for having been validated for believing that our friendship would become tenuous as soon as I stopped making music that he approved of. The whole EA thing, for me, really comes down to being bound to some people I don't have full-time empathy with, and so I'm always on the verge of cutting and running, although for the time being I remain too polite to do so.
But I'm talking like I'm actually some sort of musician here. I'm not. I don't want to change the face of music as we know it. I don't want to start some sort of movement or subculture. I don't want to create some sort of utopian pocket universe for my artistic colleagues (what artistic colleagues). I just want to get my paper published, get into an exciting graduate program, get a few friends together for beers and conversation, and maybe get the girl on my way there.
Which would all be fine and dandy, if I could stop questioning whether I am being pragmatic and mature, or just running around willy-nilly massacring all my wispier, more idealistic ambitions because I have finally lost all hope.
I've been having visions of Boston, even though I've never been there. I think right now I picture it as some sort of remote Arctic outpost subject to long winters and icy daylight. That is probably not even distantly accurate, but I can't account for it right now.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Learned(?)
These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise that you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk* to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (only read in abridged form)
Dracula (again, abridged form...though I'm not sure)
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984*
Angels and Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables (abr.)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short history of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse 5
The Scarlet Letter (ugh)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (abr.)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo (only read in abridged form)
Dracula (again, abridged form...though I'm not sure)
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984*
Angels and Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables (abr.)
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short history of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse 5
The Scarlet Letter (ugh)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (abr.)
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
School
Pulled through a couple midterms relatively unscathed...didn't kill the Computational Biology one last week, but at least got average-ish, and the Reproductive Physiology one yesterday went decently. I forgot the names of a few things, but remember exactly what they did. That's the way things are with me. Proteins & Nucleic Acids hasn't had an exam yet; that class is one of those classes that would be "totally fucking awesome"--if you were taking only one or two classes in addition to it. 13 out of 15 students in the class are graduate students, so they're in the clear, but since I'm taking a full-time (though only marginally) undergrad courseload, my PNA experience only rates "awesome."
I'm feeling a little heat as far as academics go these days; I respect every last one and admire many of the older Biophysics students I've met here (Zach H., Sarahs K. and M., Irun, Anna K., Izzi)--students of my year and below notwithstanding, seeing as I've always been critical of people my age and younger, perhaps unfairly--not to mention professors (Barrick, Garcia-Moreno). And whenever you respect someone, I suppose, inevitably you end up wanting their approval (even if such a concept is purely imaginary) and regarding them as a standard for yourself. (Or maybe I just didn't have a good father figure in my upbringing. Hell with that.) Plus, if I really want to go to MIT CSBi, I'd better convince myself first that I'm good at what I do. So, when I didn't kill the CompBio midterm last week--I knew even before I finished that I wouldn't--I was slightly frustrated, especially since I want to make a career in computational work, and it was one of the classes I'd been looking forward to the most since last spring. Of course, I did have a couple of distracting things on my mind. Just in time for midterms--won't you believe it, it's just my luck. And 2006 is poised to repeat itself...
Speaking of distractions, that one thing: been wondering for a couple of days whether my original plans are going to do anyone that matters any good. It's doubtful a nomadic 21-year-old could ever help salvage anyone's sabotaged life plans. So maybe I should put my hands away, or maybe I shouldn't, yet.
But as I said, this isn't about me, though it does help put things in perspective for me: the drift and the loneliness are bad, to be sure, but less so when your body and mind still have the capacity to endure them; time is running out, to be sure, but not as fast as I thought it was. Maybe that's true. In any case, it's always a relief to worry about someone else's problems once in a while. Familiar signs of self-effacing affection emerging--maybe it's a return to form, maybe it's nothing but relapse, maybe it's nothing at all. Wait and see.
Jesu at Black Cat, crash at Johnny L.'s tonight. Seeing Thrushes open for Stars of Track and Field next week, and someone owes me a Folk Implosion CD (for borrowing). Cranked Sebadoh today and it wasn't so bad.
Coming this weekend to a basement near you--M. Scott Sterling (recording engineering, doo-hickeys) and W. Kurtis Chang (guitar, existential angst) present: the 6-Hour Song Project!
I'm feeling a little heat as far as academics go these days; I respect every last one and admire many of the older Biophysics students I've met here (Zach H., Sarahs K. and M., Irun, Anna K., Izzi)--students of my year and below notwithstanding, seeing as I've always been critical of people my age and younger, perhaps unfairly--not to mention professors (Barrick, Garcia-Moreno). And whenever you respect someone, I suppose, inevitably you end up wanting their approval (even if such a concept is purely imaginary) and regarding them as a standard for yourself. (Or maybe I just didn't have a good father figure in my upbringing. Hell with that.) Plus, if I really want to go to MIT CSBi, I'd better convince myself first that I'm good at what I do. So, when I didn't kill the CompBio midterm last week--I knew even before I finished that I wouldn't--I was slightly frustrated, especially since I want to make a career in computational work, and it was one of the classes I'd been looking forward to the most since last spring. Of course, I did have a couple of distracting things on my mind. Just in time for midterms--won't you believe it, it's just my luck. And 2006 is poised to repeat itself...
Speaking of distractions, that one thing: been wondering for a couple of days whether my original plans are going to do anyone that matters any good. It's doubtful a nomadic 21-year-old could ever help salvage anyone's sabotaged life plans. So maybe I should put my hands away, or maybe I shouldn't, yet.
But as I said, this isn't about me, though it does help put things in perspective for me: the drift and the loneliness are bad, to be sure, but less so when your body and mind still have the capacity to endure them; time is running out, to be sure, but not as fast as I thought it was. Maybe that's true. In any case, it's always a relief to worry about someone else's problems once in a while. Familiar signs of self-effacing affection emerging--maybe it's a return to form, maybe it's nothing but relapse, maybe it's nothing at all. Wait and see.
Jesu at Black Cat, crash at Johnny L.'s tonight. Seeing Thrushes open for Stars of Track and Field next week, and someone owes me a Folk Implosion CD (for borrowing). Cranked Sebadoh today and it wasn't so bad.
Coming this weekend to a basement near you--M. Scott Sterling (recording engineering, doo-hickeys) and W. Kurtis Chang (guitar, existential angst) present: the 6-Hour Song Project!
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Schrödinger's Boy
And sometimes there just is nothing a boy can do. Time may go too fast or it may go too slow and often it does both simultaneously, but still, there's nothing a boy can do. I've cast caution to the winds and myself with it, no wings, no sail, just drop.
Easier if I think about it as not being about me. Which it isn't, really.
My...I haven't been this willfully cryptic in a while. Have trouble admitting things to myself, perhaps. Ironically, seeing as I've had a pretty good track record of admitting them to others.
Or maybe it's just a matter of too little to say, too much time. But who am I kidding. I've no time...
Easier if I think about it as not being about me. Which it isn't, really.
My...I haven't been this willfully cryptic in a while. Have trouble admitting things to myself, perhaps. Ironically, seeing as I've had a pretty good track record of admitting them to others.
Or maybe it's just a matter of too little to say, too much time. But who am I kidding. I've no time...
Monday, October 15, 2007
Thought Experiments, pt. 3
The Twilight Sad album is a tear-jerker. Coming from me, that's saying something.
More on poetry again; I thought I'd just head out and write one straight this week, but it's not working out too well right now. Or last night. I was up until 3:30AM accomplishing not a single word worthy of keeping. Sometimes these things happen.
Things are always more difficult when you care about the quality of the finished product; if you can't somehow disconnect the link between you and the product of your work, you can't ever really get to working your art on it. The hardest poems to write and the hardest songs to record are the ones that you feel represent you in some way. Especially considering the subject matter this time...if it had come a few weeks sooner, or heaven forbid a few weeks later, it might've been easier. All the wrong timing at all the wrong times, or perhaps that's redundant.
Anyway, it all starts from my new, Jessica-inspired theory. The full name of which probably looks something like: You Can't Really Fall In Love With A Girl Until You See The Back Of Her Neck, or the Begans-Chang Conjecture for short. Talked it over with her (as I tend to do most things of pressing concern these days) after CVP the other night, and she confirmed my thoughts on the matter: that it was a matter of vulnerability, and of reacting to it in a certain way that you wouldn't for anyone else.
If that sounded removed and meandering, it was me avoiding feelings again, so let me give it one more try: the back of someone's neck is a symbol for vulnerability, and if your first reaction to seeing it is not to be embarrassed, but to want to reach out--or, even better, to want to reach out but also to be suddenly afraid to do so, because it doesn't matter if you have skinny androgynous hands like I do, in that moment none of your cleverness and dexterity will save you, they will not seem remotely graceful enough, as though they weren't even under the control of your nerves anymore. Or maybe it's nerves themselves that are haywire, spitting sparks; it's the most intense resonance and you've never been more locked into your brain.
And it doesn't help that I think of the first verse of Shellac's "Prayer to God" every time I open this thing to try and write it. Sometimes I creep myself out.
More on poetry again; I thought I'd just head out and write one straight this week, but it's not working out too well right now. Or last night. I was up until 3:30AM accomplishing not a single word worthy of keeping. Sometimes these things happen.
Things are always more difficult when you care about the quality of the finished product; if you can't somehow disconnect the link between you and the product of your work, you can't ever really get to working your art on it. The hardest poems to write and the hardest songs to record are the ones that you feel represent you in some way. Especially considering the subject matter this time...if it had come a few weeks sooner, or heaven forbid a few weeks later, it might've been easier. All the wrong timing at all the wrong times, or perhaps that's redundant.
Anyway, it all starts from my new, Jessica-inspired theory. The full name of which probably looks something like: You Can't Really Fall In Love With A Girl Until You See The Back Of Her Neck, or the Begans-Chang Conjecture for short. Talked it over with her (as I tend to do most things of pressing concern these days) after CVP the other night, and she confirmed my thoughts on the matter: that it was a matter of vulnerability, and of reacting to it in a certain way that you wouldn't for anyone else.
If that sounded removed and meandering, it was me avoiding feelings again, so let me give it one more try: the back of someone's neck is a symbol for vulnerability, and if your first reaction to seeing it is not to be embarrassed, but to want to reach out--or, even better, to want to reach out but also to be suddenly afraid to do so, because it doesn't matter if you have skinny androgynous hands like I do, in that moment none of your cleverness and dexterity will save you, they will not seem remotely graceful enough, as though they weren't even under the control of your nerves anymore. Or maybe it's nerves themselves that are haywire, spitting sparks; it's the most intense resonance and you've never been more locked into your brain.
And it doesn't help that I think of the first verse of Shellac's "Prayer to God" every time I open this thing to try and write it. Sometimes I creep myself out.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Haunted Attics
Grizzly Bear + Beach House at the 2640 St. Paul church tonight. It was a good show; the church was the perfect kind of space to see either of these bands in. Went for Beach House, mostly; and it was a good set, they didn't even have to do anything except sit, play, and have Victoria sing and tell dumb jokes in the deep half-asleep voice of hers. Lovely.
Took a long, nervous 10-block walk down St. Paul to get there. Reasons for being nervous related to content of previous non-survey entry. What stood still stands, but there's little I can do about it now. Still, as I discussed with Jess tonight, something is probably inevitable, for better or worse--little to lose, and even less self-respect to get in the way. Dignity never saved anyone and the stakes are high.
Took a long, nervous 10-block walk down St. Paul to get there. Reasons for being nervous related to content of previous non-survey entry. What stood still stands, but there's little I can do about it now. Still, as I discussed with Jess tonight, something is probably inevitable, for better or worse--little to lose, and even less self-respect to get in the way. Dignity never saved anyone and the stakes are high.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Raiding Surveys from Hannah, pt. 3
1) Do you have a crush on somebody?
Well.
2) Do you hate more than 3 people?
Hate is a waste of time.
3) How many houses have you lived in?
3 in Taiwan + 2 in Minnesota + 2 houses (= dorms) in NJ + 3 dorms/apartments in Baltimore = 10 buildings
4) Favorite candy bar?
Milky Way Midnight, I think that's what it was called. Milk chocolate is for suckers.
6) Have you ever tripped someone? (and also, where did 5 go?)
When I was 9 or 10, I tripped this kid next door, who must've been only 5 or something at the most, when he was running in circles. I still don't know why I did that. Possibly my first recorded example of completely unjustified lapse of conscience.
7) Least favorite school subject?
Anything that involves memorizing a lot of stuff.
8) How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Docs + NBs + Converse + "black star" Converse + hiking boots + Tevas + slippers = 7
9) Do you own a Britney Spears CD?
No.
10) Have you ever thrown up in public?
Multiple times...from motion sickness when I was younger, from drunkenness in more recent years.
11) Name one thing that is always on your mind?
The condition of human existence.
12) Favorite genre of music?
Good.
13) What is your zodiac sign?
Leo.
14) What time were you born?
11AM or so...
15) Do you like beer?
Yes please!
16) Ever made a prank phone call?
Yes.
17) What is the most embarassing CD you own?
Either Yanni or something from the nu-metal months (let's not drop names in the latter case).
18) Are you sarcastic?
No...
19) What is your favorite color?
Blue or black.
20) How many watches do you own?
1
21) Summer or winter?
Winter. The cold is my friend.
22) Is anyone in love with you?
Wouldn't bet on it.
23) Favorite color to wear?
Black, grey, or olive drab.
24) Pepsi or Sprite?
Ginger ale...but, Pepsi.
25) What color is your cell phone?
Silver, but flaking off in many places.
26) Where is your second home?
Right here, technically.
27) Have you ever slapped someone?
Nah.
28) Have you ever had a cavity?
Yes.
29) How many lamps are in your bedroom?
Just one, on the desk.
30) How many video games do you own?
The only ones I have with me are burned copies of Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam: the Second Encounter, but I haven't touched either of them in ages. I need to go play Halo 3 at Graham's sometime.
31) What was your first pet?
Never had one.
32) Ever had braces?
Never had any.
33) Do looks matter?
Everything matters!
34) Do you use chapstick?
Guy does what he needs to.
35) Name 3 teachers from high school:
Gaffney, Hamill, Baldwin (technically not a teacher, but a housemaster)
36) American Eagle or Abercrombie?
Fuck that.
37) Are you too forgiving?
Sometimes, probably, and most likely too unforgiving other times.
38) How many children do you want?
I'll ask my wife...whenever I find her, that is.
39) Do you own something from Hot Topic?
Sure don't.
40) Favorite breakfast meal?
Brunches notwithstanding...oatmeal, hardboiled eggs, and tea.
41) Do you own a gun?
This one's for fun...
42) Ever thought you were in love?
Yes.
43) When was the last time you cried?
Summer after freshman year of college. I was on the bus home from a tiring day of research at the Med School and just started crying silently for no real reason. I guess it was from the stress. This happened two days in a row.
44) What did you do 3 nights ago?
Monday night...wrote programs...I think.
45) Olive Garden?
Never been.
46) Have you ever called your teacher mommy?
What?
47) Have you ever been in a castle?
Kind of a castle.
48) Nicknames?
None, really. Most people seem to think my full name is interesting enough to use as a nickname. I've walked into a room and been called my full name by someone I never even met.
49) Do you know anyone named Bertha?
No.
50) Ever been to Kentucky?
No.
51) Do you own anything from Banana Republic?
No.
52) Are you thinking about somebody right now?
I wasn't until I got to this question. Damn you.
53) Ever called somebody Boo?
Uh...
54) Do you drink?
Yes please!
55) Do you own a diamond ring?
Am I wry?
56) Are you happy with your life right now?
It's good for what it is.
57) Do you dye your hair?
No, though I've thought about highlighting it deep blue or purple.
58) What did you do right before you took this?
Studied for CompBio. Sort of.
59) What year were you born?
MCMLXXXVI
60) What were you doing in May of 1994?
Being 7 years old, in 2nd grade, failing at Super Mario, and...who knows.
61) Do you own a Backstreet Boys CD?
No.
62) McDonald's or Wendy's?
Ugh. I guess Wendy's, if it came down to it.
63) Do you like yourself?
I'm alright for what I am. Could be better.
64) Are you closer to your mother or father?
Mom.
65) Favorite physical feature(s) of the preferred sex?
Everything matters!
66) Are you afraid of the dark?
No.
67) Have you ever eaten paste?
Not that I can remember.
68) Do you own a webcam?
My mom made me get one for Skype, but I only used it twice.
69) Have you ever stripped?
Not that I can remember.
70) Ever broke a bone?
No.
72) Do you chat on AIM often?
Quite.
73) Pringles or Lays?
Whatever, chips is chips.
74) Have you ever broken someones heart?
Yes...I tried everything to avoid it, though.
75) Rugrats or Doug?
Doug.
76) Full House or The Brady Bunch?
Never watched either.
77) Like your school guidance counsilor or advisor?
Bertrand? He's the man. I'm a fan of caustic left-wing types.
78) Has anyone ever called you fat?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
79) Do you have a birth mark?
Don't think so.
80) Do you own a car?
No, though I wish I did.
81) Can you cook?
Well enough to not kill anyone who eats it (me).
82) 3 things that annoy you:
I already answered this question tonight and I refuse to do it again.
83) Do you text message often?
Only when texted to.
84) Money or love?
Love. Being broke is romantic.
85) Do you have any scars?
I have one on my left palm from the time Oren convinced me to jump into a bush. We were drunk.
86) What do you want more than anything right now?
To be content.
87) Do you enjoy scary movies?
If they're good.
88) Relationships or one night stands?
Relationships...I guess I'm just not cool.
89) Big Red or Juicy Fruit?
Altoids. The original, because the other kinds have artificial flavoring.
90) Do you enjoy greasy food?
No.
91) Have you seen all the Rocky movies?
None.
92) Do you own a box of crayons?
Used to.
93) Ever had sex in a public place?
No.
94) Who was the last person that said they loved you?
I don't know. Woohoo.
95) Who was the last person that made you mad?
Kids in Basford's class last week.
96) Who was the last person that made you cry?
The overwhelming futility of human existence...um, personified.
97) Who was the last person that made you laugh?
That guy who made the video of distorted BW footage of jitterbuggers synced to Radiohead's "Spooks."
98) Who was the last person that had your heart?
This question bores me.
99) Who was the last person that instant messaged you?
Caroline.
100) Who was the last person that called you?
J.
Well.
2) Do you hate more than 3 people?
Hate is a waste of time.
3) How many houses have you lived in?
3 in Taiwan + 2 in Minnesota + 2 houses (= dorms) in NJ + 3 dorms/apartments in Baltimore = 10 buildings
4) Favorite candy bar?
Milky Way Midnight, I think that's what it was called. Milk chocolate is for suckers.
6) Have you ever tripped someone? (and also, where did 5 go?)
When I was 9 or 10, I tripped this kid next door, who must've been only 5 or something at the most, when he was running in circles. I still don't know why I did that. Possibly my first recorded example of completely unjustified lapse of conscience.
7) Least favorite school subject?
Anything that involves memorizing a lot of stuff.
8) How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Docs + NBs + Converse + "black star" Converse + hiking boots + Tevas + slippers = 7
9) Do you own a Britney Spears CD?
No.
10) Have you ever thrown up in public?
Multiple times...from motion sickness when I was younger, from drunkenness in more recent years.
11) Name one thing that is always on your mind?
The condition of human existence.
12) Favorite genre of music?
Good.
13) What is your zodiac sign?
Leo.
14) What time were you born?
11AM or so...
15) Do you like beer?
Yes please!
16) Ever made a prank phone call?
Yes.
17) What is the most embarassing CD you own?
Either Yanni or something from the nu-metal months (let's not drop names in the latter case).
18) Are you sarcastic?
No...
19) What is your favorite color?
Blue or black.
20) How many watches do you own?
1
21) Summer or winter?
Winter. The cold is my friend.
22) Is anyone in love with you?
Wouldn't bet on it.
23) Favorite color to wear?
Black, grey, or olive drab.
24) Pepsi or Sprite?
Ginger ale...but, Pepsi.
25) What color is your cell phone?
Silver, but flaking off in many places.
26) Where is your second home?
Right here, technically.
27) Have you ever slapped someone?
Nah.
28) Have you ever had a cavity?
Yes.
29) How many lamps are in your bedroom?
Just one, on the desk.
30) How many video games do you own?
The only ones I have with me are burned copies of Unreal Tournament and Serious Sam: the Second Encounter, but I haven't touched either of them in ages. I need to go play Halo 3 at Graham's sometime.
31) What was your first pet?
Never had one.
32) Ever had braces?
Never had any.
33) Do looks matter?
Everything matters!
34) Do you use chapstick?
Guy does what he needs to.
35) Name 3 teachers from high school:
Gaffney, Hamill, Baldwin (technically not a teacher, but a housemaster)
36) American Eagle or Abercrombie?
Fuck that.
37) Are you too forgiving?
Sometimes, probably, and most likely too unforgiving other times.
38) How many children do you want?
I'll ask my wife...whenever I find her, that is.
39) Do you own something from Hot Topic?
Sure don't.
40) Favorite breakfast meal?
Brunches notwithstanding...oatmeal, hardboiled eggs, and tea.
41) Do you own a gun?
This one's for fun...
42) Ever thought you were in love?
Yes.
43) When was the last time you cried?
Summer after freshman year of college. I was on the bus home from a tiring day of research at the Med School and just started crying silently for no real reason. I guess it was from the stress. This happened two days in a row.
44) What did you do 3 nights ago?
Monday night...wrote programs...I think.
45) Olive Garden?
Never been.
46) Have you ever called your teacher mommy?
What?
47) Have you ever been in a castle?
Kind of a castle.
48) Nicknames?
None, really. Most people seem to think my full name is interesting enough to use as a nickname. I've walked into a room and been called my full name by someone I never even met.
49) Do you know anyone named Bertha?
No.
50) Ever been to Kentucky?
No.
51) Do you own anything from Banana Republic?
No.
52) Are you thinking about somebody right now?
I wasn't until I got to this question. Damn you.
53) Ever called somebody Boo?
Uh...
54) Do you drink?
Yes please!
55) Do you own a diamond ring?
Am I wry?
56) Are you happy with your life right now?
It's good for what it is.
57) Do you dye your hair?
No, though I've thought about highlighting it deep blue or purple.
58) What did you do right before you took this?
Studied for CompBio. Sort of.
59) What year were you born?
MCMLXXXVI
60) What were you doing in May of 1994?
Being 7 years old, in 2nd grade, failing at Super Mario, and...who knows.
61) Do you own a Backstreet Boys CD?
No.
62) McDonald's or Wendy's?
Ugh. I guess Wendy's, if it came down to it.
63) Do you like yourself?
I'm alright for what I am. Could be better.
64) Are you closer to your mother or father?
Mom.
65) Favorite physical feature(s) of the preferred sex?
Everything matters!
66) Are you afraid of the dark?
No.
67) Have you ever eaten paste?
Not that I can remember.
68) Do you own a webcam?
My mom made me get one for Skype, but I only used it twice.
69) Have you ever stripped?
Not that I can remember.
70) Ever broke a bone?
No.
72) Do you chat on AIM often?
Quite.
73) Pringles or Lays?
Whatever, chips is chips.
74) Have you ever broken someones heart?
Yes...I tried everything to avoid it, though.
75) Rugrats or Doug?
Doug.
76) Full House or The Brady Bunch?
Never watched either.
77) Like your school guidance counsilor or advisor?
Bertrand? He's the man. I'm a fan of caustic left-wing types.
78) Has anyone ever called you fat?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
79) Do you have a birth mark?
Don't think so.
80) Do you own a car?
No, though I wish I did.
81) Can you cook?
Well enough to not kill anyone who eats it (me).
82) 3 things that annoy you:
I already answered this question tonight and I refuse to do it again.
83) Do you text message often?
Only when texted to.
84) Money or love?
Love. Being broke is romantic.
85) Do you have any scars?
I have one on my left palm from the time Oren convinced me to jump into a bush. We were drunk.
86) What do you want more than anything right now?
To be content.
87) Do you enjoy scary movies?
If they're good.
88) Relationships or one night stands?
Relationships...I guess I'm just not cool.
89) Big Red or Juicy Fruit?
Altoids. The original, because the other kinds have artificial flavoring.
90) Do you enjoy greasy food?
No.
91) Have you seen all the Rocky movies?
None.
92) Do you own a box of crayons?
Used to.
93) Ever had sex in a public place?
No.
94) Who was the last person that said they loved you?
I don't know. Woohoo.
95) Who was the last person that made you mad?
Kids in Basford's class last week.
96) Who was the last person that made you cry?
The overwhelming futility of human existence...um, personified.
97) Who was the last person that made you laugh?
That guy who made the video of distorted BW footage of jitterbuggers synced to Radiohead's "Spooks."
98) Who was the last person that had your heart?
This question bores me.
99) Who was the last person that instant messaged you?
Caroline.
100) Who was the last person that called you?
J.
Raiding Surveys from Hannah, pt. 2
10 bands you've been listening to lately
1) RADIOHEAD. (Well, of course.)
2) Mew
3) Slowdive
4) A Place to Bury Strangers
5) My Bloody Valentine
6) The Hold Steady
7) Thrushes
8) Mazzy Star
9) Sigur Rós
10) The Smiths
9 things you look forward to [Man, I have to come up with that many?]
1) Beach House/Grizzly Bear in a church, with Sarah.
2) Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. (Yes, lame, I know.)
3) The Darjeeling Limited tomorrow, perhaps?
4) Grad school (if I get in).
5) Jesu concert in DC next week.
6) Finishing the poem I started last weekend.
7) In Rainbows discbox in 2 months.
8) Being done with this CompBio midterm.
9) Being comfortable with the present (if that ever happens).
8 things you like to wear
1) Glasses. They help me see.
2) Belt. It keeps my pants on.
3) Headphones.
4) Guitar.
5) Sneakers.
6) Olive drab faux-military jacket.
7) Suit + black shirt + blue tie + Doc Martens (always looking for excuses).
8) Black scarf (winter).
7 things that annoy you
1) Being sleepy at inconvenient times.
2) Caught without an umbrella.
3) Being rushed for anything.
4) Basford's poetry class.
5) Printing and reading the wrong papers for PNA.
6) The fact that I can't hit the "hold" switch on my iPod without opening the case.
7) When Safari on the Jenkins computer lab Macs asks for a keychain and I don't have one, and I can't get a Firefox installation to stick.
6 things you say most everyday
1) Oi.
2) Um.
3) Bollocks.
4) Yeah.
5) Well.
6) Damnit.
5 things you do everyday
1) Wake up to music (except sleep-in days).
2) Check friends' blogs, email, and BBC News.
3) Drink tea (usually).
4) Sleep.
5) Space out.
4 people you want to spend more time with
1) I guess we know whose name goes here.
2) The Nagans.
3) J...maybe. I'm not really sure.
4) Sterling: more jam sessions must occur.
3 movies you could watch over and over again
1) Dark City
2) Kill Bill vol. 1. I saw it three times in the theater, which is a record.
3) I don't know...really not that into movies.
2 of your favorite songs at the moment
1) Radiohead - Bodysnatchers/Nude/All I Need
2) Mew - She Came Home for Christmas
1 person you would spend the rest of your life with
1) Myself...if I can stand me for that long.
1) RADIOHEAD. (Well, of course.)
2) Mew
3) Slowdive
4) A Place to Bury Strangers
5) My Bloody Valentine
6) The Hold Steady
7) Thrushes
8) Mazzy Star
9) Sigur Rós
10) The Smiths
9 things you look forward to [Man, I have to come up with that many?]
1) Beach House/Grizzly Bear in a church, with Sarah.
2) Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. (Yes, lame, I know.)
3) The Darjeeling Limited tomorrow, perhaps?
4) Grad school (if I get in).
5) Jesu concert in DC next week.
6) Finishing the poem I started last weekend.
7) In Rainbows discbox in 2 months.
8) Being done with this CompBio midterm.
9) Being comfortable with the present (if that ever happens).
8 things you like to wear
1) Glasses. They help me see.
2) Belt. It keeps my pants on.
3) Headphones.
4) Guitar.
5) Sneakers.
6) Olive drab faux-military jacket.
7) Suit + black shirt + blue tie + Doc Martens (always looking for excuses).
8) Black scarf (winter).
7 things that annoy you
1) Being sleepy at inconvenient times.
2) Caught without an umbrella.
3) Being rushed for anything.
4) Basford's poetry class.
5) Printing and reading the wrong papers for PNA.
6) The fact that I can't hit the "hold" switch on my iPod without opening the case.
7) When Safari on the Jenkins computer lab Macs asks for a keychain and I don't have one, and I can't get a Firefox installation to stick.
6 things you say most everyday
1) Oi.
2) Um.
3) Bollocks.
4) Yeah.
5) Well.
6) Damnit.
5 things you do everyday
1) Wake up to music (except sleep-in days).
2) Check friends' blogs, email, and BBC News.
3) Drink tea (usually).
4) Sleep.
5) Space out.
4 people you want to spend more time with
1) I guess we know whose name goes here.
2) The Nagans.
3) J...maybe. I'm not really sure.
4) Sterling: more jam sessions must occur.
3 movies you could watch over and over again
1) Dark City
2) Kill Bill vol. 1. I saw it three times in the theater, which is a record.
3) I don't know...really not that into movies.
2 of your favorite songs at the moment
1) Radiohead - Bodysnatchers/Nude/All I Need
2) Mew - She Came Home for Christmas
1 person you would spend the rest of your life with
1) Myself...if I can stand me for that long.
Look Back and Laugh
In Rainbows Day +1: officially better than Hail to the Thief, edging out Amnesiac, possibly equal to The Bends.
In other news, what appears to be a survey about high school:
1. Who was your best friend?
Patrick and Ben, until they got kicked out of school. Then Andrew. Emily, Fiona, and Alice were often around, as well.
2.What sports did you play/ extra curricular activities?
a. Intramurals that I didn't care about, and kayaking! (Never did master rolls, though.)
b. The Lit, first writer, then exec. editor.
3. What kind of car did you drive?
Boarding school/never owned a car.
4. It's Friday night, where were you?
I don't remember...probably running around with Andrew and Zach, or something.
5. Were you a partier?
Only during weekends and breaks senior year, in rural pastures far, far from campus.
6. Were you considered a flirt?
Ha!
7. Ever skip school?
You can't "skip school" if you live there.
8. Were you a nerd?
I was too inconsistent and confused to be a nerd.
where's #9?.....I know, but I won't tell, because that's just way too cheesy.
10. Did you get suspended/expelled
Not even close.
11. Can you sing the fight song?
I sort of remember the melody, except for the last line, and only the first line of words...why I remember even that much is beyond me.
12. Who was your favorite teacher?
John Gaffney, though I slacked off and got Cs from him. Leita Hamill. John Shilts was fun times as well.
13. Favorite class?
AP Physics C (Gaffney)/Postmodern Literature (Hamill)/Makers of the Modern Mind (Shilts)
14. What was your school's full name?
The Lawrenceville School. Note: not "Lawrence Prep."
15. School mascot?
Red...the color red...I don't know.
16. Did you go to Prom?
Yes, for what it was worth.
17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
If I couldn't keep the lessons I learned (which I don't expect I would be allowed to), I'd probably make all the same mistakes...what's the point?
18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Being severely sleep-deprived. I remember more about the afternoon and evening post-ceremony: going with Uncle Bill and Aunt Susan (surrogate familial elements) to Andrew's catered graduation party, falling asleep in the basement while trying to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, returning to Upper with Andrew &al and frantically trying to empty my room while Mills glared at the lot of us...that last fiasco kind of ruined dramatic endings for me.
19. Favorite memory?
There's simply no way to summarize this. Nonspecific moments: Eric's room/Ben's room (first incarnation), the library sun room and CD collection raids at night, diners with Andrew, Emily &al, Lit meetings... Specific moments: chasing cows and drifting into my first drunken daze beside a bonfire in Virginia, drunk on rum watching the sun rise over the Atlantic on the Jersey shore, wandering the same shore at night in total darkness...
20. Where were you on senior skip day?
I've absolutely no clue.
21. Did you have a job your senior year?
Boarding school?
22. Where did you go most often for lunch?
Cafeteria (boarding school)
23. Have you gained weight since then?
Pretty much remained the same.
24. What did you do after graduation?
Oops, I think I already answered this question.
25. When did you graduate?
2004.
26. Who was your Senior prom date?
Alice...to be honest, it was a little strange and awkward.
27. Are you going to your 10 year reunion?
If I'm alive and not on the run from the law, why not?
28. Who was your home room teacher?
No such thing, but my housemaster in Hamill was Gary Baldwin, and Jeff Streeter was assistant. (Forget Mills.)
29. Who will repost this after you?
Satan!
30. Who was President of your class?
Teddy Tu. Taiwanese guy, my mom tried to get me to make connections with him when I first arrived. Unfortunately I didn't really like the guy a whole lot, a fact which hasn't changed over the years, and I haven't spoken to him since high school, except the time we happened to be on the same flight back from Taiwan (freshman year winter break, I think) and I ran into him and Nick Francona during the layover at Anchorage International Airport (!?)
In other news, what appears to be a survey about high school:
1. Who was your best friend?
Patrick and Ben, until they got kicked out of school. Then Andrew. Emily, Fiona, and Alice were often around, as well.
2.What sports did you play/ extra curricular activities?
a. Intramurals that I didn't care about, and kayaking! (Never did master rolls, though.)
b. The Lit, first writer, then exec. editor.
3. What kind of car did you drive?
Boarding school/never owned a car.
4. It's Friday night, where were you?
I don't remember...probably running around with Andrew and Zach, or something.
5. Were you a partier?
Only during weekends and breaks senior year, in rural pastures far, far from campus.
6. Were you considered a flirt?
Ha!
7. Ever skip school?
You can't "skip school" if you live there.
8. Were you a nerd?
I was too inconsistent and confused to be a nerd.
where's #9?.....I know, but I won't tell, because that's just way too cheesy.
10. Did you get suspended/expelled
Not even close.
11. Can you sing the fight song?
I sort of remember the melody, except for the last line, and only the first line of words...why I remember even that much is beyond me.
12. Who was your favorite teacher?
John Gaffney, though I slacked off and got Cs from him. Leita Hamill. John Shilts was fun times as well.
13. Favorite class?
AP Physics C (Gaffney)/Postmodern Literature (Hamill)/Makers of the Modern Mind (Shilts)
14. What was your school's full name?
The Lawrenceville School. Note: not "Lawrence Prep."
15. School mascot?
Red...the color red...I don't know.
16. Did you go to Prom?
Yes, for what it was worth.
17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
If I couldn't keep the lessons I learned (which I don't expect I would be allowed to), I'd probably make all the same mistakes...what's the point?
18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Being severely sleep-deprived. I remember more about the afternoon and evening post-ceremony: going with Uncle Bill and Aunt Susan (surrogate familial elements) to Andrew's catered graduation party, falling asleep in the basement while trying to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, returning to Upper with Andrew &al and frantically trying to empty my room while Mills glared at the lot of us...that last fiasco kind of ruined dramatic endings for me.
19. Favorite memory?
There's simply no way to summarize this. Nonspecific moments: Eric's room/Ben's room (first incarnation), the library sun room and CD collection raids at night, diners with Andrew, Emily &al, Lit meetings... Specific moments: chasing cows and drifting into my first drunken daze beside a bonfire in Virginia, drunk on rum watching the sun rise over the Atlantic on the Jersey shore, wandering the same shore at night in total darkness...
20. Where were you on senior skip day?
I've absolutely no clue.
21. Did you have a job your senior year?
Boarding school?
22. Where did you go most often for lunch?
Cafeteria (boarding school)
23. Have you gained weight since then?
Pretty much remained the same.
24. What did you do after graduation?
Oops, I think I already answered this question.
25. When did you graduate?
2004.
26. Who was your Senior prom date?
Alice...to be honest, it was a little strange and awkward.
27. Are you going to your 10 year reunion?
If I'm alive and not on the run from the law, why not?
28. Who was your home room teacher?
No such thing, but my housemaster in Hamill was Gary Baldwin, and Jeff Streeter was assistant. (Forget Mills.)
29. Who will repost this after you?
Satan!
30. Who was President of your class?
Teddy Tu. Taiwanese guy, my mom tried to get me to make connections with him when I first arrived. Unfortunately I didn't really like the guy a whole lot, a fact which hasn't changed over the years, and I haven't spoken to him since high school, except the time we happened to be on the same flight back from Taiwan (freshman year winter break, I think) and I ran into him and Nick Francona during the layover at Anchorage International Airport (!?)
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Nude
Momentum, it can catch a boy off guard. Just when you thought it was safe to grab a beer, kick back in your little hole in the ground and not get off your ass for the foreseeable future.
New Radiohead album, In Rainbows out today. I happened to be awake at 2:45AM for other reasons, when they sent out the email...needless to say I jumped on it in the blink of an eye, delaying my bedtime even further, discussing the music with Andrew and Caroline who were sleepless in New York. Halfway through my second run-through this morning, I think I can safely say I rank it above Hail to the Thief, and possibly even above Amnesiac (a fire engine just drove by during one of the vocal dropouts in Weird Fishes/Arpeggi--it actually would've been the perfect place for a short fire engine siren solo), though it would be pretty hard for me to admit any album was superior to the The Bends/OK Computer/Kid A trinity, even if it really were.
Anyway, I can't get over how good the guitar on this album is; like Johnny Marr with radioactive superpowers. (Maybe radioactive Mancunians broke into the studio and bit them all on the neck.) It makes me want to turn off my delay and distortion pedals (!) and make up weird chords. After seeing them at Tower Theater in June of 2006 I predicted that the new songs would comprise the next Great Guitar Album, and I was right. I hereby make two more predictions: that some dude on Myspace will have sampled "15 Step" and rapped over it before the end of the week, and the beat from Weird Fishes/Arpeggi will snake its way into indie dance parties everywhere...or something. Wonder what the devil imagery is though...first "Mephistopheles is just beneath" and now "Faust Arp." I'll figure that one out later.
Yesterday, just before checking out to the Deli for Jess and Jordan's reading, I called a friend up on the phone, and heard some interesting news--by "interesting," I mean I yelled "What!?" into my battered Sony-Ericsson more than once, and felt a deluge of blankness wash through my mind. Nevermind the yawning seven-year-wide gap that'll never be bridged, nevermind I'll be leaving town within the year (for Boston, ironically, God willing), nevermind that I don't and never have liked it when people I care about get hurt, much less their life plans flushed down the drain after the time for such cataclysms has long since come and gone--something jolted and turned, ponderously and painstakingly, a giant waterwheel that's slept for years above a river everyone thought had run dry, breaking off rust, shrugging off dust, and in a darkened underpass I thought, oh--I'll go to hell for what my dirty mind is thinking.
So maybe I've been bombed out of my foxhole. The question is real, but at least I have the rest of the week to think about it, until some dude on Myspace raps over 15 Step. Be ready to run, but don't get any big ideas; they're not gonna happen.
New Radiohead album, In Rainbows out today. I happened to be awake at 2:45AM for other reasons, when they sent out the email...needless to say I jumped on it in the blink of an eye, delaying my bedtime even further, discussing the music with Andrew and Caroline who were sleepless in New York. Halfway through my second run-through this morning, I think I can safely say I rank it above Hail to the Thief, and possibly even above Amnesiac (a fire engine just drove by during one of the vocal dropouts in Weird Fishes/Arpeggi--it actually would've been the perfect place for a short fire engine siren solo), though it would be pretty hard for me to admit any album was superior to the The Bends/OK Computer/Kid A trinity, even if it really were.
Anyway, I can't get over how good the guitar on this album is; like Johnny Marr with radioactive superpowers. (Maybe radioactive Mancunians broke into the studio and bit them all on the neck.) It makes me want to turn off my delay and distortion pedals (!) and make up weird chords. After seeing them at Tower Theater in June of 2006 I predicted that the new songs would comprise the next Great Guitar Album, and I was right. I hereby make two more predictions: that some dude on Myspace will have sampled "15 Step" and rapped over it before the end of the week, and the beat from Weird Fishes/Arpeggi will snake its way into indie dance parties everywhere...or something. Wonder what the devil imagery is though...first "Mephistopheles is just beneath" and now "Faust Arp." I'll figure that one out later.
Yesterday, just before checking out to the Deli for Jess and Jordan's reading, I called a friend up on the phone, and heard some interesting news--by "interesting," I mean I yelled "What!?" into my battered Sony-Ericsson more than once, and felt a deluge of blankness wash through my mind. Nevermind the yawning seven-year-wide gap that'll never be bridged, nevermind I'll be leaving town within the year (for Boston, ironically, God willing), nevermind that I don't and never have liked it when people I care about get hurt, much less their life plans flushed down the drain after the time for such cataclysms has long since come and gone--something jolted and turned, ponderously and painstakingly, a giant waterwheel that's slept for years above a river everyone thought had run dry, breaking off rust, shrugging off dust, and in a darkened underpass I thought, oh--I'll go to hell for what my dirty mind is thinking.
So maybe I've been bombed out of my foxhole. The question is real, but at least I have the rest of the week to think about it, until some dude on Myspace raps over 15 Step. Be ready to run, but don't get any big ideas; they're not gonna happen.
Monday, October 8, 2007
We'll Always Have Baltimore
I've slacked, I'll admit it; gone a week, or nearly so, without looking in this figurative mirror of mine. Last week was unexpectedly labor-intensive, and this week should be pretty busy too; but there's nothing to be done about that, I've midterms coming up, and Mikhail's getting on my case about my paper.
Read an entry on Joe M.'s blog--I think he's a cool, intriguing man, though he doesn't seem to give a damn about me either way--where he wrote about finding himself unexpectedly in "work is ultimately the only thing that matters" mode.
Excerpted directly here, because he describes the feeling so well it's pointless for me to try and paraphrase:
"...my emotions about things are in suspension because they seemingly have to be...I've never had so few prospects both personally and professionally, nor have I ever been so completely unconcerned (actually, more like resigned, but I just used that word...) with that fact. Is this the good or bad part of maturity? Is it maturity at all?"
Joe speculated that the situation was unique to the 21 Writing Seminars graduate students at JHU. Unique to Writing Seminars graduate students...and nomadic senior Biophysics undergraduate types with a secret love for 7th chords and Sad Boy Writing, it would seem. Or maybe just not that unique at all within our age bracket. I remember being in this position my senior year of high school, too, only then I had no concept of resignation, though I'd already read Kierkegaard by that point. I suppose the difference between Joe and me is that, for me, should all else fail, I could always try to focus my energies on grad school applications, and he doesn't even have that. But it's still hard to conceive that the next few months may carry little meaning in and of themselves; I sort of want to be in a band again, playing guitar, but what good would that do when I'll almost certainly be in a different city (note the title of this blog) this time next year?
I've empathy for the whole "what's the goddamn point" mentality; once you accept that there's nothing to do and nothing you can do about it, it gets hard to get out of bed in the morning, and even as you do, as you get up and about and attend to your business, some part of you is always detached and adrift from the parts of you that are being productive, wondering in a bemused way what keeps you running around and functional when there seems to be nothing pulling your strings or winding up your gears, no motivation or incentive whatsoever. It's like Jessica said: it takes blood to wake up in the morning.
And if that goes on for long enough, eventually you come around to realizing that, no, there's no real infrastructure in the world, no guidelines or waypoints to guide you to your personal happiness, there's everything you could ever want to tell you how to do and to receive doing, action, action, action, but as far as feeling like you're living a happy life goes, you're really dropped straight into the ocean treading water with no shores in sight, and if you only followed the paths you didn't have to carve yourself from scratch, you'd never find your way to the place you really wanted to be; no, if you wanted to get to happy, wherever the hell that was, you'd have to draw the map on a blank slate, erase, revise, no rules, but no help, no hints either. You realize it's not easy. Granger called me twice from the OC because in the month that he'd been there he hadn't had opportunities to meet any friends, or possibly a new date, just work from 7:30AM to 11:30PM.
The fact is, nobody really gives a damn if you snap, as long as you don't. Nothing's ever wrong with you until something is. And then they wonder why people do. I'm glad I won't be in the real world for quite a few years yet.
Saturday was busy: took a long walk to the Waverly Farmer's Market in the morning, first time I'd been here in my 3+ years in Baltimore. I have to say, I much preferred the atmosphere there than that in Giant at 9PM on a weeknight, which is just depressing. That afternoon, I went to my labmate Lijuan's wedding in Catonsville. It was very Chinese, and very Christian, and the minister's exhortation was vaguely misogynistic--something about the husband needing to self-sacrifice, and the woman needing to "submit," submit, submit (this word was used many times over) for the sake of love, but that despite that, husband and wife were equal, because the husband and wife were to each other as Christ and his congregation were--what the hell ass? I couldn't tell if I was crazy or actually witnessing the assignment horribly obsolete gender roles. A few times I actually felt like bolting from the church. But then again, Lijuan (and her husband as well, I assume) is the type of person who'd ask around in July for a place her then-fiance could live for a month--and no more--in September, because although he was moving to Baltimore to be with her, she wouldn't let him live with her until they were actually married.
Apparently she came to lab yesterday, too. As in the day after her own wedding. Some people just fucking scare me.
That evening we went to see Sigur Ros' film, Heima, which was screening at the Rotunda, which is possibly the least appropriate venue for anything involving Sigur Ros. The film consisted mostly of Iceland looking beautiful, though it did look really fucking beautiful. Stunning scenes of the band setting up for an acoustic set in the middle of a huge, sprawling steppe with glacial mountain ranges looming over the horizon line. Unbelievable. I want to go there now.
Saturday night I watched Casablanca with Jess and Thom. I usually don't respond particularly strongly to movies, and I'm not exactly a connoisseur of the classics, but that was a great movie. Humphrey Bogart set the bar way too damn high for us nihilistic angsty types. Yeah, sure, we'll always have Paris, but Paris is overrun by Nazis now, or maybe by Nazis we actually mean langoliers, or entropy's rushing tide, whatever. Point is, after being shunted to the backwaters to await the future for years, this is what one deserves, this is what one gets? Way too damn high.
Yesterday was pretty interesting for a Sunday; went down to the Current Space near the Inner Harbor with Diamond and Sarah K. to see Monarch at the Current Canyon arts festival. It was a good show; they had a really shoegazey new song, which was very long, and very beautiful. Hung out in an alleyway where Diamond and I watched a couple of solo acts (acoustic guitar through EHX pedals, circuit-bending accompanied by Jeskola Buzz and such) perform while Sarah checked out handmade clothing. Bizarrely, Cheri--the one from Alabama whom I met at Pitchfork Festival in July--called, and I talked to her for 20 minutes while standing on the sidewalk with Diamond and Sarah, who chatted as they waited for me. I owe Cheri a long email--she's a very intense type with a head full of thoughts, though not all of them agree with me.
Later that night after we went home, Diamond looked at Sarah's Myspace and was disappointed to find she was dating someone. Alas, alack, etc., either way I had a crush on her first.
Speaking of Sarah, I've been borrowing her as a semi-muse for poetry assignments, which probably reflects upon my aforementioned lazy resignation; did that for last week's poem, and will probably do it this week as well. I'm that boring.
Except I have a new theory, stemming from thoughts upon reading one of Jessica's short stories, that you can't really fall in love with a girl until you've seen the back of her neck. I remember being at the TV on the Radio show at Sonar last fall. It was on a Friday night; that Tuesday had been the day Sarah came to Trafalgar's show at 8x10, after which I pulled her aside and told her that I really liked her, after which she told me she was taken...and after that we were cool, and I thought I was done, that I'd done a good job of pre-empting the awkwardness that would've inevitably resulted had I allowed the emotions (remember those?) to bottle up longer. (And I did, more or less.) But anyway, that Friday--almost a year ago--we were at the TV on the Radio show with John and some others...she stood in front of me, and happened to have her hair tied up, and I accidentally let my eyes drift from the band onstage and saw the back of her neck--and all of a sudden it felt like getting hit by a truck, as though I'd never actually liked her until that moment. These things happen, I suppose. Or maybe they don't, and I just remember them happening a year later.
That last paragraph was really a pretty messy narrative. I'm just glad the theory itself is arguably more interesting than me and my little bundles of romanticized nostalgia. (Remember those?)
Read an entry on Joe M.'s blog--I think he's a cool, intriguing man, though he doesn't seem to give a damn about me either way--where he wrote about finding himself unexpectedly in "work is ultimately the only thing that matters" mode.
Excerpted directly here, because he describes the feeling so well it's pointless for me to try and paraphrase:
"...my emotions about things are in suspension because they seemingly have to be...I've never had so few prospects both personally and professionally, nor have I ever been so completely unconcerned (actually, more like resigned, but I just used that word...) with that fact. Is this the good or bad part of maturity? Is it maturity at all?"
Joe speculated that the situation was unique to the 21 Writing Seminars graduate students at JHU. Unique to Writing Seminars graduate students...and nomadic senior Biophysics undergraduate types with a secret love for 7th chords and Sad Boy Writing, it would seem. Or maybe just not that unique at all within our age bracket. I remember being in this position my senior year of high school, too, only then I had no concept of resignation, though I'd already read Kierkegaard by that point. I suppose the difference between Joe and me is that, for me, should all else fail, I could always try to focus my energies on grad school applications, and he doesn't even have that. But it's still hard to conceive that the next few months may carry little meaning in and of themselves; I sort of want to be in a band again, playing guitar, but what good would that do when I'll almost certainly be in a different city (note the title of this blog) this time next year?
I've empathy for the whole "what's the goddamn point" mentality; once you accept that there's nothing to do and nothing you can do about it, it gets hard to get out of bed in the morning, and even as you do, as you get up and about and attend to your business, some part of you is always detached and adrift from the parts of you that are being productive, wondering in a bemused way what keeps you running around and functional when there seems to be nothing pulling your strings or winding up your gears, no motivation or incentive whatsoever. It's like Jessica said: it takes blood to wake up in the morning.
And if that goes on for long enough, eventually you come around to realizing that, no, there's no real infrastructure in the world, no guidelines or waypoints to guide you to your personal happiness, there's everything you could ever want to tell you how to do and to receive doing, action, action, action, but as far as feeling like you're living a happy life goes, you're really dropped straight into the ocean treading water with no shores in sight, and if you only followed the paths you didn't have to carve yourself from scratch, you'd never find your way to the place you really wanted to be; no, if you wanted to get to happy, wherever the hell that was, you'd have to draw the map on a blank slate, erase, revise, no rules, but no help, no hints either. You realize it's not easy. Granger called me twice from the OC because in the month that he'd been there he hadn't had opportunities to meet any friends, or possibly a new date, just work from 7:30AM to 11:30PM.
The fact is, nobody really gives a damn if you snap, as long as you don't. Nothing's ever wrong with you until something is. And then they wonder why people do. I'm glad I won't be in the real world for quite a few years yet.
Saturday was busy: took a long walk to the Waverly Farmer's Market in the morning, first time I'd been here in my 3+ years in Baltimore. I have to say, I much preferred the atmosphere there than that in Giant at 9PM on a weeknight, which is just depressing. That afternoon, I went to my labmate Lijuan's wedding in Catonsville. It was very Chinese, and very Christian, and the minister's exhortation was vaguely misogynistic--something about the husband needing to self-sacrifice, and the woman needing to "submit," submit, submit (this word was used many times over) for the sake of love, but that despite that, husband and wife were equal, because the husband and wife were to each other as Christ and his congregation were--what the hell ass? I couldn't tell if I was crazy or actually witnessing the assignment horribly obsolete gender roles. A few times I actually felt like bolting from the church. But then again, Lijuan (and her husband as well, I assume) is the type of person who'd ask around in July for a place her then-fiance could live for a month--and no more--in September, because although he was moving to Baltimore to be with her, she wouldn't let him live with her until they were actually married.
Apparently she came to lab yesterday, too. As in the day after her own wedding. Some people just fucking scare me.
That evening we went to see Sigur Ros' film, Heima, which was screening at the Rotunda, which is possibly the least appropriate venue for anything involving Sigur Ros. The film consisted mostly of Iceland looking beautiful, though it did look really fucking beautiful. Stunning scenes of the band setting up for an acoustic set in the middle of a huge, sprawling steppe with glacial mountain ranges looming over the horizon line. Unbelievable. I want to go there now.
Saturday night I watched Casablanca with Jess and Thom. I usually don't respond particularly strongly to movies, and I'm not exactly a connoisseur of the classics, but that was a great movie. Humphrey Bogart set the bar way too damn high for us nihilistic angsty types. Yeah, sure, we'll always have Paris, but Paris is overrun by Nazis now, or maybe by Nazis we actually mean langoliers, or entropy's rushing tide, whatever. Point is, after being shunted to the backwaters to await the future for years, this is what one deserves, this is what one gets? Way too damn high.
Yesterday was pretty interesting for a Sunday; went down to the Current Space near the Inner Harbor with Diamond and Sarah K. to see Monarch at the Current Canyon arts festival. It was a good show; they had a really shoegazey new song, which was very long, and very beautiful. Hung out in an alleyway where Diamond and I watched a couple of solo acts (acoustic guitar through EHX pedals, circuit-bending accompanied by Jeskola Buzz and such) perform while Sarah checked out handmade clothing. Bizarrely, Cheri--the one from Alabama whom I met at Pitchfork Festival in July--called, and I talked to her for 20 minutes while standing on the sidewalk with Diamond and Sarah, who chatted as they waited for me. I owe Cheri a long email--she's a very intense type with a head full of thoughts, though not all of them agree with me.
Later that night after we went home, Diamond looked at Sarah's Myspace and was disappointed to find she was dating someone. Alas, alack, etc., either way I had a crush on her first.
Speaking of Sarah, I've been borrowing her as a semi-muse for poetry assignments, which probably reflects upon my aforementioned lazy resignation; did that for last week's poem, and will probably do it this week as well. I'm that boring.
Except I have a new theory, stemming from thoughts upon reading one of Jessica's short stories, that you can't really fall in love with a girl until you've seen the back of her neck. I remember being at the TV on the Radio show at Sonar last fall. It was on a Friday night; that Tuesday had been the day Sarah came to Trafalgar's show at 8x10, after which I pulled her aside and told her that I really liked her, after which she told me she was taken...and after that we were cool, and I thought I was done, that I'd done a good job of pre-empting the awkwardness that would've inevitably resulted had I allowed the emotions (remember those?) to bottle up longer. (And I did, more or less.) But anyway, that Friday--almost a year ago--we were at the TV on the Radio show with John and some others...she stood in front of me, and happened to have her hair tied up, and I accidentally let my eyes drift from the band onstage and saw the back of her neck--and all of a sudden it felt like getting hit by a truck, as though I'd never actually liked her until that moment. These things happen, I suppose. Or maybe they don't, and I just remember them happening a year later.
That last paragraph was really a pretty messy narrative. I'm just glad the theory itself is arguably more interesting than me and my little bundles of romanticized nostalgia. (Remember those?)
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
You Haven't Seen Enough
I never thought that a discussion about poetry could upset me on a personal level, but apparently I was wrong:
We were workshopping a girl's poem in class. It was about remembering her grandmother six years after her death, picking imagery from a birthday party her grandmother had thrown for her and the grandmother's funeral, and it was written in an understated, yet subtly sincere way that was rather close to my own heart.
Anyway, this kid made some comment about how she was putting "a cushion between her poem and her emotions"--saying that there wasn't enough raw anguish apropos to the death of a loved one coming through the poem, and not enough of the knee-jerk "betrayal" feeling (which he seemed to pick up on, though I didn't see it as being part of the original poem's intent at all, if it was even possible to infer such a sentiment from the poem), and those things detracted from the psychological impact. I did not agree with this, and responded that, especially given the six-year gap between the death and the perspective from which the poem was written, it might make more sense to deliver the emotions in a fuzzy, nostalgic way.
So far all in good fun, if momentarily absurd, but a girl suddenly burst in saying she couldn't believe I would suggest something like that, that the removal took away something human about grieving. She said that it was, quote, "anti-poetry." As though I was somehow inhuman for suggesting that one could write about grief in a mellowed-out tone of voice.
I had a lot of things to say to that. Things along the lines of my own father died not even six years ago, and two more of my family members have died since then, you can't tell me what's human about grieving and what's not because you don't have any fucking perspective, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I wanted to say that sometimes--all of the time for me--writing poetry was like throwing knives at the circus: you have to cut it as close as you humanly can, but you can never throw the knife directly at your target, because if you actually hit it, you were fucked.
I wanted to say that if talking about emotions, real ones, were so easy a thing, we wouldn't have to resort to literature, confronting emotions like Perseus did Medusa--through reflections and projections, because to face the thing face-on would snuff out the life in us all.
I wanted to ask if they could even understood what that meant, and if not, what were they even talking about?
All these things rushed to my head like a dammed-up river, and I couldn't even think until a minute later, when I realized the professor was talking to me, and actually agreeing with them. Bloody hell. All I could do after that class ended was wander into the Hut, collapse on a couch, crank Kid A and pass out. I didn't get much sleep last night.
And people wonder why I never talk about my "emotions," as they were.
We were workshopping a girl's poem in class. It was about remembering her grandmother six years after her death, picking imagery from a birthday party her grandmother had thrown for her and the grandmother's funeral, and it was written in an understated, yet subtly sincere way that was rather close to my own heart.
Anyway, this kid made some comment about how she was putting "a cushion between her poem and her emotions"--saying that there wasn't enough raw anguish apropos to the death of a loved one coming through the poem, and not enough of the knee-jerk "betrayal" feeling (which he seemed to pick up on, though I didn't see it as being part of the original poem's intent at all, if it was even possible to infer such a sentiment from the poem), and those things detracted from the psychological impact. I did not agree with this, and responded that, especially given the six-year gap between the death and the perspective from which the poem was written, it might make more sense to deliver the emotions in a fuzzy, nostalgic way.
So far all in good fun, if momentarily absurd, but a girl suddenly burst in saying she couldn't believe I would suggest something like that, that the removal took away something human about grieving. She said that it was, quote, "anti-poetry." As though I was somehow inhuman for suggesting that one could write about grief in a mellowed-out tone of voice.
I had a lot of things to say to that. Things along the lines of my own father died not even six years ago, and two more of my family members have died since then, you can't tell me what's human about grieving and what's not because you don't have any fucking perspective, you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I wanted to say that sometimes--all of the time for me--writing poetry was like throwing knives at the circus: you have to cut it as close as you humanly can, but you can never throw the knife directly at your target, because if you actually hit it, you were fucked.
I wanted to say that if talking about emotions, real ones, were so easy a thing, we wouldn't have to resort to literature, confronting emotions like Perseus did Medusa--through reflections and projections, because to face the thing face-on would snuff out the life in us all.
I wanted to ask if they could even understood what that meant, and if not, what were they even talking about?
All these things rushed to my head like a dammed-up river, and I couldn't even think until a minute later, when I realized the professor was talking to me, and actually agreeing with them. Bloody hell. All I could do after that class ended was wander into the Hut, collapse on a couch, crank Kid A and pass out. I didn't get much sleep last night.
And people wonder why I never talk about my "emotions," as they were.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Disparate and Misinformed
I should sleep more; late nights spent trying to forcibly realign my Circadian rhythm always leave me blank the next day. Not having anything force me to wake up is getting to be challenging.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays it's difficult to keep in mind that I am still in college, since I have either only one or no class on these days. I just hack it in the lab all day, for whatever good that does. I should really start learning to spend time where it is needed and not spend it where it is not. You'd think I'd've learned that years ago, but it turns out that wasting time is essential to my health.
High Zero this past weekend, the annual Baltimorean orgy of experimental noise-music; went with Jessica and Victor, Esteban was with us for the ride there, but bailed with Sophie and Jeanette when it became evident they were sold out of seats at the Theater Project. I waited around and managed to score a ticket (= wristband) after Jaap Blonck's opening set. The rest was good noise; the closer with dueling vocals between Blonck and local beatboxer Shodekeh, accompanied by a saxophone and Dan Breen's drums, was particularly amazing.
We hit up the H&H afterparty after that, after farewells to Victor (he seems to stick to his own devices these days; wish there was something I could do about that, but he seems wary of me, at least the way I am in public, and I've never been good at busting people out of their shells) and a 20-minute trek with Dani walking his bike beside Jess and me. H&H parties are something of a nostalgia item for me: I first started going to them freshman year after the Animal Collective show that I somehow wound up in the front row at, when I was still hanging with Julia's crowd (including Liz, Emily, et al, many of whom were also at this party). I've been there a few times since then, despite a drought that lasted all sophomore year. H&H is kind of a symbol, for me, of my once-held belief in some sort of Baltimore "scene" solidarity, when I was still trying to "get in on it" as the municipality likes to say, and really believing I was connecting with those people I was spending my time with, instead of accepting my self-imposed exile while paradoxically living in that city and among those people. I have a photo of the skyline I took from the H&H fire escape freshman year, titled "my city"--so much for the city ever belonging to me, or anyone.
Come this time next year I will most likely be in: 1. Boston 2. Chicago 3. San Francisco Bay Area--and if such a time comes, don't cry for me, Baltimore, because Lord knows I could never really leave you--we all track pieces of ourselves like clinging rubble as we pass through this world, after all--and anyway you broke my fucking heart. Just kidding about the second part. But there are still times I feel like I've gotten all I could out of this city--am I wrong? would that ever happen? have I just lost my nerve and become anxious to cut my losses and start again clean-slate so I can take comfort in making the same mistakes for a second time? Probably, probably not, and most likely are the answers to those questions.
At the Ottobar show on Friday night, Two if by Sea sang something about "let's go back to the city...in the snow/Of Baltimore" over a triumphant flight of power chords, and I wondered if they were singing about some fantastical interpretation of Baltimore that I didn't know about, because it doesn't really snow that much here (at least for someone who was raised in MN and NJ), and who could seriously sing about Baltimore in that anthemic tone of voice, anyway?
But I digressed. Yeah, there was a dance party, in a warehouse, with one of the best DJs I've heard in this city. Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio was dancing in the corner, although he bailed before I could speak to him. I drank beer and drank some more because it kept bypassing my head and going straight to my gut, for some reason, and when someone pulled a chair into the middle of the floor I danced on that; luckily for me (and my semi-functional right ankle), I didn't fall, or break the chair (the guy who came after the guy after me did both of those things). I distractedly did pull-ups in the bathroom doorframe while waiting in line. I met a MICA girl named Sophia whom I greeted with a big hug for no reason than I can now think of (sometimes I'm so amiable I shock myself; too bad this only happens when I'm drunk). She said it was the first time she'd managed to find her way there without getting lost, and later asked me if I had any drugs, or knew anyone who had some--"What kind of drugs?" "Anything, really."--to which I had to say no, with a genuine feeling of apology.
But in other news. There is a new Radiohead album coming out in 9 days. There is a massacre in Burma. All in my life seems pretty trivial by comparison. Don't let me dwindle away. Help keep me here, man, at least until I have to leave, and we all have to let me go.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays it's difficult to keep in mind that I am still in college, since I have either only one or no class on these days. I just hack it in the lab all day, for whatever good that does. I should really start learning to spend time where it is needed and not spend it where it is not. You'd think I'd've learned that years ago, but it turns out that wasting time is essential to my health.
High Zero this past weekend, the annual Baltimorean orgy of experimental noise-music; went with Jessica and Victor, Esteban was with us for the ride there, but bailed with Sophie and Jeanette when it became evident they were sold out of seats at the Theater Project. I waited around and managed to score a ticket (= wristband) after Jaap Blonck's opening set. The rest was good noise; the closer with dueling vocals between Blonck and local beatboxer Shodekeh, accompanied by a saxophone and Dan Breen's drums, was particularly amazing.
We hit up the H&H afterparty after that, after farewells to Victor (he seems to stick to his own devices these days; wish there was something I could do about that, but he seems wary of me, at least the way I am in public, and I've never been good at busting people out of their shells) and a 20-minute trek with Dani walking his bike beside Jess and me. H&H parties are something of a nostalgia item for me: I first started going to them freshman year after the Animal Collective show that I somehow wound up in the front row at, when I was still hanging with Julia's crowd (including Liz, Emily, et al, many of whom were also at this party). I've been there a few times since then, despite a drought that lasted all sophomore year. H&H is kind of a symbol, for me, of my once-held belief in some sort of Baltimore "scene" solidarity, when I was still trying to "get in on it" as the municipality likes to say, and really believing I was connecting with those people I was spending my time with, instead of accepting my self-imposed exile while paradoxically living in that city and among those people. I have a photo of the skyline I took from the H&H fire escape freshman year, titled "my city"--so much for the city ever belonging to me, or anyone.
Come this time next year I will most likely be in: 1. Boston 2. Chicago 3. San Francisco Bay Area--and if such a time comes, don't cry for me, Baltimore, because Lord knows I could never really leave you--we all track pieces of ourselves like clinging rubble as we pass through this world, after all--and anyway you broke my fucking heart. Just kidding about the second part. But there are still times I feel like I've gotten all I could out of this city--am I wrong? would that ever happen? have I just lost my nerve and become anxious to cut my losses and start again clean-slate so I can take comfort in making the same mistakes for a second time? Probably, probably not, and most likely are the answers to those questions.
At the Ottobar show on Friday night, Two if by Sea sang something about "let's go back to the city...in the snow/Of Baltimore" over a triumphant flight of power chords, and I wondered if they were singing about some fantastical interpretation of Baltimore that I didn't know about, because it doesn't really snow that much here (at least for someone who was raised in MN and NJ), and who could seriously sing about Baltimore in that anthemic tone of voice, anyway?
But I digressed. Yeah, there was a dance party, in a warehouse, with one of the best DJs I've heard in this city. Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio was dancing in the corner, although he bailed before I could speak to him. I drank beer and drank some more because it kept bypassing my head and going straight to my gut, for some reason, and when someone pulled a chair into the middle of the floor I danced on that; luckily for me (and my semi-functional right ankle), I didn't fall, or break the chair (the guy who came after the guy after me did both of those things). I distractedly did pull-ups in the bathroom doorframe while waiting in line. I met a MICA girl named Sophia whom I greeted with a big hug for no reason than I can now think of (sometimes I'm so amiable I shock myself; too bad this only happens when I'm drunk). She said it was the first time she'd managed to find her way there without getting lost, and later asked me if I had any drugs, or knew anyone who had some--"What kind of drugs?" "Anything, really."--to which I had to say no, with a genuine feeling of apology.
But in other news. There is a new Radiohead album coming out in 9 days. There is a massacre in Burma. All in my life seems pretty trivial by comparison. Don't let me dwindle away. Help keep me here, man, at least until I have to leave, and we all have to let me go.
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