But most of all, thank you, Jon Stewart, for making sense of it all...

Ode to Election Year Politics...

Oh, election year politics, how I love you...and hate you...and love to hate you and hate to love you. Mostly, I just love you.

A brief recap:

First, there was the unprecedented primary between Hillary and Barack. Back in March I got to experience first hand the thrilling drama that is a political caucus (and no, I am not exaggerating...it was actually thrilling and atually dramatic). There were people cheering and boo-ing, and wearing Hillary bumper stickers on their asses and vying for coveted spots as delegates. The line outside the community center in the park near my house wrapped around the entire parking lot.

Then we had the daily suspence of the V.P. pick. This did not disappoint. Would Obama pick Hillary? Would Hillary bitch and whine if he didn't? And, who the hell is Sarah Palin and what the F*** was John McCain thinking???

Then there was the excitement of the conventions. Who doesn't love watching the crazies dressed in red, white, and blue from head to toe with donkey hats and too many opinions for cable news reporters to handle?!? Oh, the endless drama...did the Clintons really endorse Obama enough, and why did Obama stand in front of giant columns, and what is the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom, and how did the Republicans manage to pose John McCain in front of a random middle school as a backdrop????

Another election season bonus: SNL is relavent (and funny) again! Thank you, Tina Fey.

After all this, and just when you think things might settle down, it is debate time! Just to keep things interesting, John McCain suspended his campaign to fix the economy but then changed his mind (and also didn't fix anything) and came to the debate anyway. Can it get any better?? (Answer: Yes, it can. We still get to see Joe Biden debate...er...um...demolish Sarah Palin this Thursday. I. Can. Not. Wait.)

So, election year, please, please, please don't end. I will miss you.

Another very true (but sad) thing...

Yet one more story to add to the growing arsenal of life experiences that prove to me I can no longer escape the label "completely uncoordinated clutz."1 Today the weather was lovely and it felt like fall. So, I decided to go for a walk/run. I ran about 1/2 a mile and promptly twisted my ankle. I have iced and wrapped and iced and taken anti-inflammatory pain killers and my stupid ankle is just completely fucked up.

I. Am. A. Clutz.

I hate being this uncoordinated as it is a pain in the ass (er, foot?) and makes me feel like I'm just a spastic crazy person. However, the sad conclusion is that there is simply nothing I can do to change this trait. I have tried to calm down/walk more carefully/will myself into graceful coordination/go to yoga to improve balance/other anti-clutz stuff and nothing works. I was walking very carefully today. I am just not good at walking or running or remaining uninjured in day to day life. Also, I hit a parked car yesterday in the Starbucks parking lot. Sheesh.



1 Other stories in this list include, breaking my foot when walking, breaking my hand when walking, nearly cutting off my fingertip when shutting a door, and breaking my toe when walking (well, that time I was pretty drunk...so, "breaking my toe when walking under the influence" is more accurate). Also, sorry for the footnote explanation. I'm drowning in thesis-writing at this point and therefore footnotes seem the most logical method of explanation of related facts.

Perhaps one of the truer true things...

Bessie Smith is not only my favorite blues singer, but quite possibly my favorite female vocalist of all times. Her voice is heartache dipped in sorrow coated in soulful honesty and unshakable grit and strength. I love her. I have loved her since I heard Mountain Top Blues when I was 19 (Lyrics from Mountain Top: "When you find me, you will see, lots of pieces layin' round").

Also, Bessie is from Tennessee (Chattanooga, to be exact) and "Rocky Top will always be, home sweet home to me..."

Ode to immitative counterpoint...

Ah, history of western music, how i love you!

This is my third semester teaching an undergraduate course in music appreciation. Each semester begins with me bombarding poor unsuspecting (and largely uninterested) students with a crash course in medieval and renaissance music. I will refrain here from digressing into a diatribe on traditional musicological pedagogy and the challenges of making plainchant relevant to today's non-major student. What I will say, is that each semester, about two weeks into class, we come to Palestrina (dear old savior of polyphony and musical hero of the Council of Trent) and his famous Pope Marcellus Mass. Every time I play Palestrina's Agnus Dei from this mass, something in the unfolding of the first contrapuntal notes stops me in my tracks. Listening to this music is a spiritual experience for me and one that provides me with a sense of awe in the science and art of musical sound. I always play it for my students with the lights off and I always feel that when it is over, nothing I could possibly say, point out, lecture, instruct, or explain could do it justice. So I don't say anything, I just play it again (still in the dark...while students look at me as if I'm just a tad bit crazy...). There are no words.

A "key" taboo. Or, something you'll never see at the Dallas Museum of Art...

http://karalla.com/Piano/BabyGrand.htm

How to become a musician. Or, Satie says (quote of the day)...

"How does one become a musician? It is quite simple: one finds a teacher - a music teacher, if possible. One chooses him carefully, attentively, severely. One agrees a price. At this point, I prefer to tell you, one should not get carried away. An hour is quickly up, yes, one agrees a price, but...a good price...for oneself - moderate...yes. . . .

Next one must buy a metronome. Above all, one that is not too ripe...nice and plump...a little fat...one that works properly. There are metronomes that work out of time...like madmen. There are even ones that do not work at all.

The pupil must have a lot of patience - great patience - the patience of a horse, a big one. For it is useful to get used to putting up with the teacher. Just think, now: a teacher! he asks things he knows already & which you do not know. Obviously, he is taking advantage. . . ."1

1Quoted in Erik Satie A Mammal's Notebook, ed. and trans. by Ornella Volta, 132.

A little Thursday morning Henry James...

I've been reading James' The Portrait of a Lady as part of my ongoing reading-classic-novels-of-the-last-two-centuries-I-somehow-missed-in-my-education-thus-far project. This is my favorite part so far:

"'Young girls here - in decent houses - don't sit alone with the gentlemen late at night.'
'You were very right to tell me then,' said Isabel. 'I don't understand it, but I'm very glad to know it.'
'I shall always tell you,' her aunt answered, 'whenever I see you taking what seems to me too much liberty.'
'Pray do; but i don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just.'
'Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways.'
'Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do.'
'So as to do them?' asked her aunt.
'So as to choose,' said Isabel."

On feeling like a broken record. Or, 10 things i say more than 20 times a day...

1. "Sit up straight and tall, please."

2. "No saggy wrists. Show me good piano hands!"

3. "Fuck. Fucking shit, fuck."*

4. "Okay, play it one more time."

5. "Take your feet OFF the pedals. Now, please. Feet off the pedals. Sit up straight and tall."

6. "Let's try that again with a steady beat."

7. "There's something wrong with me."**

8. "Please play that again with dynamics."

9. "Sit up straight and tall, please."

10. "Oh, dear."***


*Note that I don't say "fuck" in the presence of young children during piano lessons. My daily expletive quota is most typically reached in the safe (and soundproof) confines of my car.

**Note that this, also, is not something I say in the piano lesson setting. (Although, that would be funny. I imagine the following scenario: "Good job on your new song, little Johnny. By the way, there is something wrong with me. I'm totally fucked up about relationships and my life is a complete mess. Want to take a break from 'Yankee Doodle' and go grab a drink?").

***Who knows! I just say this all the time. It's my inner spinster/old lady coming out. Oh, dear.

Sylvia says (quote of the day)...

"This hurts. Not being perfect hurts. Having to bother about work in order to eat and have a house hurts. So what. It's about time. This is the month which ends a quarter of a century for me, lived under the shadow of fear: fear that I would fall short of some abstract perfection: I have often fought, fought and won, not perfection, but an acceptance of myself as having a right to live on my own human, fallible terms. "1

1 From Sylvia Plath's Diary. Reprinted in The Norton Book of Women's Lives, 667.

Satie says (quote of the day)...

"Am I French?...

Of course I am...How do you think a man of my age could not be French?...

You amaze me..."1




1 Nigel Wilkens, The Writings of Erik Satie (London: Eulenburg Books, 1980), 68.

A few more true things...

1. I am the world’s worst (or best, depending on your perspective) procrastinator. I know there are lazy wait-til-the-last-minute-ers out there who think they are worse than me. Sorry, people, you just aren’t. I take the cake. Your procrastination can’t hold a candle to mine. My procrastination trophy is WAY bigger than yours. If you wait until the last minute, I will wait one more minute than you and then find five more minutes and then wait til the last one of THOSE minutes. (Note to prospective employers: I’m still super amazing and productive).
2. I work well under pressure.
3. My favorite cheesy one-liner joke about procrastination is: “If you wait ‘til the last minute, it only takes a minute!”
4. I have the sense of humor of a 68-year-old man.

Some things that are true...

1. Sara Palin would make an excellent motivational speaker at a Christian women’s conference. Christian soccer moms at a weekend conference would love that joke about hockey moms, pit bulls, and lipstick. They would also love her family “values” (i.e. marrying off her under aged daughter to an asshole just because she’s pregnant). They would also love her stupid claw-clip hair-do.
2. Sara Palin would not make an even passable vice president. She has no foreign policy experience and her ethics are questionable (enter trooper-gate).

On being a student (still)...

Waking up on Saturday morning with absolutely nothing to do (for real nothing, like you can’t even think of something you remotely need to do, not even your laundry or calling your grandma or painting your toes) is quite possibly the most peaceful, happy, amazing feeling one can experience in life. In that moment, the world is your oyster. You can go back to sleep, you can go shopping, you can shower or not shower, you can watch tv, or go to a movie by yourself, or eat breakfast at 3:00pm, or call people who live far away, or go for a walk, or read a book, or look up your old house on google maps, or paint your kitchen, or read about Larry King’s life and career on Wikipedia, or get a margarita, or drive around without a destination, or, or, or…

The possibilities are endless.

Waking up on Saturday morning knowing you have to sit at your computer all day and work on your thesis is just not the same. However, if the air is crisp and you aren’t too hung-over and there’s a good spot at your favorite coffee shop, there is something satisfying about studying on a Saturday. Good coffee is just good. It tastes good and pulls you gently into productive consciousness. Listening to “study music”** is also good. Accomplishing things gives one a sense of satisfaction. Getting lost in researching something you love is fulfilling. Avoiding being completely grown up and in the ‘real world’ can save you from having an emotional breakdown or a quarter-life crisis.

Also, it is possible that still technically being a student gives one license to be completely irresponsible on occasion (or most of the time if we’re honest, here).


P.S.
Murray Street Coffee in Deep Ellum is my favorite coffee shop in Dallas (the only good one, really, since the sad removal (sniff) of dear old Gachet on lower Greeneville). Murray Street has good coffee, a big table upstairs, decent music (usually), and plenty of outlets for my computer with its sad, old, tired battery. Also, the owners are probably 60 but think they are 20-something hipsters. Also, they shop exclusively at Barney’s. Also, I think the lady (Liz) is an alcoholic. Sometimes she yells at people. Also, sometimes I think she’s strung out on drugs. I like her because she gives me free coffee (I think she feels bad for me because I obviously shop at Target and thrift stores and can’t afford Barney’s). Also, she makes me kick ass oatmeal. It takes 30 minutes but is worth the wait. Fluffy oats, fresh berries, and cream. Mmm-mmmmmm!

**Someday I will define the characteristics of perfect study music. For now, know that I am listening to Fleet Foxes and they have what it takes.