Tuesday, February 19
I have written four record reviews this afternoon/evening, as you can see below. Despite my intentions on brevity, they all ended up being over 500 words. Among them is, I think, some of the better stuff I've done later. As usual, a lot of these lines have been kicking around in my head over the last week or so. I didn't know it was all going to come out today though. Well, I figure, I might as well write some more now. (But read the reviews, I like them, and while you're at it check out the four terrific videos from the new Cornelius record, directed by the man himself. And is anybody interested in the point contest? It's a little late for it, but it looks like fun.)
About the 1:15 Monday to 12:35 Tuesday block of classes and stuff:
I augmented my food purchases with some akmak and mango chutney and strolled over to class, through the ridiculously pretty scene of arboretum workers working amidst fields of purple crocuses with a jhetto-blaster playing Vivaldi or something. I sat alternately unperturbed and slightly anxious as Bruce took the first half hour of class talking about the paper that I don't have to write (oh yeah, that's the other bit - I justify not getting the concretization of knowledge that comes through writing because this isn't stuff I'm officially interested in, it's just kind of neat to be exposed to it, although of course it would be good to get it solidified that way. Oh well.), suggesting for instance, that "and" should only be used in serial closure (as in "this, that, and the other" - I asked him about a list of two things, and he said that was allowable; of course that's the only way "and" is used anyway. But I don't have to write for him, as I said.) When it came time to get our facilitate on, which was for about an hour and a half, my partner Roxanne said very little. And I said a lot. I would estimate that I made about a third of the utterances made during that time. Didactic questions, rhetorical questions, genuine questions I had about the reading, genuine questions I had about the nature of existence and theory and meta-theory (is that what he means?), my interpretations of what other people said, my interpretations of the readings, and so forth. It was fun, especially towards the end when Bruce started to talk a bit too, and was occasionally unsure how to reconcile some of my concerns. Yeah, it was really fun. Then, after break (when I talked to super-friendly and stereotypically self-deprecating Sean Lannigan and made a date with Jocelyn) Bruce offered some more of his characteristic words of advice. To be specific, his top 3 German words to slip casually into conversation: Weltschauung ("pronounce it like you're the kind of person who knows that there are two 'u's"), Zeitgeist ("starts with a capital zed") and Schaudenfreude. It's hilarious how deadpan (or genuinely serious) he is about these things - how important it is to seem smart.
I had a good time back here; rather than reading Plato I read Elvis Costello lyrics over Joel's shoulder as I accompanied him on his magical first encounter with Imperial Bedroom, then snuggled with my sicko girlfriend and played her some Strummer as I skipped out to get some practicing in. I had forgotten, but we had a combined class in African, so it was fortuitous that I was there anyway, and so was Alyssa. And it was all very fun and fast-paced, simpler movement but still a workout, until I cut my foot on a piece of wood during across the floor. Then, when we were doing some awesome men-only moves with sudden drops and pops back up, long low lunges, alternating elbows to the ground, my thighs started to get really cramped. That got better, but I still couldn't muster the energy and focus to do most of the movement full-out, also out of fear of hurting my foot. With the free hour and a half, there was time to read some Alexie to Alyssa and share a lovely pasta dinner before biz-as-usual SAC, still stayed up too late trying to focus on The Republic.
But apparently I didn't comprehend it well enough, since I was rather stymied by the pop quiz this morning. I was a bit sleepy during class, and was worried that I might become more so sitting through the next two hour-and-a-half classes as well. Instead, as is I think more usually the case, I became more and more awake as the morning progressed - through being a model for body-part identification in French and a major participant in syntax dialogue today (with Kari in white(!) - I asked her about it and she said "Oh, you guys! I like grey!). To the point where by the time I got back here it felt like morning, time to start the day refreshed. Alyssa was still here, sick and reading, and we had some Mac+Cheese, listened to Sam Phillips, read the times (deciding on a book for NYC to read). It felt nice and easy-going. Then I wrote all those record reviews, just sitting here on the bed, trying to brush some of the crumbs away. I reconquered my CD player remote for the task, as well as relying on Joel's power cable to avoid the inconstancy of mine.
Not too much after I finished (and Kate Duffy sends me congratulatory, supportive e-mails) (and Joel wrote his nine-days-overdue three-page Geology paper too) Nori came home, made dinner for me and Nadav as promised (accompaniment: Stories from the City.) Food was good: funky yellow rice with golden raisins, pink yogurty sauce, and (her favorite) hard-boiled eggs. I skipped out on that (promising Nadav a game of diplomacy sometime - any takers?) to catch the hastily publicised showing of "Smoke Signals," which was fun but not as superb as I remembered. Then practicing (progress on parsing out those arpeggios; Bach is fairly solid; Bartok makes strides whenever I actually think about it) and a swing by Paces (Morcheeba on the box; Edleson and LePichon.) I passed JoeFlo and R. Van Fleet, pink-faced in parlors ("we've been talking about some pretty face-turning-pink stuff") on the way to the habitual stopover. Brigid in purple peasant garb showed off her marker-drawn hand-puppets, a frog and a girl (and they talk! "ribbit" and "hi," respectively) and requested to be screwed with Beck. As I walked out with Stef, I wrote on the dry-erase: "Loveless 1, Fallen 2" (Stef insisted on wiping it out, and then the pen wouldn't work.) We walked down and then conferred at length in Worth courtyard. She's got everyone taken care of except Felicia, who seems like an extremely problematic case. Girls are more difficult to screw in general. And I've got a bunch to deal with: my two lovely roommatesses, Alyssa, Rae (whom I've conditionally convinced to go). Joel is another issue. But of course I can't really talk about any of these things here. Suffice to say that discussions are happening; wheels are in motion; the good stuff is on its way. I just sent a series of three e-mails to the three relevant subsets of roommates, subjected "Mission: Joel," "Mission: Rebecca," "Mission: Nori." I'm still somewhat open to suggestions for any of the above, and particularly for Operation: Rae. Smoke Signals has inspired me to make frybread, but as it's late (nigh on two) it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
you say it doesn't matter if he sends you roses
you say apologies don't mean a thing
About the 1:15 Monday to 12:35 Tuesday block of classes and stuff:
I augmented my food purchases with some akmak and mango chutney and strolled over to class, through the ridiculously pretty scene of arboretum workers working amidst fields of purple crocuses with a jhetto-blaster playing Vivaldi or something. I sat alternately unperturbed and slightly anxious as Bruce took the first half hour of class talking about the paper that I don't have to write (oh yeah, that's the other bit - I justify not getting the concretization of knowledge that comes through writing because this isn't stuff I'm officially interested in, it's just kind of neat to be exposed to it, although of course it would be good to get it solidified that way. Oh well.), suggesting for instance, that "and" should only be used in serial closure (as in "this, that, and the other" - I asked him about a list of two things, and he said that was allowable; of course that's the only way "and" is used anyway. But I don't have to write for him, as I said.) When it came time to get our facilitate on, which was for about an hour and a half, my partner Roxanne said very little. And I said a lot. I would estimate that I made about a third of the utterances made during that time. Didactic questions, rhetorical questions, genuine questions I had about the reading, genuine questions I had about the nature of existence and theory and meta-theory (is that what he means?), my interpretations of what other people said, my interpretations of the readings, and so forth. It was fun, especially towards the end when Bruce started to talk a bit too, and was occasionally unsure how to reconcile some of my concerns. Yeah, it was really fun. Then, after break (when I talked to super-friendly and stereotypically self-deprecating Sean Lannigan and made a date with Jocelyn) Bruce offered some more of his characteristic words of advice. To be specific, his top 3 German words to slip casually into conversation: Weltschauung ("pronounce it like you're the kind of person who knows that there are two 'u's"), Zeitgeist ("starts with a capital zed") and Schaudenfreude. It's hilarious how deadpan (or genuinely serious) he is about these things - how important it is to seem smart.
I had a good time back here; rather than reading Plato I read Elvis Costello lyrics over Joel's shoulder as I accompanied him on his magical first encounter with Imperial Bedroom, then snuggled with my sicko girlfriend and played her some Strummer as I skipped out to get some practicing in. I had forgotten, but we had a combined class in African, so it was fortuitous that I was there anyway, and so was Alyssa. And it was all very fun and fast-paced, simpler movement but still a workout, until I cut my foot on a piece of wood during across the floor. Then, when we were doing some awesome men-only moves with sudden drops and pops back up, long low lunges, alternating elbows to the ground, my thighs started to get really cramped. That got better, but I still couldn't muster the energy and focus to do most of the movement full-out, also out of fear of hurting my foot. With the free hour and a half, there was time to read some Alexie to Alyssa and share a lovely pasta dinner before biz-as-usual SAC, still stayed up too late trying to focus on The Republic.
But apparently I didn't comprehend it well enough, since I was rather stymied by the pop quiz this morning. I was a bit sleepy during class, and was worried that I might become more so sitting through the next two hour-and-a-half classes as well. Instead, as is I think more usually the case, I became more and more awake as the morning progressed - through being a model for body-part identification in French and a major participant in syntax dialogue today (with Kari in white(!) - I asked her about it and she said "Oh, you guys! I like grey!). To the point where by the time I got back here it felt like morning, time to start the day refreshed. Alyssa was still here, sick and reading, and we had some Mac+Cheese, listened to Sam Phillips, read the times (deciding on a book for NYC to read). It felt nice and easy-going. Then I wrote all those record reviews, just sitting here on the bed, trying to brush some of the crumbs away. I reconquered my CD player remote for the task, as well as relying on Joel's power cable to avoid the inconstancy of mine.
Not too much after I finished (and Kate Duffy sends me congratulatory, supportive e-mails) (and Joel wrote his nine-days-overdue three-page Geology paper too) Nori came home, made dinner for me and Nadav as promised (accompaniment: Stories from the City.) Food was good: funky yellow rice with golden raisins, pink yogurty sauce, and (her favorite) hard-boiled eggs. I skipped out on that (promising Nadav a game of diplomacy sometime - any takers?) to catch the hastily publicised showing of "Smoke Signals," which was fun but not as superb as I remembered. Then practicing (progress on parsing out those arpeggios; Bach is fairly solid; Bartok makes strides whenever I actually think about it) and a swing by Paces (Morcheeba on the box; Edleson and LePichon.) I passed JoeFlo and R. Van Fleet, pink-faced in parlors ("we've been talking about some pretty face-turning-pink stuff") on the way to the habitual stopover. Brigid in purple peasant garb showed off her marker-drawn hand-puppets, a frog and a girl (and they talk! "ribbit" and "hi," respectively) and requested to be screwed with Beck. As I walked out with Stef, I wrote on the dry-erase: "Loveless 1, Fallen 2" (Stef insisted on wiping it out, and then the pen wouldn't work.) We walked down and then conferred at length in Worth courtyard. She's got everyone taken care of except Felicia, who seems like an extremely problematic case. Girls are more difficult to screw in general. And I've got a bunch to deal with: my two lovely roommatesses, Alyssa, Rae (whom I've conditionally convinced to go). Joel is another issue. But of course I can't really talk about any of these things here. Suffice to say that discussions are happening; wheels are in motion; the good stuff is on its way. I just sent a series of three e-mails to the three relevant subsets of roommates, subjected "Mission: Joel," "Mission: Rebecca," "Mission: Nori." I'm still somewhat open to suggestions for any of the above, and particularly for Operation: Rae. Smoke Signals has inspired me to make frybread, but as it's late (nigh on two) it'll have to wait until tomorrow.
you say it doesn't matter if he sends you roses
you say apologies don't mean a thing
