Friday, May 10
Enjoying it. Now there are two days to be written about, but it shouldn't take long because they were dominated by a monolithic activity. The funny thing about writing this paper is how little of a deal it was. I was anticipating big stress and unpleasantness, and maybe feelings of hopelessness and just lots of frustration. And it wasn't even that I sloughed it off. I guess I was expecting it to be a break from what stuff has been lately, of just letting things flow over me, taking care of each thing in turn in stride - that it would be actual work. But I never got worked up about it beforehand (which is always the worst part anyway), even though I perhaps got a late start (or maybe not); and the writing itself was fine, no problems with progress, despite lots of breaks, and like I said, it was mostly pretty enjoyable. And I got over three hours of sleep. And it ended up being 24 pages! I don't even feel like it was an accomplishment, though, because I just went and did it. Okay. How it should be.
I read the article some more, and thought about it I guess, but I didn't even start writing until four or five in the afternoon. I went to Lang at noon to see about juries, and signed up on the sheet which had miraculously reappeared (thanks to Nori) for the final slot at 2:20. I looked for a place to read, and ended up in Sharples (walked in the back and got yelled at, which I feel really bad about, but what can I do?) where I talked with Jedd and big and small music and performances. Of course the juries ran late, and I didn't play until maybe quarter of three. The Bach was decent until the last five or six measures, when I tripped up stupidly, a place I've never had problems with before. I got it back together for the ending, and I don't think it was too terrible - I didn't stop playing or anything, it was just the right hand melody alone for a bar or two. Bartók I was much happier with - it certainly wasn't flawless either, but I didn't flub anything too badly, and I think the dynamics and expressive content were pretty strong. I wasn't feeling very apprehensive, or much of anything, until right after, which is always kind of a disorienting thing.
The paper-writing hours that followed had a nice balance of work and play. Lots of chatting with Rebecca, Rae, Joel, who came in with his exciting new drum machine-sampler. Excellent dofoo stirfry dinner made by him and Michelle, my darjeeling-chai ice tea blend, and plenty of snacking - toast with peanut butter, etc. Ben was over for a while, fretting about housing for June, and made a sign on Joel's computer. I made myself a tasty spinach-bacon-salsa-cilantro omelet-thing fried in a pleasantly tender tortilla, at about 3 in the morning, in the Joel tradition of late-paper-night omelets. Lots of good working music: Preemptive Strike, Sway and King Tech (during dinner), Crooked Fingers, That Skinny Motherfucker…, Plaid, the Six Parts Seven, Hefner (the new one, which is actually not too bad), Califone (really getting into that), Ted Leo, Mic City Sons, Up, a four-song CD by Kent's old punk-ska-ish band (pretty decent), the Lilys (rock on), Jim O'Rourke, and On Avery Island, twice. That was part of the shipment from cheap-cds that arrived in the morning, that Nori plopped in my lap not long after my three-and-a-half hour sleeping break (five to eight:30). Yes yes, CDs! Stuff I'm really excited to explore: a Crystals best-of, the Mountain Goats' Coroner's Gambit, the new Blackalicious record (chosen over the old one on basis of price), the NMH, Bowie's Low (I remembered that Nick Lowe put out an "answer record" called Bowi - ha ha), Scott Walker's Tilt, and most excitingly (for now at least), the Uri Caine Ensemble's Goldberg Variations. This is an exquisitely packaged two-disc set of seventy new variations on the Goldberg aria, created and performed by an incredible assemblage of musicians in styles ranging from authentic baroque instrumentation, haunting choral pieces, contemporary classical compositions, all genres of jazz (some featuring Don Byron), techno, gospel, blues, spoken-word, far-out experimental stuff. It's really crazy to listen to all of those styles jammed up against each other, but somehow it really works. It's not just fun to listen to, it's really beautiful. Incredible. I'm so glad I decided to pick it up - I've been thinking about it for a long time now. Only downside so far: it's not the best working music (rather distracting).
The paper - it was largely a summary of this article that I read, with plenty of somewhat unfocused commentary, much of it in footnotes (microsoft word does weird thing to footnotes, and there was at least a chunk of one on nearly every page of the paper). I used some examples from the original paper, including the ones I mentioned before, as well as one of my other favorites:
(i) [Observing Ivan playing pretty good ragtime piano]
And he doesn’t even have a left hand!
But had more fun coming up with lots on my own, a couple of which involved people like Roger, Gene, and Sheila, but more often barnlife:
(12) [Rebecca observes Ross struggling to extricate a lid from a jar of Newman’s Own® medium chunky salsa. He finally gives up, and entreats her:]
* Maybe you can.
(24) I cleaned my plate, and Rebecca, the bathroom.
(25) [Ross cleans his plate]
Rebecca: *And I, the bathroom.
(28) [Nori buys yet another jar of Jif® peanut butter]
Rebecca and Ross: we don’t approve.
(17) [Upon discovering that there is no spinach in the fridge]
I don’t believe it!
there was also a fun sequence about making sag, a play on the author's name. Even my brother got in on the fun:
b. [Alex enters the cocktail party, removes some widgets and cogs from his pocket, and proceeds to tamper with them.]
Ross (by way of explanation): He’s a mechanical engineer.
Oh yes. I finished the summary/specific commentary part by about 2:30, and then wrote two more pages (1sp.) of general discussion, pitting this article against (markedly different) Chomsky-style theory, wherein I verged dangerously on just writing out all my frustrations with syntax in general. It's funny, in the course of writing the paper I first regained my enthusiasm for syntax, as I realized that I really liked the article for the intuitiveness of its argument, etc., and then I regained some of the disillusionment with the whole field that has been brewing in me all semester, after talking to Rebecca about grammaticality judgments, etc. But in general it was a nice way to end syntax for the year (or maybe forever).
The paper was done at four. Rae read it through ostensibly to proofread, but mostly to ask me about all the jargon she didn't understand; while I drew some trees on my homework redo, and danced to the Lilys. Then I rushed to Beardsley (having changed into fuzzy fleece grey sweatpants that morning, rather than the black linen dress slacks I'd had on all the day before; but still wearing the white ribbed-tee and again wearing the olive-green linen dress shirt I'd had on the day before for my jury - and with birkenstocks, and full fluffy hair that made me feel like I looked like someone else exciting and not so thin) to print out the paper (24 pages, complete with copious footnotes, out of the printer in under a minute, it seemed) and then to 3 and 5 Whittier to hand it in, only maybe 10 minutes late. Then to the Opera class scenes presentation, which was very amusing. Apparently I missed a Star Wars version of something, but I got to see Eden as forlorn Dido on her deathbed, Matt (introduced as both "scummy" and "studly") as the womanizing Duke from Rigoletto, who prefaced a nicely-executed quartet with a bit of Old 97's, and most bizarrely, Jackie as the leather-jacketed leader of a trio of witches/bad-asses, who screeched and drank Corona and pranced around made special effect baking soda smoke come out of a hat, before the whole class came in and pounded the chorus, meanwhile bashing cardboard boxes around the Presser room floor. It was most entertaining.
From there to the religion department picnic, where I succumbed to my substantial hunger by gnawing on a hamburger bun and devouring some vaguely disgusting thick bbq corn chips, but not getting a veggie burger. Alyssa was there, and Stef and Joel and Sydney and Alison, and I found out what Deutsch and Wallace look like and that one of them used to room with an ex-member of Tortoise, and the other one is concerned about delaying his five-year-old son's future encounters with alcohol. It was really pleasant I thought, and the weather was nicely cool and humid and grey - not extreme enough according to Stefanie, but interesting I thought. I didn't mention this before, but I wasn't invited to my own department picnic. Seriously - the only reason I knew it took place at all was that I happened to walk by it the other day and noticed that there were a bunch of art students and profs, and I hadn't even been notified. I'm not quite sure how to take that.
It took a while to leave religion - first someone had to talk to someone, then someone else to someone else, then me to Alison, and so on - but then Stef and lys and Joel and I tramped over to the barn. Rebecca's cousin was here, a truly impeccable 39-year-old, and we all listened to Goldberg and chatted and read poetry and prepared dinner. And then we ate it - hummus and rice and wine and veggies and more stuff, I don't know it just was tasty and made me full. And we ran off to Dan Blim's composition concert. Except I left after the first piece (albeit a 30-minute long classical music game/joke with a twelve-tone piece performed twelve times by Nori and D. January, with one fewer note each time, as they were voted off á la Survivor; very amusing, but would have worked better with a different piece I think) to see the new Woody Allen movie with Rae and Joel. In Bryn Mawr. What a terrible movie. I mean, it was fun to watch, but just because of Woody Allen. But two hours long, and preposterous, and bizarrely paced, with long boring routine stretches of the same gag, and then screwball plot twists that take a second to buy. Like the long-lost son character who's introduced in the final fifteen minutes; a pierced, blue-haired rockündroller who changed his name to Scumbag X, and waxes all sensitive-artist about eating rats. Yeah, it's silly. So that was a questionable decision, but at least I didn't miss Spiderman (Becca and Sarah didn't go after all, I guess) or Paris Texas (we were going to watch it, but Ben and Stef couldn't, and it was late when we got back anyway.
We got back at eleven thirty or something, and had cake, and a big old common-room fun talking time: Rebecca, Petar, Joel, Rae, Alyssa, me, Renee, Nori sometimes, and Sarah in the corner chair, alternately involved and bemused. I talked to her about music and art a bit, but we didn't get to play word games. The conversation somehow got very gossipy and noisy - Dingman!? Dremeaux!? break-ups! togethers! - and almost turned a bit nasty but not quite. Alyssa and I went to bed, and it wasn't even too late (2?) Yeah. I got up at 8:30 to go birding. I was late because of ambivalence over whether Nori was going to shower or not, and I ended up just leaving without showering, not running into Janet or anyone, but meeting a contractor who's going to replace the platform of the train trestle in the Crum. And I turned in my binoculars, dubnobass in the mailroom, which I was listening to until a minute ago. I went back to sleep for an hour. I'm going to the city for art and food and music with Amy and maybe others, later. But now I think I'll go back to campus for money and pictures. Yeah. Life is good, good, good. I'm listening to the Mountain Goats, and the drums just kicked in for the first time on the record, and it's track 15.
This morning I know who you are
I read the article some more, and thought about it I guess, but I didn't even start writing until four or five in the afternoon. I went to Lang at noon to see about juries, and signed up on the sheet which had miraculously reappeared (thanks to Nori) for the final slot at 2:20. I looked for a place to read, and ended up in Sharples (walked in the back and got yelled at, which I feel really bad about, but what can I do?) where I talked with Jedd and big and small music and performances. Of course the juries ran late, and I didn't play until maybe quarter of three. The Bach was decent until the last five or six measures, when I tripped up stupidly, a place I've never had problems with before. I got it back together for the ending, and I don't think it was too terrible - I didn't stop playing or anything, it was just the right hand melody alone for a bar or two. Bartók I was much happier with - it certainly wasn't flawless either, but I didn't flub anything too badly, and I think the dynamics and expressive content were pretty strong. I wasn't feeling very apprehensive, or much of anything, until right after, which is always kind of a disorienting thing.
The paper-writing hours that followed had a nice balance of work and play. Lots of chatting with Rebecca, Rae, Joel, who came in with his exciting new drum machine-sampler. Excellent dofoo stirfry dinner made by him and Michelle, my darjeeling-chai ice tea blend, and plenty of snacking - toast with peanut butter, etc. Ben was over for a while, fretting about housing for June, and made a sign on Joel's computer. I made myself a tasty spinach-bacon-salsa-cilantro omelet-thing fried in a pleasantly tender tortilla, at about 3 in the morning, in the Joel tradition of late-paper-night omelets. Lots of good working music: Preemptive Strike, Sway and King Tech (during dinner), Crooked Fingers, That Skinny Motherfucker…, Plaid, the Six Parts Seven, Hefner (the new one, which is actually not too bad), Califone (really getting into that), Ted Leo, Mic City Sons, Up, a four-song CD by Kent's old punk-ska-ish band (pretty decent), the Lilys (rock on), Jim O'Rourke, and On Avery Island, twice. That was part of the shipment from cheap-cds that arrived in the morning, that Nori plopped in my lap not long after my three-and-a-half hour sleeping break (five to eight:30). Yes yes, CDs! Stuff I'm really excited to explore: a Crystals best-of, the Mountain Goats' Coroner's Gambit, the new Blackalicious record (chosen over the old one on basis of price), the NMH, Bowie's Low (I remembered that Nick Lowe put out an "answer record" called Bowi - ha ha), Scott Walker's Tilt, and most excitingly (for now at least), the Uri Caine Ensemble's Goldberg Variations. This is an exquisitely packaged two-disc set of seventy new variations on the Goldberg aria, created and performed by an incredible assemblage of musicians in styles ranging from authentic baroque instrumentation, haunting choral pieces, contemporary classical compositions, all genres of jazz (some featuring Don Byron), techno, gospel, blues, spoken-word, far-out experimental stuff. It's really crazy to listen to all of those styles jammed up against each other, but somehow it really works. It's not just fun to listen to, it's really beautiful. Incredible. I'm so glad I decided to pick it up - I've been thinking about it for a long time now. Only downside so far: it's not the best working music (rather distracting).
The paper - it was largely a summary of this article that I read, with plenty of somewhat unfocused commentary, much of it in footnotes (microsoft word does weird thing to footnotes, and there was at least a chunk of one on nearly every page of the paper). I used some examples from the original paper, including the ones I mentioned before, as well as one of my other favorites:
(i) [Observing Ivan playing pretty good ragtime piano]
And he doesn’t even have a left hand!
But had more fun coming up with lots on my own, a couple of which involved people like Roger, Gene, and Sheila, but more often barnlife:
(12) [Rebecca observes Ross struggling to extricate a lid from a jar of Newman’s Own® medium chunky salsa. He finally gives up, and entreats her:]
* Maybe you can.
(24) I cleaned my plate, and Rebecca, the bathroom.
(25) [Ross cleans his plate]
Rebecca: *And I, the bathroom.
(28) [Nori buys yet another jar of Jif® peanut butter]
Rebecca and Ross: we don’t approve.
(17) [Upon discovering that there is no spinach in the fridge]
I don’t believe it!
there was also a fun sequence about making sag, a play on the author's name. Even my brother got in on the fun:
b. [Alex enters the cocktail party, removes some widgets and cogs from his pocket, and proceeds to tamper with them.]
Ross (by way of explanation): He’s a mechanical engineer.
Oh yes. I finished the summary/specific commentary part by about 2:30, and then wrote two more pages (1sp.) of general discussion, pitting this article against (markedly different) Chomsky-style theory, wherein I verged dangerously on just writing out all my frustrations with syntax in general. It's funny, in the course of writing the paper I first regained my enthusiasm for syntax, as I realized that I really liked the article for the intuitiveness of its argument, etc., and then I regained some of the disillusionment with the whole field that has been brewing in me all semester, after talking to Rebecca about grammaticality judgments, etc. But in general it was a nice way to end syntax for the year (or maybe forever).
The paper was done at four. Rae read it through ostensibly to proofread, but mostly to ask me about all the jargon she didn't understand; while I drew some trees on my homework redo, and danced to the Lilys. Then I rushed to Beardsley (having changed into fuzzy fleece grey sweatpants that morning, rather than the black linen dress slacks I'd had on all the day before; but still wearing the white ribbed-tee and again wearing the olive-green linen dress shirt I'd had on the day before for my jury - and with birkenstocks, and full fluffy hair that made me feel like I looked like someone else exciting and not so thin) to print out the paper (24 pages, complete with copious footnotes, out of the printer in under a minute, it seemed) and then to 3 and 5 Whittier to hand it in, only maybe 10 minutes late. Then to the Opera class scenes presentation, which was very amusing. Apparently I missed a Star Wars version of something, but I got to see Eden as forlorn Dido on her deathbed, Matt (introduced as both "scummy" and "studly") as the womanizing Duke from Rigoletto, who prefaced a nicely-executed quartet with a bit of Old 97's, and most bizarrely, Jackie as the leather-jacketed leader of a trio of witches/bad-asses, who screeched and drank Corona and pranced around made special effect baking soda smoke come out of a hat, before the whole class came in and pounded the chorus, meanwhile bashing cardboard boxes around the Presser room floor. It was most entertaining.
From there to the religion department picnic, where I succumbed to my substantial hunger by gnawing on a hamburger bun and devouring some vaguely disgusting thick bbq corn chips, but not getting a veggie burger. Alyssa was there, and Stef and Joel and Sydney and Alison, and I found out what Deutsch and Wallace look like and that one of them used to room with an ex-member of Tortoise, and the other one is concerned about delaying his five-year-old son's future encounters with alcohol. It was really pleasant I thought, and the weather was nicely cool and humid and grey - not extreme enough according to Stefanie, but interesting I thought. I didn't mention this before, but I wasn't invited to my own department picnic. Seriously - the only reason I knew it took place at all was that I happened to walk by it the other day and noticed that there were a bunch of art students and profs, and I hadn't even been notified. I'm not quite sure how to take that.
It took a while to leave religion - first someone had to talk to someone, then someone else to someone else, then me to Alison, and so on - but then Stef and lys and Joel and I tramped over to the barn. Rebecca's cousin was here, a truly impeccable 39-year-old, and we all listened to Goldberg and chatted and read poetry and prepared dinner. And then we ate it - hummus and rice and wine and veggies and more stuff, I don't know it just was tasty and made me full. And we ran off to Dan Blim's composition concert. Except I left after the first piece (albeit a 30-minute long classical music game/joke with a twelve-tone piece performed twelve times by Nori and D. January, with one fewer note each time, as they were voted off á la Survivor; very amusing, but would have worked better with a different piece I think) to see the new Woody Allen movie with Rae and Joel. In Bryn Mawr. What a terrible movie. I mean, it was fun to watch, but just because of Woody Allen. But two hours long, and preposterous, and bizarrely paced, with long boring routine stretches of the same gag, and then screwball plot twists that take a second to buy. Like the long-lost son character who's introduced in the final fifteen minutes; a pierced, blue-haired rockündroller who changed his name to Scumbag X, and waxes all sensitive-artist about eating rats. Yeah, it's silly. So that was a questionable decision, but at least I didn't miss Spiderman (Becca and Sarah didn't go after all, I guess) or Paris Texas (we were going to watch it, but Ben and Stef couldn't, and it was late when we got back anyway.
We got back at eleven thirty or something, and had cake, and a big old common-room fun talking time: Rebecca, Petar, Joel, Rae, Alyssa, me, Renee, Nori sometimes, and Sarah in the corner chair, alternately involved and bemused. I talked to her about music and art a bit, but we didn't get to play word games. The conversation somehow got very gossipy and noisy - Dingman!? Dremeaux!? break-ups! togethers! - and almost turned a bit nasty but not quite. Alyssa and I went to bed, and it wasn't even too late (2?) Yeah. I got up at 8:30 to go birding. I was late because of ambivalence over whether Nori was going to shower or not, and I ended up just leaving without showering, not running into Janet or anyone, but meeting a contractor who's going to replace the platform of the train trestle in the Crum. And I turned in my binoculars, dubnobass in the mailroom, which I was listening to until a minute ago. I went back to sleep for an hour. I'm going to the city for art and food and music with Amy and maybe others, later. But now I think I'll go back to campus for money and pictures. Yeah. Life is good, good, good. I'm listening to the Mountain Goats, and the drums just kicked in for the first time on the record, and it's track 15.
This morning I know who you are
