so. senior week and graduation weekend are now over. obviously they were full to bursting with occurrences and thoughts and emotions, and were some of the most intense and powerful times in recent memory, or even my whole life.

contrary to usual, i don't feel particularly inclined to document all or even most of what happened this past week, or how i felt about it as it was happening. but i do and will have a lot to write, and i'll probably be posting a lot over the next few days, and beyond, about aspects of the experience. i'm sorry that i have essentially not been posting at all during it.

today was incredible - i was so so happy and so so sad and was in and out of tears for much of the ceremony and its aftermath. i just returned from dinner with some of my favorite people at what i'm pretty sure now is my favorite philly restaurant. when he brought us the check, our waiter thanked us and told us to enjoy the rest of "what he hoped would be" a long weekend.

here's to that.

ain't too proud to beg
you keep me hanging on
chain of fools
you can make it if you try
don't worry 'bout a thing
till the end of the day
school days
here comes your man
sound + vision
no expectations [iatwtc]
2d2f > i need your love
love at first sight
sly beyonce walks like a nerd
hit 'em up style (oops)
heart of the city (ain't no love)
we don't care [kanye west]
raspberry beret
down [juelz santana]
i'll be around
in time
i'll take you there
i've been lonely too long
i'm just a prisoner (of your good loving)
hold on i'm coming
that was your mother
adrenaline!
darts of pleasure
heaven [vhs or beta]
ubik
like humans do
can't stand losing you
here i am (come and take me)
lucifer
pump it up [missy elliott]
got to give it up [aaliyah]
stacy's mom
i believe in a thing called love
care of cell 44
wouldn't it be nice
how sweet it is (to be loved by you)
one in ten
why you wanna treat me so bad?
let's stay together
ms. jackson (mr. drunk remix)
caress me down
freak like me
laura
like a prayer (extended remix)
one more time
penthouse
red alert
fever [kylie]
brimful of asha
mo money mo problems
i can't get next to you
good vibration
kiss
such great heights
naive melody
everyday [buddy holly]

aww yeeah.

fifteen 1sp pages written, something like five to go, most of them basically prewritten already:

intro and brief biographical bit (each roughly 1 page)
wrapping-up of stylistic analysis > fun edward hicks comparison > historiography-bating conclusion (around 2.5 pages all told)
optional "coda: henri rousseau is a sad clown" (less than a page)

and it's still awll good. laura's here now (with orangutans in tow), but i'll be able to wrap up tonight and still get some sleep before we turn this place from a pigst[ud]y into a monkeyhaven tomorrow. (the pretty piñaniñas are on my worktable.)

oh yeah, so the goal (like really no sweat) is to finish my paperin' before alex the hobo does. (hear me buddy? it's a race.)

gonna go get some food mmhmm. later!

oh, p.s. - did it ever occur to you that those famous guitar hiccups in the chorus to "creep" are actually saying "fucking!…fucking!"? that's poetry.

(except on the radio version, where they're saying "very!…very!")

life's a draayeeyaaheeyaag

<<
21 mai 1844: 
Henri Julien Rousseau, called 'Le Douanier', born in Laval, Fr.

20 may 2004 (projected):
K. Ross Hoffman completes his megapaper/babythesis on the art of H.J. Rousseau, his final act as an art historian and student at Swarthmore College

May 21, 2004 (THIS FRIDAY!):
we celebrate the anniversaries (160-year and 1-day, respectively) of these two momentous occurrences with a furiously festive feral fête the likes of which have never been seen at 13 park avenue, no. 2.

in the spirit of Rousseau's "soirées familiales et artistiques" and Picasso's notorious Banquet Rousseau* (one of the most patently ridiculous events in the history of parties)

and taking a cue from the Douanier's beloved Jungle paintings.**

round about ten in the evening, Lima time
the apartment will be mystically transplanted
into the heart of the Mexican Rainforest
for a primeval shindig of Amazonian dimensions

replete with
real live (mostly) vegetation!
animistic totems!
baby pineapples!
and perhaps even cocktail umbrellas!

jungle food!
jungle music!
jungle fever!
and my jungle print shirt!

our quasi-tropical weather may have disappeared (phew),
but we'll still heat you up to cool you down, shake and stir you,
and a something something…

school's almost over.
exoticization is no longer a dirty word.

brought to you by:
rosseau + the roommates
the south orangutan crew
dept. of a.a.a.h.

~~~~

(end bombastic party-invite-e-mail tone):
please note that this party is, ostensibly, b.y.o.b.  so do it, yo. 
much preferable to b. of course would be rum punch, piña coladas, and the tropical like -
so if you'd care to coordinate (in advance, even)
and perhaps contribute a little monetarily and/or alcoholistically
we can get some that hooked up too

oh, and in case you were a little disoriented the first time, here's the specs again:
• Friday, 21 May 2004 (that's tomorrow)
• 10:00 pm til wheneva
• 13 Park Avenue in the Ville (above the Salon des Co-Educationels; across from the laundry)
• prizes awarded for the best "modern altuzarra" jungle-style outfit
• baby pineapples

~~~~

*you can read all about it here
(that's exactly how it went down)

**dig if you will
(that's exactly what it's going to be like***)

***not like this

>>

paper status:
>13 pages (single spaced, w/ copious footnotes)
estimated ~7 pages left to write

GO! GO! GO!

it's so exciting to be sleeping here in this new room

woosh! i've now got ≥4 pages, 12pt single spaced, of what i guess i should stop calling a paper/project/thing since "paper" seems too pedestrian and refer to as my excuse for a thesis. (hey, it accounts for half a credit, and is potentially big enough to stop me from graduating.) that's i guess eight out of perhaps thirty ("yeah, or twenty, whatever" said the delectable prof. cothren) presumably meaning double-spaced though i think i'll do 1.5 with paragraph line breaks.

enough that i may well treat myself to a flic ce soir, and even, eventually, dinner. i'd been intending to work roughly straight through and get done tomorrow afternoon (?), but this has been so pleasantly process-over-product for me that i'm actually not in that particular a hurry, and i'd rather preserve my capacity for enjoying it, particularly if that means little enjoyments along the way. what i could really use is some yoga or a run (and food), so that may be in the works too (or in the running).

so far this paper has been almost overbearingly writerly - the bulk of what i've written so far is actually directly about words rather than art (though that will change soon!) i've been tacitly tabulating the intricacies of word's sometimes bizarrely arbitrary spellchecker, relishing how much i like words like "posit" (so useful, so cool), mourning the lack of interchangeable synonyms for "particularly" and "exactly," wondering: will one always continue to cling so to a thesaurus? as one internalizes a given array of near-synonyms will the drive for ever-more-exacting diction impel him ever further beyond it?

thank goodness rousseau is so fascinating, and thank goodness english is up to the task.

what could be more british than "here's a picture of me bum"?

as if in preparation for joining them, i spent seventeen hours of the past several with alumni. what i have to report about alumni life…

we ate breakfast.

it was an impressively complete collection of one of the more tightly-knit friend groups i've had the pleasure of being in the more significant fringes of, as in-law, roommate, and general-purpose 2nd-degree friend. according to rebecca, they're the kind of people who take a lot of pictures. it was only the hostesses (laurel entirely) who were most missing.

unfortunately, alyssa went to bed and (as she informed me shortly after my potential ride had gone) left early in the morning, so i barely got to see her at all. also, amelia didn't collect me for church. but i had a nice time having a conversation with blair (for the first time in ages) about blossom dearie and the art department, talking to emily clough about her childen's book, playing with the kittys bonnie and clyde, washing dishes, and wiggling my toes when i didn't feel like being an otherwise active participant in the shenanigans. it was a party for syttende mai, norvegian independence (which is actually today - so, happy happy) so we had lefsa and some squabbles with swedes (though bjorn and annifrid won out over sondre and erlend.)

in the eventual morning, after sleeping with at least five or so others on alyssa's cat-free floor, and after some ny times reading and some intensely ginger granola (mmm) from bowl-colored bowls, there was a motion to brunch. brunch is a thing, they say. talk about brunchfest leaving the house shortly after noon-thirty (when am got back from kirke), we didn't finish until after three, what with walking twelve blocks to karma, splintering off into a mutiny group (w/ nori, jenny, emily, and a different paul) and heading back up again to the standard tap, a few rounds of 'though my soul…' and waiting at least an hour for food there. at least it was delectable once it arrived - my steak and avocado omlet was phenomenal, and even jenny's tuna melt was probably worth its $9 tag. (though the spoonbread was underwhelming.) the music they were playing was uncannily like a mixtape i might have made c.2002-3.

by the time we finished there was a spot of izzard and it seemed like a worse idea to go to the pma, so i just trained back home, talking about terpsichore and worklife with emily, who's on an 8-week homeless-and-jobless sojourn.

the whole business was passively nice and a touch unfathomable; i think in other circumstances i might have found it panickily nonengaging, but it was just fine to have an island of leisure in among this wrapping-up. it didn't feel removed from my experience, i just felt removed from it. but i do like those people.

i have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

p.s. perhaps you didn't notice that i was wrong (again) about dates in that last long entry - rousseau's birthday is actually on friday, not wednesday. so even better, i'll finish the paper by weds and have the party fri. more time to slice pineapple and turn the cantina into a jungle!

but really this extra post is just an excuse to (waste time and) use the lyrics that have been my refrain for the last couple days (along with "boys in the girls room…"):

baby if you wanna be wild!
you've got a lot to learn!
close your eyes let them melt
let them fire
let
them
burn…

so i'm at the top of page eleven of this 10-12 page paper, and in the fragmented middle of what should be my last paragraph. i still have some things to go back and revisit, like this annoying footnote about why cavell says statements about language are "obviously" not analytic (i still can't quite wrap my finger around it. maybe it can just disappear.) so those will happen soon, but maybe after moofer comes here and we have a dinner of some sort. but before syttende mai!

in the mean time, maybe i'll make an op. cit. page.

i'm having such friends as well as work these days, it's great.

angular banjos sound good to me

i felt like for a long time there i wasn't writing very much. the impulse got away. well seems like i'm back now, if i was ever gone.

so apparently this is my 800th post. that's 500 more than dea, in case you didn't notice.

and i have something notable to write. this will be a special entry indeed. i have a plan.

should i tell you? maybe i'd be jinxing myself. i don't usually write about the future here you know, just the past. oh, it's not that exciting a plan. it doesn't even extend a week into the future. my plan is to finish my work.

today, i am going to pick a topic for, prepare to write, start, and then finish the short philosophy paper that is technically about two weeks overdue now. that's uncharacteristic: i almost never turn in papers late. but whatever. what should i write about - brandom or cavell? or chomsky?

then, tomorrow, i will do the same for the long philosophy paper that is not overdue yet. maybe i won't finish it tomorrow, but hopefully by saturday afternoon. maybe i'll go talk to old boy eldridge. that would be nice. what should i write about - chomsky? or cavell or brandom?

then, after that, maybe i'll go to syttende mai. but not baltimore. because then i get to write my art history paper! it will be the last paper i will write at swarthmore! it will be beautiful. and i will talk about this funny old man and his funny old paintings.

i have been preparing for this. yesterday i spent all in the cantina, reading five books about henri julien rousseau and his art, and taking notes on my computer. except for in the evening, when rob called and asked if i wanted to go to a concert in the city. i was planning to go hear andrew and joe, and then go to vertigogo, but i agreed to go with rob instead to keep him company. unfortunately, even though it was a very nice night and the north star is a very nice venue, neither of us enjoyed the show as much as we had wanted to. i kind of liked the first band, frog eyes, even though it wasn't really what i was in the mood for. they were somewhere in the xiu xiu universe, but more poppy and 50's-influenced (?), and with nice synthy organs. they had an awkward frontman who was a bit of a childman, with an intense voice but defiantly normal appearance. destroyer was next, and frog eyes stayed on as his backup band. maybe we would have liked it more if it had just been mr. destroyer by himself. but honestly i didn't like his songs at all. okay, there was one i liked. part of it is i don't care much for his voice. maybe his aesthetic is just not compatible with mine. even his songs on the new pornographers records are the low points for me. it's kind of like how i don't really like looking at duchamp's paintings. anyway. so we left when he was almost done with his set. we didn't stay for califone. i like califone a lot and they're fun to see live, but i've seen them twice before and that's enough for now. then i went back to the cantina.

i also prepared for it, sort of, by going to the philamuseum with michael, erin, and claire this morning, and talking about rousseau with them. i'm finding it really hard to bring the biography into conversation with the painting. there are so many contradictions in his life and work that are difficult to reconcile. it should make for an interesting but i'm afraid pretty inconclusive paper. then we went around and looked at some of claire and michael's favorite paintings.

so, as i was saying, the plan is to write this paper by next wednesday. next wednesay will be henri julien rousseau's 160th birthday. he was born on 21 may 1844. so i thought it would be nice to finish my paper on his birthday.

i won't tell you about the next part of the plan. it involves having a party to celebrate rousseau's 160th birthday and the end of my work as a swarthmore student. actually, that's the whole plan. the rest of it is that the party will be jungle themed. and modeled in spirit after rousseau's "soirées familiales et artistiques" and picasso's "banquet rousseau." okay, so now you know.

now i'm going to go to the theatre department picnic. and get a hair cut. and maybe i'll have a popsicle.

ekyasandiyashadjanasandiyasooksabellyandanudina-atunomdiyeh! kimerakarkree

(well what do you think he's saying?)

my my, what's going on with blogger. high times!

there was a bit of rumbling and some flashes and then snap it is summer (as of yesterday), and i'm thinking why ever is my plan to live anywhere south of 60°N? well i guess i have little enough of a plan that that could be remedied.

funny thing is it feels like the end of summer, not the beginning, like we've already sweltered through a couple two months of this and we'd better be cherishing these listless nights because there aren't going to be many more of them.

of course i'm just confused - this wistful transient fin-de-saison aimlessness comes from this being the last three weeks of swatlife, the summer of my youth, not the actual weather. but it's like as hard to buckle down and write these last three papers as it is to do preparatory summer homework before it's actually the last days before school, what with all the late august nothingness to get done.

i came home after a full day of drumming - i was afraid my poor worn hands were going to give out, but luckily (though sort of disappointingly) the combo jazz gig (@ haverford philosophy dept. picnic, an all-out summer bbq in a professor's yard) was way less hardcore or organized than even the recording successession that had me and james ripping out take after take of stripped punk rock all afternoon (dave said we could be the world's best breeders scover band) - to find the house empty (at least of people i was looking for to talk with) and impossible to be in, even with no lights and open windows and fan starting up. so i left again and now i'm in the mcair conditioning.

there was more of this, about my late-night popsicle adventure with angela and robert and laura and sergio mendes (after dinner with patty and max), and how summer nights belong perpetually to the nineteenfifties. but it got erased when the internet went crazy.

and now, instead of recreating it again, i am going to work. !. because i haven't done any schoolwork in almost a week now.

i didn't write the words you hear me singing
i didn't sing the line before this one

some days it's a good day to eat breakfast. i think i will today, though it's already late for that. but i mean that metaphorically too - it feels like a day for getting my life in order, or at least progressing towards that. here's a to-do list, right now: 1. put my cds and lps away 2. clear out my inbox 3. have a long talk with rebecca, if i can find her - maybe while making and eating a meal 4. finalize the art dept. t-shirt design 5. do a modicum of reading to prepare for one of my 3 remaining papers 6. watch a movie. that seems like a good start. i'll be happy if accomplish those things today. oh and 7. call my mama.

there is still so much fun to do, i'm worried that i'll never be able to have any work. but i know the fun will get accomplished, one way or another. just take it one thing at a time, right?

the last two days were thoroughly and lovelyful, full, especially friday, of wall-to-wall activities that were obligations i had made up for myself right then, rather than had bargained myself in for at some point in the past (such as my gothic final on thursday - which was plenty doable - and the all-consuming theatreworld that finally ended that night - perhaps the most interesting part of which has been talking to folks afterward about how they responded to the play.)

[though while i'm on the subject, a few moments worth preserving from our tiny run: the mostly improvised o'sullivan and oregon trail scenes (consensus favorites) getting an extra energy boost from the audience both nights; the joint-cast impromptu rendition of "a whole new world" and subsequent foot game at warm-up on wednesday; little stinky's spiteful, disillusioned rant during our genuardi's sushi+knish run that night - really just getting to know adam better has been a highlight; those blasted toys finally almost working perfectly on thursday, only to run into snafus from the other end when i had the spool in my hands the wrong way?]

friday started with the art department potluck in the eastern nason quad. i felt a little bad for not bringing anything to pass, but i did have the t-shirt design and a sign-up for that. there was plenty of good food as it was, plus my first ice cream of the day. the open studios were a great idea and fun to explore - rajaa's stuff was the most striking and effective (not to mention intense?), but i liked a lot of the prints and the painting (esp. inessa's and lauren's) as well. i'm so impressed by painting and art. which is maybe why i go to these amazing senior shows and start to get unsettled and insecure about what exactly i have accomplished with my four years here.

i ran to wharton courtyard where i of course couldn't register to vote, not having a permanent pa mailing address (wouldn't that be nice), but at least i had some ice cream. met some of the co-mos in parlors for walking to goodwill but ended up instead riding with jersey joe in his pick-up, as the thunderstruck. bought eight shirts for silk-screening on, so now i really have no excuse.

next was the first success practice in well over a week, at which we decided to give up on lofty goals and play it loose tomorrow night. then sharples for more ice cream. then the re-routed "eight friends" gathering at abis and mark's place, featuring angela's strawberry tart, anna's israeli dessert wine, adam's book of housman, robert's thesis on disney obesity, and bocce in the dusky courtyard. then a highly enjoyable non-surprise party for the loved and lovely louisa lillian, on the science center patio. with bridge (of course), lots of woodchuck, and an unbelievable cake from mali (like my ninth dessert of the day? who's counting.) and then visits with claire, who gave us her baby-bourges-on-board drawing, and hannah, who left the next morning for a long time away (alaska > boston > italy > england) with her goldfish in a nalgene.

yesterday was a "real saturday" according to laura, in that it included an adventure (or by my snarky interpretation, it was a real saturday because all the time you thought you might accomplish something was consumed by frivolous unplanned activites.)

we went cowtown. we is joe, josh, eric, emmy, sophie, laura, and myself, and of course we listened to lincoln on the way there, along with a herman's hermits cassette. cowtown a longstanding south jersery cattle auction turned all-purpose flea market, with miles of rows of stalls hawking knickknacks, household goods, dollar-store junk, swords, shoes, flashing jesuses, factory-reject t-shirts (darn, should've waited to get those to screen), big bottles of spices, 80's-era gospel cds by a suit-wearing candi staton, cheap plastic toy guitars that play make animal noises and "old mcdonald" in whatever key you want, plus candy, pretzels, cheesesteaks, and eggrolls "you really shouldn't think about eating" says joe.

i look forward to going back when i actually have things i want to buy (and when i'm not at the worst possible stage of life to be acquiring new things) - this time i just got some film and an enoch light LP (persuasive percussion one.) laura got 24 colors of bootleg sharpie. on the way back of course we stopped for burgers and shakes (at richman's, in woodstown) which tasted about perfect.

but - aha - the day wasn't over yet. i gave what was advertised as in all likelihood my last performance at swarthmore ever, and was certainly one of the least stressful and among the most fun. success opened for the father fucking pig fetuses at olde club with a respectable crowd (thirty or so) of friends. we started with a reprise spoon cover (S2L42), then played our two most solid and rocking originals ("stop rock and roll" and "rocktown") in my opinion the best we've ever done them, at least with the most energy. it felt really good.

keeping with the whole looseness thing, we had decided to play both of our not-quite-finished songs ("joe's" and "ghost") as a sort of medley, so the first featured me literally making up a melody as i went along, with lyrics cribbed from the poem at the bottom of this site, as well as our countrified post-rock homage, too-fast, and the latter became a wordless theremin feature with manic hoedown backing. we ended the set with one cover instead of two (no kinks), which was slightly marred by joe's amp futzing out and a long (unnecessary?) tuning delay before we started: goofy country blues fakeout intro into "i believe in a thing called love." and yes, i can do almost all of the falsetto bits (just not the "god you're touching me" part or the yelp at the end of the chorus.) with tribute-to-death ending and blistery metal solo tag. hail nauj!

then the ffpigfuckrs spilled fake blood on me, spattered marshmallows, peanutbuttercups, and grass all over the floor, and generally wreaked raunchy pioneer havoc with occasional interjections of tunefulness from ben's half-strung guitar.

i went with em & soph to buy papbooze for the intended bonfire. that became the abortive, no thanks to partypooping public safety, even though drew had such a nice little fire going. instead, people gathered on a blanket in upper olde tarble and drank and grappled with those tough questions, like would you rather have spaghetti hair or potato chip fingernails. so that was not as nice as being in the woods, but it was okay.

started to watch dirty pretty things, and it was really good but i fell asleep not very far into it. and woke up late (even with these full days, i've been getting up before nine nearly every one until today) with strip-poker dreams. now i think it is actually time for breakfast.

p.s. i listened to lolita nation while i wrote this.

cowboys dance with the farmers' daughters
farmers dance with ranchers' gals

(ha. i just got a spam with an offer to "get [my] diploma in 30 days." also, when i opened it it said "get your diploma today.")

still most of y'all come out confused

so that last post was longer than we expected. i really ought to sleep. i've been getting very small amounts of sleep the last few nights. i'm very tired of the extent to which this play, considerable though it is, has been preventing almost any other aspect of my life to take place, even when i try to plan around it.

the long-gestating gothic t-shirts are trying so hard and getting nowhere. yet another shirt-buying-trip plan (gotta be at least the tenth) was deferred today. the other shirt will hopefully happen (i was working on it today - i really want to use garamond, but it's not on any computers here, and i was going crazy trying to download it. why do these sites say they're free and then aren't?), but i can't yet say when. (if you want one let me know please.)

i feel like i've barely even listened to music in the last few days. tonight it's chill-out (as i said earlier, chill t.f.o.) life is full of possibilities and vertigo. soon it will be star time. is the music industry going to keep releases new albums even though i no longer have a dependable way of getting a lot of them for free-ninety-nine? i've been selling on half.

the main other thing has been art history stuff. seminar dinner on monday. was weird. i really liked being in cothren's house (and a house at all.) and it was nice meeting emma and especially lewie, who has the most adorable brown spots on his face, and balla-esque bell-bottom legs. and i liked the exons in the dining room and the fetish trucks on the fireplace mantel.

but it was markedly non-relaxing and awkwardly social. bad enough that we basically had "class" after dinner. i mean, that wasn't really bad at all, the convo was interesting enough, even if a bit stifling. why is alex so mean to claire? and michael just seemed so tense.

he was much much better next morning, up and chipper as we crusied [sic - i like it] down 476 and he told stories about the objects hanging (illegally?) from his rear view mirror. does he like us (workshop) better than us (seminar)? that would be clairev's (hehe, like clairvaux) take. maybe he just loves the sunshine. we talked about erin's dove at pafa (which is wild! so much going on in that interior decorating scheme.) then we went to the 1st (nèe 2nd) presbyterian and claire (ruud claire) let us look at the windows. it was great. she referred to the church as "we" (she's been worshipping there for two months now) and was managing to join her two great loves. i decided i like her.

we didn't have time to get to the philamuseum for me to talk about rousseau, as i'd been up late preparing to do. but that was okay, because we'll have fun going another time. laud gave me a sky-blue or cerulean gryphon tag to make up for it.

listen, here's something. i missed my jury. i had it in my head very much so that juries were on wednesday. i had scheduled carefully to plan for them, and i signed up for a time and everything. but they were on tuesday, when i was in philly with my class. i'd had a vague foreboding that i would find out that was the case, but i couldn't really do much by then because of the laboriously-scheduled presentation trip. so then i went to check and sure enough i had missed it.

hell. do i care? this is ridiculous. the music department must think i'm the most irresponsible (or else incompetent) person on planet. i wonder if that's true (i wonder also which is closer to true, and which is worse.) i've screwed up or come close to screwing up this 48 thing in one way or another nearly every semester. i was so game this time. i played in two ensembles, i wrote my paper and had my conference and even signed up for a jury time. garsh. what the what.

i hate, i realize, the jury system. no, all i want, what i would like, is to be able to perform. all through my pre-college study, there was a recital twice a year, and everyone would play. performance is such an important part of learning to play music, especially in a formal context. i love playing for myself and it's own sake (which is also something i barely get to do), but really what does it say that the ultimate accomplishment of a semester's study is an undistinguished few minutes playing in an bare hall for a scattered clutch of faculty who are just there out of obligation. no fanfare, no climax, no resolution. it's so ugh anti-musical.

but that's beside the point, right? still, no wonder i'm so at a loss for affect. not to mention i feel so distanced from my piano study - i love tony so much but i despise what college life has done to my capacity to get anything substantial from lessons and their objective significance in my personal scheme, not to mention the forward momentum that once existed in my study. passion doesn't work on this restricted a time frame. well i don't know what my problem is.

but there's also the piece that's related to my (less intense) ambivalence about this test tomorrow. no, that's not right - i'm looking forward to the test, or i'm anxious about it or whatever you're supposed to be - it's mattering. but it's not like i've been giving it much overt thought, not what with the incredible expanding rehearsal schedule that invades my homelife tooo. but, whatever, it's just as much a nuisance as anything. i just want one day, one, where i can be outside in the afternoon. i know, i'll get lots soon. okay.

well. so i should get sleep to prepare for it. right rebecca? (gates, not ennen, she's asleep already.) i don't have to get up for anything tomorrow! (test is at 1:30.) well, except laundry.

the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

so what's so momentous and epochal about all that? yeah, nothing really i guess. but it was fun. i'm just going to tell you about saturday now, and then maybe i'll write about my adventures with michael in a little minute. can't you detect this renewed sense of audience i'm writing with?

hearsal intil four, which put us right on time for arriving at worthstock + kielbasafest. there was a lot of good food, especially the strawberries, and the pineapple i grilled. not very good drinks though. and all the lovely people were there. i sat on the grass with them. more like i flitted back and forth among them (in rebecca's words "bopping around and being ross.")

like a parent whose child has been unjustly wrested away from her, i felt a slightly defensive vested concern and pride for the festival. i tried to encourage folks to dance as appropriate, and got a nice clump for one el guapo song (they kept alternating between dancy and non-dancy, which made it hard.) then i went home to get some cds.

some people said (and i think some of them were being sort of sincere) that they enjoyed the 'tween-set music more than the sets themselves. in some ways i did too. if you're interested, it was (after piper at the gates and joe's garage, which i did not supply) candi staton, musicology, the first call and response album, and the erlend øye dj-kicks disc, which get more fantastic every time i hear it.

so nice that it was actually in worth this year, and the big stage was fun even though a bit preposterous (for everyone except for alo brasil.) palomar especially looked so tiny up there. and we were so far away from them. but they were cute anyway.

cex, who when the final lineup materialized was the only remnant of my marginal-marginal involvement in booking, was frustrating and complicated. i was particularly amped for his set, not just because of that but because i believe he is one of the best performers i've seen. so i was going around telling everyone how great he is and that they should move up and be people for him, even though i figured he'd be able to get them up and into it without my help. and i told him beforehand i was sorry about how sparse and low-energy the crowd was at that point.

he started with his futzy electronic whizzery, and an eager bunch of us moved stageward and dancily - including my sister, and green-shirted get-up kid cob rox, and bestofall ben (stef said "i like it when ben and ross are together," and so do we.) i really liked the music he was playing - pretty straight idmmy, all instrumental except for a revamped "kill me" hook - it was much more complex and curious than the idm of his early cds. if this is what his next record sounds like, i can't wait to hear it. but it wasn't at all crowd-pumping, festivally, exciting music. (although i'll admit it was keen for relaxing back in the grass.) worse, he barely said anything to the audience and made basically no effort to engage them as a performer.

you have to understand, cex is a fking brilliant, if [endearingly?] erratic entertainer - i've seen him crazy on point, down in the crowd, taking his clothes off, putting a drill to his head, kicking audience-participation freestyles about mr. peanut, cocky as whatever. if he'd been interested in it, he could have had the worthstockers on their feet and eating out of his hairy wrist. i mean, it's cool and all that he wasn't feeling that this day. he made music for a while, and that was his contract (i'm assuming.) if i had been any degree more involved in the festival, i would have contacted him in advance and asked him to do some of his hiphop stuff.

but my friends and i did ask him, nicely, if he would do some or at least freestyle or even sing something. we were dancing for him and being good little fans and he almost seemed not to notice. meanwhile, the rest of the audience was growing more non-enraptured. (eventually he sorta-caved and did one of the b-cuts from the kind of mediocre maryland mansions [why did all the critics love that so best?])

ryan, if you're reading this - unlikely since this was a few days ago now, but you did find this site once before, when you linked to my review of td&h. i was the mustachioed guy in the pink+blue berry shirt. i don't know if you remember me, but actually i talked to you at the north star bar last year about playing at swarthmore. i did enjoy your set here, but it also made me sad that your performance was so apathetic (relatively speaking).

if you (all) are interested, you should read what rjyan himself wrote about the gig. laura thought it was sadd how emphatically (undercuttingly) he says he's not unhappy. i'll testify that he seemed really very happy when he was here - he did seem to be enjoying himself when he was making his noise, he just wasn't overly concerned about the rest of us doing same. well whatever. and for the curious, this is what i wrote about the first and second times i saw him, last april and the april before (so we were a bit late this year, maybe that's the problem.)

annywizzay. . . so it was still lush and green and hummy. the sun lowered. folks left and came back with sweatshirt jackets and vittles. i took multiple heaping plastic spoon-overfuls of cookies'n'cream ice cream and ate them like impatient lollipops. i had a can of yueng. i watched dee and lillie penny lie on their backs and compare lengths and belly buttons. rainer maria yelped and made us happy. i kept track with the glorious moon. i played some cards.

then (well, a little later than that), alo brasil got on and the place went frenzy, as planned. front and center and dancing. (not me - everyone.) it was such a relief when they played that (awesome) funky number with the birimbao, and gave everyone a break from the syncopation which is not natural for most of us to be dancing to.

the set order from that point on (massive infectious samba orquestra > lone strummy folkster > blah what-trance [okay, the dude's album is called "tribal realm"]) was the nonsequiturest imaginiable, although it made a curious logic. i have to hand it to the incredible dmcc though: his crowd-manipulation introduction of ian thomas was absolutely brilliant. ian's set was real good too.

yes, and we left not long after the moda started (i did give him a chance), and went to the wsrn party, which was kind of amazing. if i had been djing, i would have been unhappy with the number of people there, but as a dancer it was a perfect small group with all of olde club to bop around in. flav played perhaps nothing but james, george, stevie, and sly all night. what a good idea! i chicken-fighted with audrey (she on gerrit's shoulders, me on joe's.)

that's about all i have to say about saturday.

i'm just a prisoner of your good lovin'

look i'm published

can i count on you to be lonesome even when i'm near?

this is a time of year for vicissitude, and for extremeness in all things, which is what i always want that word to mean even though it doesn't. not for but of. it's a momentous-feeling time of year. when you have the kind of emotions and experiences that you want to write about. and this weekend, this epochal weekend, was the most so yet. and it's not over yet, even though the birds are chirruping cheerily in the (pitch dark mind you) monday morning. because i'm awake, which is only partly because i'm less tired than i probably could be. and so i'll write about it for a spell.

must begin with friday, the last day of classes; more specifically the day of my last class (not to be confused with my lsat class), which was film theory + culture and featured, most memorably, ester cracked up to tears by photographisitor, and sparkling french limonade. that afternoon/evening had the most seasonably-emblematic explosion of goings-on, the way i always get to feeling this time of year there's so much to do so many much food parties many girls people weather dancing beautiful aah it's too much and everything is just too pretty to stand, to stay, too much to feel.

then i could only squeeze it in little bits (bites, bounces, burns) because of manifest (which i'll get to later, maybe) pres going long. and instead of seeing the amid the dead screening (fine - i'd already seen it), which would probably not have led to me getting a trifle despondent, lillie and i returned to hers so we could prepare a dish for the the phoenix party. and as i hacked mango and she her big beautiful papaya we rattled off the future and i got feeling disconnected from each aspect of it, one by one, which means disconnected from these things now too. i just wanted to lay there across her bed, windowsill chinrest, looking down at the tropicalish (everything is, suddenly) greenery, across at a friendly dormer, up at the big open bluesky moon, which is very present these days (maybe that's it: we've all, or i've, gone loony) and stay and stay.

but we went, singing beach boys songs, quietly, to each other (but not the summery ones), to the chorus concert. i hadn't been sure i was up to passion, but i stayed for it all, despite michael marr's midpoint talk (which was actually fascinating, as were his notes and following along with his translation), but as he promised the second half was kairotically wonderful despite it's chronic length. something about it (maybe the sitting still) cleared my head.

so then it was party time. despite some delectable fruit + bean salad, and a decently tasty drink i made myself, the phoenix dig failed to transcend its unrepentantly bland location. but made up for it with all kinds of [non-phoenix-related] people showing up unexpectedly for me to talk to, like joe and dave and rackoff. and eva, who covered futile-danceparty-transformation-attempt duty.

next party(x6) was also fun, and way more popular. i more appreciated it than enjoyed it, as shortly after i arrived they were after me to get folks together for dip, so i went businesslike through multiple flats times to keep the posse together. when we eventually made it down, there were nine of us (rackoff and friends were already on their way up.) dip was fabulous, definitely one of the most enjoyable in memory. it was the especially nice kind where you feel so much better once you've gone in all the way that you just want to stay in the water, and ducking back in for warmth almost make sense. we played "a great wind blows." some talk of streaking, but the movies were done and paces was dark so we just went in and shook it a bit.

i figured there would be better dancing back at the barn, but actually the party was starting to dissolve there that early (explosive days make people tired, you know.) so i invited a gang of favorite friends back to mine, and we sat around in the cantina, letting the evening end properly. talked about blogs (very funny: at first we knew that three of eight of us had them; as the conversation continued it gradually came out that six did), so of course the conversation has now been amply edocumented - by ang and emmy tho not eva.

actually those entries talk mostly about the next day, worthstock and all that. which i ought to and will do too. but not yet, because that's another day, and now it is night. but i will say that i listened to pet sounds the next morning, and i don't think i've ever found it so emotionally wrenching.

wouldn't it be nice if we were older?
then we wouldn't have to wait so long