November 2008 Archives

I haven't updated my blog in a week for one reason: exhaustion.  It's incredible that after 3 years of the college gig, it's still getting harder.  And it's not the difficulty of the work.  It's the amount and the logic behind it.

For example, I have a test, a paper, a project, and two presentations due on Monday, another paper and another project due Tuesday, a performance and auditions on Wednesday, radio station tracks and another project due Thursday, a decent amount of music to be memorized by Sunday, and a list of portfolio pieces for grad schools due ASAP, and on top of it all, I have to contest my automated termination at work because an absence to prepare for my senior recital on Saturday (which I told them about 3 months ago), and because of that, I'm behind on my second job, too.

How much have I completed?  Not much, because for a week out of class, I wanted a week out of class.  It's hard enough doing anything worthwhile at home for me; it's not an atmosphere conducive to hard work.  But to have all that shoved in my face is ridiculous.  So, no, I'm not working on some random assignment I don't care about on break.  It's hard enough finding time to compose, let alone relax for five minutes.  And considering all the house and yard work I did for my parents on break and how much work it's taking just to cover my behind, it's not worth the stress.

Even though I'm spending thousands and thousands of dollars a year (yes, my money, and yes, my debt), I feel like the school and the teachers lose sight of the students from time to time.  Another example: Dorms don't reopen until tomorrow.  My sister goes to Pitt University, and they keep their dorms open (maybe not their cafeterias, but their dorms) through the entire break.  Me?  I had to bust my tail to get out of there before noon on Sunday after my radio show, and I still can't get back in until tomorrow (unless I paid more money).

This strikes me as a bit of a doublethink: Here's a ton of work to do, here's the denial of the facility to do it, and P.S., you should have done the project earlier.  You know, before you knew about it.  I'm struggling to get above a B this semester (for the first time since 4th grade, and in one of my busiest semesters ever), and I'm still denied financial support.

All I'm asking for is a break.  Okay, I can work on a project or two.  But to pile me up with a towering stack of odditties makes me unwilling to do any of it.  I got to read over break.  You know how long it's been since I've been able to sit down and just read?  By refusing to do work, I got to read a book.  It's sad that that has become monumental, and with all these projects do, I'm questioning whether I'm actually learning anything.

Don't get me wrong.  The minute I step back on campus, it's back to work (and harder than ever, since I have three pieces I haven't had time to finish through the rest of the semester).  But for know, I'm going to catch up on my reading and listening.  (I've decided to start James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" as soon as I'm done with my current book.  I'm told this is a bad idea...)

I truly cannot work at home.  Then again, most of this work would have been done if the library didn't shut down at 6pm on Friday.

Needless to say, I'm quitting my job at Redifer.  I've spent as much time combatting absences as I have working the actual job.  Between a fully automated system and 6 hour blocks of shift times, it's not very convenient for an active student.  I'd rather catch up on swing dance lessons and finish my pieces and papers, stuff that will actually help me get into grad school and become a professional in a field other than food service. 

I do not value much of my time in food service, only the money I've earned from it (and considering the fact I've never received a raise, you can imagine how much I value that, too...).  It's not that I don't put in the work; I put in my share and much more.  And if I'm unable to benefit from that work, I'll apply my time and energy to things that actually matter to me.  This is my last year as an undergraduate.  I want to learn and encounter as much as I can before this time leaves me.  (No, this does not include following PSU to a bowl game or spending an entire Saturday drunk.  I have neither the time, money, or inclination to do so.  Despite what Redifer and much of the rest of the university expects, I have never had an inclination to football or any organized sport and probably never will.)

In conclusion, when I'm out seeing my family for the first time in four months, I'd actually like to spend a little time with them.  That's one of the major reasons I didn't pay PSU $180 to spend break on campus...


On a brighter note, my senior recital last week went quite well,.  The centerpiece was a piece for two player pianos, laptop, and pianist called "Conlon Nancarrow at the LHC."  The piece was a depiction of the current environmental movement, with the pianos acting as the structured incoherence of nature battling against the rational forced structure of mankind, ultimately concluding with the mutual benefits of both sides.  The piece was pretty brutal to learn and perform (I hit a lot of wrong notes that night), but I was extremely pleased with how it turned out, and my audience (I had an audience!) was extremely enthusiastic.  So, yay!  And thanks to all who came out.

I'm planning on submitting the piece to the graduate (or is it still undergraduate?) exhibition.  I think I'm on to something with this piece.

I'm trying to build a repertoire of poetry to recite.  While I have three under my belt already, I would like to find more poems to learn, specifically something unique and interesting (which means no, I will not memorize "The Road Not Taken" by Frost).

Why am I doing this?  Let me get back to you on that.  I've always wanted a repertoire of spoken dialogue, particularly poetry, and while I am approaching this a bit late in the game, this is a serious attempt.  Besides, I need something to do at work...

I was watching Family Guy last night when I found what might be one of my favorite monologues.  Enjoy.



It's funny to think about where the people working on this show came from: college.  I wonder what our current generation will produce...

Now philosophy is invading my analyzation of music...  Scary...

There's a song by art-rock group Sleepytime Gorilla Museum called "Helpless Corpses Enactment" that I've been trying to decode.  They're one of those groups that are so deeply artistic that their music unveils something new every time.  Here are the lyrics:


"The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must.

A hand from the cloud emerges, holding a chart expanded. The eversower of the seeds of light to the cowld owld sowls that are in the domnatory of Defmut after the night of the carrying of the word of Nuahs and the night of making Mehs to cuddle up in a coddlepot, Pu Nuseht, lord of risings in the yonderworld of Ntamplin, tohp triumphant, speaketh.

Of all the stranger things that ever not even in the hundrund and badst pageans of unthowsent and wonst nice or in eddas and oddes bokes of tomb, dyke and hollow to be have happened! The untireties of livesliving being the one substrance of a streamsbecoming. Totalled in toldteld and teldtold.

Ascend out of your bed, cavern of a trunk, and shrine!

Vah! Suvarn Sur! Scatter brand to the reneweller of the sky,
thou who agnitest! Dah! Arcthuris comeing! Be! Verb
umprincipiant through the trancitive spaces! Kilt by kelt shell kithagain
with kinagain. We elect for thee, Tirtangel. We
Durbalanars, theeadjure.
A way, the Margan, from our astamite,
through dimdom done till light kindling light has led we hopas
but hunt me the journeyon, iteritinerant, the kal his course,
amid the semitary of Somnionia.

Too mult sleepth. Let sleepth.

The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must."


Here's the stinger: The lyrics aren't their own.  The text is from various sections of "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce.  And the video (which I've posted below) is somewhat reminiscent of, among other things, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I'm sure I'm missing a lot of elements here, but there's a lot here to go on already.  Much of the music and text from this CD, entitled "In Glorious Times," seems to deal with the juxtaposition of the Apollinian and Dionysian affects of life and art, and the value of existence in a mortal state.

So ultimately, the song and video are about trying to avoid the ultimate fate (death) and failing to do so; and even worse, speeding up the process.  Things are meant to die, and perhaps it's best if they're left that way.  Additionally, we see a very Apollinian set of compositional procedures, especially in the duple->triple->sixteenths->quintuple->sectuple transitional phrases, and the gradually increasing meters of the B section of the 'verses.'  Thus, they're taking what seems like utter chaos and organizing it very, very technically.  I take it as they're trying to theoretically understand death as, as Heidegger would put it, present-to-hand.  But the very being of death is much more primordial than that, and any theoretical attempt to 'research' and 'organize' theoretical data about death ultimately results in circular arguments and what seems to be chaos.

Only in the absence of this over-structuralization do we see the true nature of death, i.e. the very end of the song and video.  Like in Heidegger's "On Being and Time," the definition of one's Being (Dasein) is only attainable at one's death (the summation of Dasein).  However, at one's death, he and Dasein cease to exist.  So the song is an attempt to understand the Being of death through the viewpoint of the dead.

And yet the lyrics seem to also cover the other end of the spectrum: they seem to be an incantation for the soul of the dead to rise into/out of the afterworld. There's a sense of spirituality, but just as often at as it seems monotheistic, it also seems paganistic.  The text is a duality in itself, especially when the relationships between life and death, and Apollinian and Dionysian are incorporated.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing all this, and there's a lot of missed or barely skimmed over.  But I think there's something here, and I'd like to know if anyone else has any input.  The video is posted below.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - Helpless Corpse Enactment



Somebody describing the group on Amazon once said, "If your IQ is below 130-ish, you probably won't understand their music."  I think he's over-exaggerating a little (see Babbitt's "The Composer as a Specialist"), but I'm always happy to find music that requires a lot of deep thinking.

Just a quick entry:  Here's a fun site I found based on the web meme, "You're doing it wrong."  Every time you refresh the page or click the picture, a new random picture is displayed, ranging from obvious and even grotesque to intricate and subtle.  It's worth a chuckle or two, and some of the car accidents are pretty bizarre...

I've been a little weary of my position in the University as of late.  It's not only that I'm a senior, or that I still haven't adapted to the 'social life' at PSU, but it's really more a question of the ethics of me just being here.

 

I don't have any scholarships, so I've been working a couple of jobs to keep up with loans and books and the loans I don't get, and still I manage to attend every class, plus featured lectures, and I somehow find myself in the libraries every week seeking out that forgotten book or score.  And lest we not forget clubs and performances.  My issue comes from the fact that I use up a lot of the University's resources like a ravenous beast.  And I'm learning a lot, and doing a lot, but for what?  As a composer, my job is horribly abstract, as I've discussed before.

 

The real ethical issue comes to play when we consider who pays for these resources.  The kid that sits to the right of me in English, who goes to every football game and walks into class every morning hung-over, he pays for these resources.  The group that sits behind me in CompSci who complain about listening to a lecture about programming macros instead of keeping up with Sports Center, they pay for these resources.  I'm not trying to point fingers, but I struggle to justify my aptitude to studying all I can for a seemingly useless vocation while my contemporaries hand the university money to let me do so, completely unconscious of it all.

 

And how do I justify this?  I'm leeching off tens of thousands of students who are a lot like me (in terms of where we are in our lives and academic backgrounds).  I feel that as a student body, we tend to forget that everyone in that student body is essentially pursuing the same thing: education.  Some form of higher learning, if for nothing else, to leave college with the know-how to obtain a decent job.  Despite this, the whole community feeling that should be common at a university just doesn't appear and is replaced by this apathy toward the university they pay to support.

 

Don't get me wrong.  There's an amazingly powerful Liberal Arts education to be found at Penn State if you know how to look for it.  But that excludes a lot of people, too, which leaves me, and quite a few others, I'm sure, leeching off our classmates.  Is this right?

 

And in way, this leads into the core idea of this blogging prototype.  By blogging like this, we create a social atmosphere that, for some reason, doesn't pervade much on campus.  I see Dean Brady's vision for the Schreyer's students blogging as applying to the whole campus.  Imagine thousands of students actively engaged in each other's developments and discoveries.  Networking will no longer be about who you are, but what you do, which is at the very least just as much of who you are as, say, your name and that picture of you doing a keg-stand.

 

I think having the university blog will turn the campus into a network of ideas and active thought.  And that's what a university, especially one as important as Penn State, should be pushing for.  The unified pursuit of knowledge.

 

And this is found at Scheyer's.  As a junior-gate scholar and a resident of South Halls, however, I remain withdrawn from that atmosphere, for better or worse.  With so much going on around campus, however, I feel like this pursuit ought to (and to some degree, is) shared by everyone, students, grads, and faculty alike.

 

That's an abstract way to look at our academic institution, but I guess that's my job.  To try to initiate some change or at least try to push those ideas that could make a notable impact.  But I'm still uneasy about leeching.  Please take advantage of the money you spend here.  There's more than enough resources here to spare.

 

I apologize if that came off egotistical.

One of the things I've gained in college is a deep appreciation for, of all things, adult-oriented television.  Everything from Stephen Colbert's talk shows to AdultSwim's vulgar cartoons have really struck a chord with my current generation.  And what makes a lot of the stuff (the good stuff) most notable is the intelligence and creativity involved.  One cartoon, "Moral Orel," has decided to spend the second season going backwards through the first season and rather than debasing religious fanaticism like they use to, they now seem to be presenting an argument about life in conservative America.  Or look at South Park, which has turned from little kids swearing to little kids finding themselves trying to navigate complex social issues (such as last week's episode, where it turned out that McCain and Obama actually used the election as a ploy to steal a very expensive ruby). 

Yes, it's vulgar.  But the cream of the crop are trying to say something.  Or a lot of things.  I think it's an interesting development of our current era, and it should be followed and valued for what it's presenting.  And how.

Below is a clip from "Frisky Dingo," in which we find that the hero's ex-henchmen (yes, you read that right) aren't quite on the same page.  Or the same area of study.

If you've been following my posts, you may have noticed this recurring gestalt of a need for more respect between people.  (I'm writing a paper on it for English 202 presenting Ethical Literacy Education in middle and high schools as an effective solution).  So in doing research on this, I'm usually a little surprised by what I find.  But not this surprised.

Enter video 1:



Mike Huckabee urging conservatives to treat Obama with respect?  Does he need to do that?  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's urging people to respect a candidate they were often so angily against during this past year's presidential race.  But is the cultural climate really so bad as to require a notable program's acknowledgement and solution?

Don't laugh, liberals.  You're not out of the woods yet.

Oprah.com has an article featured on CNN.com about how 80% of Americans believe rudeness is an issue.  Woah.  I didn't think that many people were conscious of it.  On her website there are even more articles about ethical dilemmas and civil behavior.  And I stand alongside her.  It is.  But I'm still surprised at the sudden emergence of wide-reaching news centers pushing this idea.

Granted, civil behavior has been written about for years, long before settlers discovered America.  However, 'civil behavior' had always been synonymous with behavior within certain realms of a class system, and was therefore aimed at a specific group of elite.  Now, however, and possibly for the first time in history, we have a secular presentation of a call for all people to treat each other with civility.  If this continues, we could see something socially huge, like an Ethical Manifesto.  However, as we approach a change of this kind, we need to remember that each of us are part of the problem.

So while I'm glad the need for some form of social ethics is beginning to be noticed more, it's a call to ourselves individually, too.  Everybody, even Huckabee and Oprah, and even myself, needs to be on the same page.

I skipped work today to go see John Adams' "Doctor Atomic" at the State Theater.  "Doctor Atomic" is an opera about Dr. Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb over the span of about 48 hours, leading up to the first detonation of the bomb.  There is little bad I can say about the show.  It was incredible.  Its treatment of the subject matter and ultimate underlying themes hit me like, well, and atomic bomb.

"Doctor Atomic" is ultimately about the 'death of innocence' in America that occurred as soon as we developed a way to actually end our species.  In his Harvard lectures, Bernstein spews out a list of late 19th and early 20th century composer and artists who foretold of this, although it should be noted that a significant factor of "Doctor Atomic" is when it was written: 2005.  There's a lot of talk (well, singing) about peace through war and global impact (some scientists thought that igniting the bomb would ignite the earth's entire atmosphere!).  And to see how those concepts play out now (Iraq, Georgia, Korea, global warming, crashing markets) turns this show into a bit of a possible explanation of how we got this way.  And how we can prevent from spiraling further.

Of course, this is just based on what I've read from John Adams and Peter Sellers about it, and my initial viewing.  If you're a music theory buff, you need to check this out.  Adams has out-Messiaen'ed Messiaen through an awesome rhythmic interplay toward the end, and he's brought new tonal languages (again!) to post-minimalism.  And the finale to Act I is sure to move anybody's soul.

So geek points to me for watching an opera about physics.  If you want to see an even more unusual opera, check out Steve Reich's "Three Tales."  I'm going to write extensively about that soon, as I have yet to hear the argument made by this opera anywhere else, or at the very least, I haven't heard it this powerfully.

Posted below is "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God," the finale to the first act.  This is a different staging than the one I saw, but the same performer.    Enjoy.

Vote.  I don't care who you vote for.  Just vote.

So I was standing in line at the polls this morning when I realized that Penn State students missed one hell of an opportunity. The past two years of political coverage have been brimming with bias and blackouts (and don't you dare try to retort that Fox News isn't biased).  Even social life is filled with bias.  While thousands of people are handing out free Obama stuff every day, I've yet to receive anything supporting McCain.  In fact, there are more Obama stickers lurking like Hidden Mickey's around the campus than there are people with McCain pins, and most of those pins are attacking Obama instead of supporting McCain.

And this went on before that.  First there was a blackout of Republican primaries.  Then the complete dismissal of Ron Paul.  And all the while, we didn't hear one peep from any Independent or Green Party members.

I can't sit down and say, "Well that's just the way the system works."  There's a damn big problem on our hands if news-based media approaches everything with inherent bias.  And it's not a question of available coverage time.  I'm fairly sure that American national politics has precedence over a high speed car chase in Kansas, and that people deserve to know something about all their options...

While I wouldn't be surprised if it already exists, I'm angry that I haven't heard of anything like this throughout the past four years, so here's what I propose:  Penn State should have a student organization devoted to presenting political information and news in an unbiased way.  We have television, radio, newspapers, law students, poli-sci students, economics students, inart students, a good film program, a good music technology program - why don't we have anything like this yet?!?!  Yes, it requires organization, but the student body should be kept informed of what happens outside of this 5 square mile hole in the middle of Pennsylvania, and the experience those involved will receive will place them leagues above the rest of their contemporaries.

I say this, and yet every TV in Redifer Commons is currently still on one or another of our (what is it now, 10?  11?  12?) various sports stations (ESPN, FSN, BIG10, etc).  At least I'm guaranteed an empty seat in the Reserves Room in Pattee, the only place on campus where there's at least the chance of catching some form of political coverage other than,"Let's ask some sports fans what they think about the election!"  Why don't we just watch the damn election coverage itself?  Wouldn't that be a little more logical?!

And no, I won't apologize for my break-out above.  This election has proven just how persuasive overly-biased media can be and how ignorant we college students keep ourselves, and I'm appalled that people don't think this is a problem.

P.S. If we lose another popular vote to the electoral college, I will be picketing in front of Old Main at 11pm tonight.

My friend Rob Jones posted this on Facebook today, and I think people should be reading it.  I've reprinted it below.



Please, remember to vote.  And know why you vote.

How many times have we heard, "Penn State had a riot last week!"

Well, it wasn't a riot, and ironically, the answer was less than a Wikipedia article or two away.

Ladies and Gentlemen, that fateful October night, we exhibited the typical characterizations of Category C Hooligans.  Yep, hooliganism.  (Q: When is a colloquialism more than a colloquialism?)

So hooray for us.  Not only did we do something absurd and destructive, we can't even classify it correctly.