Be More Punk Rock, Old Man!

I'm a little terrified by the paper I'm writing, for a lot of reasons totally unrelated to the fact that it isn't even close to done yet. It's actually the point that I'm making and the people I'm making it to that make me feel panicky. 

How do you tell a bunch of old guys that they've become stagnant in a field where progress is law, tradition is sin, and innovation is the only path to success? Using an old musical gimmick is like a socialite wearing the same dress to two parties. These men, at some point, all began going to the same tailor, requesting the same cuts and colors, and eventually ALL ended up wearing the same dress.

Okay, so the metaphor has gone too far. This isn't about men in dresses, this is about music, damnit. But you see my point.

Part of the point of my paper is that the field of electronic music started out with the avant garde, the rock-n-roll sensibility of doing the weird shit, knowing it's awesome and edgy, and having that devil-may-care attitude about the opinions of others, rebelling against the status quo. Where did that go? How did we end up sitting in darkened concert halls, staring at the little blue lights on the stage monitors and listening to the same "swoosh, floop, pop!" sounds from every piece? Other fields of art have managed to blend their newfound academic credibility with the above-mentioned qualities. Electronic music, on the other hand, just rolled over, said "Oh, we're legit now!", and promptly began going to bed early, listening to music more quietly, and hanging out with people who wear ties. 

To be fair, not everyone in the field is like this. But those who aren't, those who still try to capture the excitement of tinkering with things we shouldn't and writing whatever music they feel like writing, they are shunned. They're considered immature, unrefined, not academically suitable. There will be no university jobs for them unless they're willing to squeeze into the mold and keep their dirty habits as quiet weekend activities in the privacy of their garages. 

I'm trying not to fall into the same trap, I really am, but this school is trying desperately to force me down. I'm thinking the solution might be to get weirder, to stay up late, to be louder, and to wear my tie around my head. If they want to keep me from getting my degree because of it, so be it. You can't stop the signal.

-----

For an humorous, self-disparaging account of the concepts discussed in this entry, check out Mark Applebaum's piece entitled Pre-Composition, which you can listen to on DRAM. 

Sanity is an Endangered Resource

I spent my morning being terribly academic, sipping a chai latte in a localorganicfairtrade coffee shop, listening to Depeche Mode, and furiously highlighting and annotating my hundreds of pages of reading. Then I went to the basketball arena to watch the inauguration with thousands of other people. Then I came home and dropped a class.

Okay, so the reading for Musicology scared me. A lot. Not the content so much, though a rant on that will be coming soon enough. I realized that while this week I may only have 20 pages of reading for my English class, before long I would have a total of 500-600 pages of reading between the two classes. On top of all that, I would be expected to write a lot and continue composing extensively. Today I realized that there is no way I can possibly do all that and retain my sanity. 

I've been very sensitive about my sanity lately. I've gained a lot of perspective since graduating from undergrad, and I see now that I pushed myself way too hard and sacrificed my happiness way too much for grades. I spent a good deal of undergrad strained to the limit, on the verge of breakdown, constantly taking on more and trying to be perfect at all of it. In the end, I missed out on a lot of life, but had a lot of really great work to show for it. I've gone in the complete opposite direction since then, and I'm having a hell of a time trying to strike some sort of balance. I have seriously burned out from going so hard for so long. This year, instead of dying because I'm working so hard, I'm dying because I'm having trouble forcing myself to work, to care about what I'm working on. It doesn't help that I'm really unhappy in my current program. I'm hoping that with a better lineup of classes and a more positive atmosphere, I might be able to turn things around this semester. I'm happy, I have a great home life, and I love nerding out with Warcraft and my D&D friends and reading. But I need that other kind of happiness, too. I never feel more fulfilled than I do when I work really hard on something and have a professor tell me that it's excellent work. It's not so much the praise that I need, though I do require the occasional affirmation that I don't suck everything I do. It's an artistic and intellectual satisfaction that I'm missing. 

If I don't get that by the end of this semester, I think it might be the end of my time at this university.

And now, without all that scary reading ahead of me, I can devote my full time to my conference paper. Time to grab a beer and dig in.

 

Procrastination Leads to Caffeination

This was previously posted in a more private blog on December 17th, 2008. I give you this, because the topic has come back to bite me in the ass...again:

"A note to all of my friends either currently in academia or heading that way in the future:

Never submit an abstract and bibliography to a conference assuming that the work is so bad that they would never, ever accept it. They will do so just to spite you.

Fuckfuckfuck.

So, as you probably have gathered, I've done just this. I submitted an abstract and complete bibliography to the SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Art back in October. I was working on finishing up the research portion and planned to start writing the paper within the next few weeks. The call for works went out about a week before the deadline they set, so there was certainly no way to actually write the paper in that amount of time. Besides, they were only asking for an abstract and sources, so I figured all would be cool. I'd be done with the paper by the time they sent out notifications. So, I shat out the abstract and threw together the bibliography before the idea for the paper was even fully formed. I knew it was bad. It was certainly the worst 150 words I had ever written and didn't make my concept sound appealing at all. I submitted it anyway, feeling somewhat obligated since I presented at that festival last year and I wanted to stay active and keep my name in their heads. I also kind of hoped it would magically get in, since it would mean staying with my best friend for a week. As soon as I clicked submit, I resigned myself to the fact that it would never be accepted because it was so bad. I started to feel embarrassed that I had put such terrible work out there for others to see. 

So, I promptly forgot about it. Before long, the semester got so busy that I had no time for independent research, only for grading and writing papers for courses. The notification deadline for the conference came and went. I assumed the fact that I didn't hear anything at all meant they hadn't accepted the paper. That's the way it usually goes. I was somewhat relieved. 

It turns out they were just letting me finish up my semester and relax for a few days. Two days ago I received an e-mail saying "Congratulations! Come present your paper in February!" 

FUCK. Yay? FUCK.

They haven't sent out the e-mail asking for camera-ready papers yet, but it's only a matter of days. I figure, hey, it's the holiday season. I can probably stall for a few days, saying I'm out of town (which I am) and that the paper is on my hard drive at home (which it's not) and I assumed I had not been accepted because it was 15 days past the notification date (which I did). This should work; I know the guy who organizes the conference, and he's a hell of a nice guy. In the meantime, though, I'm working frantically to write a properly academic-y paper with only partially-done research. At least my abstract is done!  D:

I'm so boned."

After writing this original post, I proceeded to do additional research and flesh out my idea a bit more, but never actually write the damned paper. The holidays came and went; no call for papers. I began to think, hey, last two years they never actually published the papers in the conference book. Maybe they aren't going to do it this year either, so they aren't bothering to ask for them. I put it off even longer, thinking maybe I would get lucky and end up presenting on a paper I never actually had to write. New Years came, then the beginning of the semester. No word. A few days ago, an e-mail finally came asking for biographies, headshots, etc. for the conference book. No mention of camera-ready papers. Could I really be so lucky?

No. Of course not. I went to the submission page for the bios and pictures, and found a spot for an abstract, and an upload area for full papers. This festival is notorious for being terribly unorganized, but I've never minded before now. Thanks for the notice, guys! They want it today. I feel confident that I can stall for a few days since they never actually publish the papers. "But but, you never gave us a formatting template for the paper! How am I supposed to know how you want the paper to look?" Not a big deal. What is a big deal is that I have several hundred pages to read for class this week and in-laws visiting today, and somehow I'm supposed to write this paper in the meantime. ARG. Why do I do these things to myself? 

If you're looking for me, I'll be the over-caffeinated one shaking in the corner and babbling about the cyberpunk aesthetic.

Playing Catch-Up: Fall 2008

So, as the end of the fall 2008 semester tried its best to grind my face into the ground, I tried my best to keep blogging. I obviously failed, as the low post count for December will show, but that isn't to say I didn't churn out some material. In fact, I have several text documents full of post fragments, topics to cover, and notes on events that I fully intend/ed to post eventually. I may get around to elaborating on some of these at some point in the future, but since most of them will likely never see their own post, I give you: December 2008 in review, Ph.Dead style. 

-- What the hell is up with students friending me on Facebook? 

-- I am going to dissect the next person who tells me what I should do with MY compositions.

-- How to talk about John Cage, one of my heroes, to an indifferent class: "He was a composer and music philosopher who specialized in skull fucking tradition." Can I say that?

-- "Grades should be submitted within forty-eight hours after the final exam." WHAT?! What about my own exams? *cry*

-- What happens when you pick a bad topic for a 20 page paper and it's due in two days...

-- I never thought I'd actually be wistful about saying goodbye to my Music 101 classes. 

-- A gift from a student? For me? And it was shipped here from China?!

-- End-of-semester crunch time...what fun.

Time for my first meeting of the semester. *deep breath* 

First Day Back Blues? Or Purples?

New semester, new posting season for Ph.Dead. 

No, I did not actually die at the end of last semester. It was a particularly unrestful winter break, however, due to excessive traveling and excessive our-apartment-is-falling-apart-but-they-won't-let-us-move raging. Now, the fateful day has arrived: the first day of classes. Time to brace myself and charge headfirst into chaos. 

So, what does the new semester hold for me? Well, hopefully it will mean increased motivation above all. I'm taking some classes that I'm terribly excited about, and the class I'm teaching this semester is not only NOT at 9 AM, it is also NOT a non-major class, NOT a 100-level class, and NOT 120 students large. Instead, it starts at a very reasonable 11:00 AM, contains all music and computer science majors, is a 300-level class, and is capped at 30 students with 10 students per lab session. The lab is what I'll be teaching, and the course material is right up my alley. Intro to Music and Computers, AKA Intro to What I'll Supposedly Be Doing for the Rest of My Life. I'm actually looking forward to this, and it'll mean I get to brush up on lots of material I should know like the back of my hand anyway. 

The professor I'm TA-ing for this semester is a visiting lecturer from Berklee, and I have to admit that I was nervous at first. All the professors around here are so snobby and anti-idealist, I was starting to fear that all computer music professors at the graduate level would be the same way. Not so. Within the first few minutes, we were pretty comfortably chatting, he was asking me for book recommendations for the class, and we jointly expressed our frustration over the crappiness of this school and the disorganized nature of the program. I thought it was just me that got kicked into the middle of everything and told to just "figure it out"; well, turns out they extend that same courtesy to faculty members. This guy has restored my hope that maybe you CAN stick with this field and not let academia turn you into a jaded, pretentious asshole. Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately, I also have this same guy for my composition lessons this semester, so I'm looking forward to working with him in that respect as well. 

One thing that I think will help keep my sanity as well is that my schedule is much more cohesive than it was last semester. Most of my classes occur in the 11:00-2:00 range, with a few exceptions, which makes sharing the car with the husband-unit much easier. Less evening classes also means I might be able to keep up a light raiding schedule for World of Warcraft this semester. Yes, I know, not exactly top priority, but it's one of those small bits of social interaction that I value very much. I'm also auditioning for the choir at our local Unitarian Universalist church ((What? Me in a church?! I know, crazy. But it's all non-religious and relaxed and fun!)), so that will hopefully be another fun and social activity. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but overall, life seems on track for a much healthier and happier semester.

I'm going to kill whoever has been making that annoying beeping noise for the past TEN MINUTES in the next cubicle. 

Healthier, happier semester.

There's about to be blood. 

Beep....beep....