Changes [2] - Composing, Philosophy, and Power Games

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Continuing on from the previous post, I want to elaborate a little on my issues with the faculty as composition teachers and the Big Damn Fuckup that was my first year meeting.

I was planning to give the department a second chance this term, see if my second year got any better with one professor gone on sabbatical and another who was gone last year returned to active duty. The meeting in June was the last straw, however. First of all, the fact that I didn't even know about the meeting until the day before speaks to the department's disorganization and unclear expectations. Then, as I'm waiting outside the door for my turn, a guy in the second year of the program me tells me that this meeting determines whether or not I can advance to the next year of the degree and their expectations are really high. Something this important, and I wasn't told? I get in there and essentially get ripped apart, alternately told that my piece is really innovative and terribly executed. Without reciting the entire conversation, they were expecting a publisher-ready score and had different ideas for how the piece should have gone. Interesting, considering it's my piece and I thought that my musical ideas were the ones being expressed, not theirs.

Admittedly, part of the problem is system shock. I was always taught by previous composition teachers that your music is your own, and no one can tell you how you should write it; advice can be given on technique and the like but ultimately, it's your piece. Coming to this place and being told what specifically to change has been a serious issue for me, and I just don't believe in that type of artistic instruction. If something in one of my pieces doesn't work, fine, let me know where and why and I'll figure out how to correct it on my own. I retain creative control over my work, the piece is still 100% my own thought and effort, but it's better for the constructive criticism that's been given.

Another part of the issue was the quality they were demanding from the score when they knew that (1) I'd never produced a non-standard written score before, (2) was striking out into new notation territory, and (3) got little real help from the faculty past the initial very rough draft. Seems like setting me up for failure and a nice dressing down, which I certainly got. Sure, everyone needs to get knocked down a few pegs when they get to grad school; we all come out of undergrad as the top of our class, the best of the best, the ones in charge. Obviously, that doesn't continue in grad school. However, I've found through my own experiences and from talking to others that you get humbled more than enough within the first few weeks, if not the first few days. The first time I sat down to discuss the listening and reading assignments for a seminar class, I felt so horrible about myself I wanted to quit. I thought I was dumber than shit on a brick and would never make it through school. Additional dressing down not necessary; I already feel stupid and useless, thanks. Skip the unnecessary pot shots at my non-existent ego and give me some real feedback. Being told "...you're going to have to work twice as hard to be as smart as everyone else here" is just cruel, and that's an actual quote.

At the end of the meeting, though, I was stunned but largely okay. I had some things to fix, some of which I really didn't want to change but would for the sake of passing my first year. Then came the cherry on top. They ask me when I can have my revisions in, and I tell them that I'll be leaving town very soon, already have a summer job, several other time commitments, and some work for another professor that I had promised I would have finished before I left town. I say that it's unlikely I'll be able to begin revisions until after I return from Atlantic Center for the Arts (something they should have been proud of, but didn't acknowledge at all). The head of the department says no, forget about Professor Y, he can wait, this comes first. None of that other stuff matters, this is your degree, you have to do this to advance to the second year. You need this done in two weeks, forget all that other crap.

I don't appreciate being told what my priorities are. When I make a commitment to something I follow through, and that's that. I will not drop my job, my previous coursework, or anything else that I've already committed to because you decided to give one day's notice for a meeting in which you tell me that what you want is more important than anything else, ever. They actually told me to just pull lots of all-nighters and get it done. Promoting unhealthy work habits in your students? Yeah, okay, sometimes we do pull all-nighters, but it's our own choice and it's usually because we've not managed our time well. That's our problem. I won't sacrifice a healthy amount of sleep just because you want to show me how much control you can exert over me.

So, I ignored what they said and revised my piece after I got back from the residency. Soon afterwards, a message was sent out to the whole department by the head of music graduate studies with the guidelines for revisions of first year projects and papers. The policy states that we have until mid-September to do revisions. This is not a new policy.

It was all a power game.

To be continued.

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Proverbial Shit, Meet Fan (Part 2)

((Continued from previous entry))

After re-reading the e-mail in which my independent study bid was rejected, I've realized some things.

What irritates me most is that he rejected my independent study request because he thinks I need to do more writing. He said: "There's a serious writing component to the program, & for most people it's the most difficult component. So if you have a chance to work on writing in the context of some academic class, that's helpful. At the end of next year, you'll have to submit an academic paper, typically incl. fairly rigorous analysis, some 'big ideas', a 'clear thesis', and so on. We tend to be pretty demanding about the quality of that paper. It's a big plus for you if you've already basically *written* the paper in some other class."

Now, this makes me very angry for several reasons. (1) I suggested that the independent study have a writing component. (2) Last semester I wrote a paper on my own, not as part of a class, submitted it to a conference, and had it accepted. I had no support from the faculty on this whatsoever. (3) That paper was actually the SECOND academic paper I had written and presented at a professional conference. No other student in my department has done that. Add to that the fact that I'm 8-10 years younger than the average student in the program. I'm not saying my writing is perfect or that I have nothing to learn, not at all. What I am saying, though, is that I don't need an analysis-based class to force me to write. All those classes do is make me churn out bad papers on topics I don't care about. I can do research and write papers on my own about topics that actually interest me, and if I have a faculty advisor who actually cares and is involved then I bet the paper would be even better.

I haven't given up the fight, but I'm just too worn out to pursue it further right now. I'm going to present the above points to him and see if he'll reconsider, but I'm not all that hopeful. I'm more concerned with getting through the semester with my sanity and health intact at this point. I've been sick three times in the past four weeks. I haven't been that bad off since my sophomore year of undergrad, the same year I had a nasty struggle with depression. I've felt myself slipping back to that time, and this recent bout of illnesses has really brought it home how close I am to being back at that point of my life, a place I never though I'd be ever again. Mr. Dead has been quite worried, as he was there for it last time, and has convinced me that I need to schedule a meeting with the composition professors to try and set things right. If it looks like things can't work out for me here, he's made me promise that I'll look for other programs to transfer to.

It scares the crap out of me, because I don't want to have wasted this entire year of work. We're also just getting to the point where we're making friends and having fun here, and now we're talking about leaving. Of course, my biggest fear is that if I leave here, I won't be accepted to any other programs, and then what will I do with my life? Ultimately, though, if I'm miserable here, is it worth it to stay? Even if they offer to change things, will I be happy if I stay, or have I already become too bitter towards them?

Maybe I'll build us a hobbit hole and become a reclusive artist who lives off the land and bites anyone who comes near. That sounds way better than getting some fancy piece of paper.

Proverbial Shit, Meet Fan (Part 1)

There's a lot going on right now, and I don't really know how to start writing about it all. I guess we'll start with some basic facts.

Fact One: My plea for an independent study got rejected.
Fact Two: My health, both physical and mental, has seriously declined over the month of March.
Fact Three: I'm going out of my mind because I hate this department so much.
Fact Four: Mr. Dead has finally convinced me that I need to look in earnest for a different program.

Fact One brings up some major problems, and has been at least partly responsible for Facts Two through Four. As I've complained about before, 4 out of 4 seminars thus far have been analysis-based; I feel like we've gone over method of analysis derived by someone with a typewriter and a need to pad their tenure portfolio. Add the fact that most of this analysis has centered around music I don't even enjoy listening to, and you have one big ball of unhappy, repressed Megan. Most of my classes might have been fine, perhaps even really interesting, had they existed on their own in a mix of different types of classes. I'm in a creative field. Ultimately, this is a music composition Ph.D program. I'm supposed to be making my own art and learning how to write about it, but in reality I've done almost nothing of either one. When they were trying to recruit me here, they told me that I could take my art in whatever direction I wanted. Sure, I can do whatever I want...on my own time, with no support or interest from them. In the meantime, I need to write this type of composition, compose for this ensemble, and analyze these pieces.

I really thought coming to grad school was going to mean more freedom. I thought I would be using this time to develop my own thoughts and opinions, to hone my artistic skills, to find the path that most suits me. The only progress I've made in those areas was done completely on my own, no thanks to them. This place is trying to box me in, instead of help me grow. What's infuriating is that the director of the program keeps insisting that they don't do that, that they're totally open. Maybe that's true at the dissertation level, but I have to survive three years of this bullshit before I get there, and I'm not sure I'm willing to put up with it.

I'll elaborate on the above listed facts as soon as I untangle everything going on in my head. Influx of nasty, pissed off posts, coming right up. To be continued.

"Hokay, so, heres sum dataz!"

So often the wisdom of the world is expressed through targeted snarkiness.


((Click to enlarge - will take you to the Socks and Barney site))

The application to academia is obvious, I hope. This comic summarizes one of the biggest problems I have with academic writing. The way I see it, the point of research is to find out new information or make interesting observations about a topic, then share what you've learned with as many people as possible. Using restrictive language (big words, field-specific words, too many words) seems contrary to the whole idea. Why do academics need things explained to them in such painfully complicated terms? Perhaps they feel that their intelligence is being insulted when they read something that non-specialists can understand. I'm sure the writer feels much smarter after writing a completely incomprehensible 200 page masterpiece of excessive citation, as well.

I try to avoid this in my own writing whenever possible. Being early in my academic career, there are certain hoops I have to jump through to pass courses with decent grades. My personal writing, though, the academic writing that I do for my own private research, is very different from the forced BS that assignments are made of. Whenever someone in the field reads it, though, they immediately start criticizing. Their critiques are generally that I am not using the "accepted language of the field". I feel like thanking them at that point, because that's my goal - to explain things in terminology that everyone can comprehend. Though I keep getting slammed for it, I'm planning to stick with it. Part of being young and stupid is being overly-idealistic and thinking you can make a difference in things larger than yourself. At the very least, I figure people will eventually get bored with worrying about my writing style and either accept it or blacklist me from all future conferences. At this point, I'm not entirely sure which I'd prefer.

Honestly, until someone catches me opening my essays with "hokay, so, heres sum dataz," I don't particularly care.

Feeding the Scholar-Eating Lion

I heard a great story the other day that really made me laugh at the academic world. The story comes from India, and is a lesson for those who "live inside their head" too much. 

To summarize the beginning, there were four scholars who had been friends since childhood. Three were extraordinarily well educated in the all the arts and sciences, while the fourth had only common sense. The other three were reluctant to let the fourth travel with them, as they did not wish to share the earnings their great knowledge would bring with one so uneducated. They decide to allow him to stay, and they begin their travels. Along the road, they come across the bones of an animal. Here's where the real story starts:

The first of the educated men said, "Here is a chance to show our ignorant friend how much we know.  Here lie the bones of some dead creature.  Let us see if we can bring it back to life by using all that we have learned."  Then he added, "I know how to put a skeleton back together!" The second Brahman, not wanting to be outdone, said, "I can give it skin and cover it with flesh and give it blood."  As he did this, the third Brahman stated that he could breath life back into the body.

As he said this, the fourth Brahman spoke up.  "My friends," he said, "I concede that you have learned much more from books and schools than I have, but my common sense tells me that we should not bring a lion back to life.  I do not believe we are wise to do this.  If he comes back to life, he will want to eat us."

The first three Brahmans were angry with him.  "We let you travel with us even though you are not very knowledgeable like we are.  You know so very little, and yet you presume to kow more than we do?

"I only know what my common sense tells me," the fourth Brahman stated.  "However, if you intend to persist in bringing the dead lion back to life, please hold your efforts until I have climbed this tree."

After the fourth Brahman climbed the tree, the first three Brahmans completed their task of bringing the lion back to life.  As the breath of life filled his lungs, the lion let out with a great roar and ate up all three scholars who were on the ground. With a full stomache, the lion was not willing or able to climb the tree and eat the fourth Brahman.  So the man with no formal education had the sense to climb down the tree and go back to his former home."

Herein lie two great lessons for the academically-inclined: 

1) Knowledge and common sense should be taken in equal parts.

2) Your snobby academic pride will get you eaten by a lion.

There are a few people around here I would love to put in this sort of situation. Granted, the art of lion-building seem to have fallen by the wayside, but I'm sure this story could be suitably taken as a metaphor for the death of one's academic career. Hell, students often seem like lions around here, and I know a few people who just get eaten alive by them because they're too wrapped up in themselves. It seems like the longer one sits in a Ph.D program, the further their social skills deteriorate as well. Or perhaps it isn't their social skills in general, only those that apply to people within their own field. Either way, I beg all my fellow graduate students: as your head fills with knowledge, please be careful what you delete in making room for the new things. Don't let it be common sense and decency! 

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Thanks to mikelockett.com for the text of the story "The Lion Makers".

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.

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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. 

Calling BS: Spectromorphology

"Calling BS" is a Ph.Dead feature in which I lament over those pretentious academics who deem themselves important enough to make up words or concepts and expect a) that we know what the hell they're talking about, and b) that others will use them, too. 

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Calling BS, 11/10/08: Spectromorphology

I have a great personal grudge against this word. In the field of electroacoustic music, it's impossible to get away from it. One of the great dilemmas of the field is finding a good way to talk about music that often has no score, and that uses sounds in ways we aren't familiar with. It's kind of the popular thing to do when you need to publish something to try to come up with your own solution to the problem. Denis Smalley is one of the few whose ideas actually caught on and became widely talked about among electroacoustic musicians, and for good reason. He's actually quite well respected, and he's not really a bad guy. However, he loses major points in my book for coming up with this clunker of a word. Who the hell wants to write a 20-page paper on Spectromorphology and have to type out that mammoth over and over? Just having to write a 3-page summary of the article in which he introduces the word made me want to cry. To add insult to injury, he not only invents this term, but coins a few others and appropriates dozens more in his attempt to create his “spectromorphological vocabulary”. For the record, here is the origin of this troublesome word:

“I have developed the concepts and terminology of spectromorphology as tools for describing and analysing listening experience. The two parts of the term refer to the interaction between sound spectra (spectro-) and the ways they change and are shaped through time (-morphology).”

In fact, Smalley even admits that his word is FAIL:

“The term may be rather jargonistic and it is perhaps an ungainly word, but I have not managed to invent an alternative which encapsulates the interactive components so accurately.”

I personally vote for “Bob”. 

((All quotes are taken from Smalley, D. 1997. Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes.  Organized Sound 2(2): 107-126.))

Sampling Pinecones

This was prompted by a quote from a visiting composer who lectured in one of my courses yesterday. After listening to a piece of my music, he said, “Much of modern music hurts to listen to. Your music was not painful.”

In the field of computer music, we like to think our art is misunderstood, or just ahead of its time and therefore only able to be appreciated by an enlightened few. I'd like to go on record and say that I hate roughly half (if not more) of the experimental music out there. Why? Well...let's take a look at this edition of the webcomic Pictures for Sad Children for a succinct description:

'Nuff said. I personally believe that music shouldn't be painful unless you're trying to convey a sense of physical pain in your piece. I love noise-based music, feedback, and all the other tools of the trade...but if they aren't used well, I want to stick a fucking pencil in my ear. If that's MY reaction, someone who is used to this crap and trained to appreciate it, what the hell must a casual listener think? I've come to the opinion that people want to feel like the misunderstood artist, labouring against the constraints of society. You know what I think about that? You can send a message and rebel against the status quo without damaging our hearing and brains, you pretentious bastard. I get criticized within my field for my music being too “pretty”, or too “normal”. I personally think it's much more fun to work within the constraints that society gives us, slipping in the experimental things in a way that doesn't offend the average listener. I'd rather subvert the listener, presenting my experimental ideas in a pretty, unsuspecting package that they can appreciate, slowly opening people to new ideas. People don't like sudden, violent change. Most of the time it doesn't actually work. But sometimes...sometimes, I actually get through to people. And after all, what is music without an audience? Yes...I'm probably just as pretentious as everyone else. But at least I don't cause people pain in the process, right? 

Introduction

In true grad student form, I require an excuse to actually get anything done. NaBloPoMo has given me that excuse. 

The idea for this blog has been beating around inside my head since before the semester even started, when I discovered the hard fact of life about grad school: everyone is a fucking pompous asshole. No one cares about anything other than their field, politics, and sports. No one ever has trouble getting motivated or getting their work done. No one ever feels burned out on their topic. 

I call bullshit.

I'm a first year Ph.D student studying computer music composition. I'm burned out and unmotivated more often than not these days. Grad school has thus far proven to be disappointing, confusing, and snobbish, though I've been assured that the first year is always the worst. I'll be blogging about many different aspects of graduate school; student teaching, stuffy academic writing, pretentious jerks, and of course music.  Don't get me wrong, grad school is a wonderful thing. I love that I'm able to research and learn and teach, some of the things I love most in life. Sometimes, though...it really sucks massive Godzilla balls.

Since I both found out about NaBloPoMo late and took forever to get my ass motivated, I'll be posting twice for at least five days this month to make up for November 1st-5th. I say this knowing that it's not really feasible for me to post every single day...but I guess I'm going to try anyway. I'm even going to try to do a semi-periodic feature: Calling BS. I'll post a full introduction to the concept when I post the first entry, but the basic idea is to make fun of the academic assholes who make up their own words to sound sophisticated and to give me an outlet for the frustration this sort of behavior generates. Ultimately, if I end up with something close to 20 entries at the end of November, I'll be satisfied with my efforts. 

So, there you have it. Outtakes, blunders, and gripes from academic America.

Grad school. I will likely be dead or insane before the end of my 5 (or 7, or 10, or 18) years here. Wish me luck.