The Daily Paper

 My dear, loyal Reader(s),

Today I am somewhat at a loss for what to write about, because I'm lucky enough to have been in contact pretty much all day.

I started the day with a delicious breakfast, some music, and my usual puzzles. I didn't get Connections, because I saw the word "Lance" and couldn't think about anything but jousting. Even though every rational part of my brain was telling me Emily, the New York Times did not make one of the Connections categories "elements of a jousting tournament" , there was some hopeful part of my brain that clung to the idea of that alternate, more beautiful reality.

The Tradle today was the Pitcairn Islands, a British Overseas Territory with a population of 35 that does not appear on Google maps. When I saw the total exports were only $1 million, I knew we'd be on a tiny island. I just had to google a list of South Pacific islands. I eventually got it. Bogus choice though.

I, silly me, rushed to campus to make it to Morrison Hall in time for my meeting with Nick. He was nowhere to be found, of course. Once he finally arrived around 11:40, he was in a weird mood. Acting very moody and self-deprecating, in a way that was simultaneously to himself but also an invitation for me to say something. I didn't take the bait. Longtime emilyjones fans know her go-to strategy when someone brings up a topic she doesn't want to talk about: clearly change the subject by talking about something funny. It's not subtle-- at some point she thought it was subtle or at least elegant but she has since been informed that it's as transparent as a mime's invisible box.

"My brain is totally going. It's the end of the semester! I know that's not an excuse but I've been messing everything up lately" and so on and so forth

"By the way I watched Galaxy Quest this weekend. It was awesome"

"Isn't it?" He instantly looks and sounds normal again. "'By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings...' Isn't that just peak Rickman!"

Subtle or not, I'm in the clear now.

We went through my outline I wrote last night, and it was really productive. Nick seems pleased with the work I've done, and confident that I know the material well enough to write a full essay. If anything, I chose too many examples for the outline. He liked the plays I chose, though, especially America Hurrah, because it's a very silly and quirky example of a play that is critiquing the invasion of television into all areas of everyday life in the 1960s. I also had a good balance of fact recitation and my own takes, and he seemed to agree with my takes.

The meeting ran a bit over, which is to be expected since it started 70 minutes late. I had to rush to ballet, and I just barely made it in time.

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Readers who communicate with me through other channels will be aware that it ended up being a successfully Beauty and the Beast themed ballet class. This was followed by a quick lunch before rushing to Music and Capitalism, which these same readers will know dealt with KPop and modern economic structures of the music industry. We talked about Fordism, post-Fordism, platform capitalism, and the gig economy.

There's no lecture on Thursday, because Nick is leaving town tomorrow to play another gig. He just had an album drop on Friday. Something he's been working on for the past few years, collaboration with some scholars of Haitian music. I saw his lecture recital about it at AMS my first year. Haven't listened to the album, though.

After the lecture was choir. Nothing much to report on that front. We're getting ready for our concert, and I'm not super hopeful. It will probably come together as it always does, but there are a few pieces Wei wants the choir to have memorized. I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly don't. And she's also trying to add minor staging and small choreographed movements to some of these pieces. It might be too late in the game to add these sorts of things and have them stick.

It was very amusing to watch Harry give advice, and then for Wei to immediately contradict him and tell people to do the opposite. Worth noting that nobody asked Harry and he holds no position of power in the chamber choir.

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When I got home, I immediately started making my Japanese curry. I watched a little bit of YouTube while it was cooking, and most of an episode of 30 Rock while I ate. Maya came home while I was still at the table. I offered her some curry (she liked it) and we spent the next long while chatting.

That's the thing with Maya. We don't see each other for weeks and then every once in a while we'll talk for hours. I gave her the rundown of the situation in the music department and the state of my quals. It turns out that Maya's situation in her department was very similar to Sasha's in ethnomusicology, which is why she's mastering out. She has a lot of good takes about the precarious structure of academia. It is sort of dangerous and unpredictable how much of your experience of academia is decided entirely by specific personality matches or clashes. Her relationship with her advisor is the main reason she's ended up needing to leave. She compares that to the situation in my department, where there is no standardization, and the faculty apply very different expectations to students even within one cohort. 

Then we talked for a while about music. Maya studied Indian classical voice for 14 years -- she's really knowledgeable and very good. But she doesn't sing anymore. We were talking about the differences between the two music systems. It came up because she asked me about my lessons with Maddie. I was saying that we've had to transition mostly to teaching by ear. She had some insights into ways to combine ear training and written notation, since Indian classical music is traditionally taught entirely by ear, with written notation only being added way later.

That brings us to about 9:30 pm, at which point I took a shower, sat on my bed, and started writing this post. My deadline is coming up soon, so let me close with some pictures I took today:

Haven't looked into this "Stop AI" group, but this is a very fun place to put one of your stickers.

"Tesla QED?" As in Tesla is a proof in and of itself? To quote Erlich Bachman, "You just disappeared up your own asshole"

PS: I put these blog posts into WordCounter to look at the stats. I hope the quality isn't dipping. Of course, the first post was the longest, because I had a lot of interesting conversations that day that I wasn't able to text about. Today it's a bit shorter. What concerns me though is that according to WordCounter, the reading level is going down. I believe my first post was at an 11th-12th grade reading level and this one is 9th-10th. Am I watering down my staggering intellect for the sake of speed, or is it just that the word "Auratically" bumped me up a level the first time?