What Chris, Matt, Katie or John go through daily

If I were an android. With a team of dedicated tinkerers.

Confidential to the real world: no, you've got it all wrong. Don't you remember? I broke up with you.

a little emotional

This is the dumbest fucking thing ever. Where's the perpetually-up-in-arms MoveOn crowd over this shit? I mean, I want to see Tom DeLay go down as much as the next progressive gal, but that will not stop tax and employee benefit breaks for developers in New Orleans, nor will it magically grant Dems the balls to refuse to pass Harriet Miers. And it certainly doesn't do anything for that forgotten corner we occasionally remember to call the rest of the world. Despite its sterling reputation, I think I'm a little frustrated with the insularity of Berkeley; yeah, we're all registered to vote, and we all study at the Free Speech Movement Café, but we aren't doing shit. (Stop me before I do my I'm-dropping-out-of-school rant.)

On the other side of my day, gin contrived to have an original piece (calling an 8.5x11 pen drawing a "piece" is a little like calling one of my a cappella arrangements a "work," except unlike that example, the art in question really, really doesn't suck) sent to my door from the author of this website(also on the sidebar). The last thing I expected today, or any day. It's simply wonderful. I don't know what else to say.

So...if I'm going to keep doing this, maybe I should make it reasonably engrossing. I'll see what I can do.

snapshots

Today has been one of those days when I just shouldn't have gotten out of bed at all. Luckily, I realized this rather quickly and have retreated into my cocoon-like apartment to sulk, avoid my homework, and listen to melancholy folk music. I don't know why I'm compelled to write a first post in seven months just now, but let's take what we can get, shall we?

Some thoughts on the first six or so weeks of living in Berkeley:

I. This isn't about Berkeley (ha! fooled you!). A friend of mine from Chicago has lost his mom this past week. He won't read this, because he doesn't know it exists, but much love, hugs, and whiskey go out to him and his family.

II. (A) word to the wise: if your parent ever assures you that it will be foolproof to send $300 or so worth of books to you through US Mail, citing the recent safe arrival of your computer speakers as evidence, tell her one successful shipment does not influence another. Tell her also that the process of filing a claim for your lost books is arduous and replete with bureaucratic road blocks; that there is one claim office in all of Berkeley, and you must stand in line with your half-filled broken-down box there, regardless of which zip code you are in or where your mail actually comes from; that you will find this out only by trial and error, since the post officers who deign to answer the phone will not inform you; that by choosing this method with all good intentions, she is, in effect, consigning you to a bitter existence wandering the streets with an ever-heavier random selection of your earthly goods, and that she will see the specter you have become in her dreams.

III. Whenever I'm really sorry for myself (ahem) or really tired, it always helps to read the bumper stickers of cars I pass as I walk home. I'm pretty sure Berkeley is the only place on the planet in which MoveOn PAC is a legitimate political affiliation, instead of a guilty email pleasure lib dems don't admit to until they've had a few beers. A quick perusal of my block reveals such hits as "Four More Wars!", "Keep The Faith...Kerry On", and "Cook Rice, Not Ice"--often on the same vehicle. Pretty good news.

I'm only poking gentle fun, though; I love it here so far. My boyfriend (who shall hereafter be known as gin) was pleasantly surprised last weekend at the unprecendented number of used bookstores and espresso joints per capita. Thai restaurants are a close second. North Berkeley, where I live, can sometimes feel like Naperville with hills and crazy flora, but if anywhere can prove to me that all families who buy $800,000 starter homes aren't alike, this is it.

IV. Part of my assignment for my History of Ethnomusicology seminar this week has been to watch a home movie of a conference held here at Berkeley, in the Music Dept., in 1977. In honor of the composer, teacher and musicologist Charles Seeger's 90th birthday, a sort of multi-day round table was held, at which lots of the most influential music scholars answered Seeger's impossibly broad questions and listened respectfully as he went off on impossibly far-ranging tangents. (Seeger was probably a genius; he's impressively lucid at 90. Sharp as a tack and cranky.) Just the mustaches and the video quality were fascinating, to say nothing of the statements made. Some of the best quotes I wrote down last night, with brief context, are below. If you're not a musicologist/geek, or really tolerant of me, you won't care.

Seeger opens with admonishments to his assembled colleagues: basically, yesterday's sessions sucked. Not enough attention was paid to one of Seeger's lifelong prime concerns, what he calls the "linguocentric predicament." Quote: "Nothing is more concrete than an abstract concept." [Glares a bit as onscreen listeners visibly giggle. Emphatically:] "It's a speech construct." [Musicologists exchange glances and quiet down.]

John Blacking, who wrote among other things How Musical Is Man?, is awesome. At some point he informs the table that "culture, though necessary for our civilization, is destructive of the self...culture is only a crutch." If I hadn't already read his book and one of his studies of the Venda, those words from that clipped British accent would not have sat well. (Good thing the Empire has been out there imposing themselves on culture! How generous of them...chin up, then, it's for your own good!) A heated discussion of the various connotations of "crutch" ensues. Blacking also points out that the discussion uses "society" and "culture" indiscriminately--to illustrate this, and the difference between dividing up life in academic speech and in experience, he says, "I think that 'culture' was created by anthropologists." Seeger, affronted, buys it hook, line and sinker. It's great.

You'd have to see and hear Seeger to find this interesting--a shaggy, snow-white beard, owlish round glasses, the craggy angular face of an elderly patriarch, with a sharply aquiline nose and anglo-american speech to match. All his life he has sought comprehensive theories for problems which contemporaries have barely acknowledged as issues, or perhaps shied from attacking as simply too huge. He knows he comes off as eccentric, and he doesn't cut anybody any slack. (At some point he turns to the moderator, my professor Bonnie Wade in her first year teaching at Berkeley, and says, "Are you a chairperson, or just a chair?")

Near the end of the second hour of the video (yes, I watched the whole thing; my head hurt from all the tape hiss), Seeger's son Pete challenges him: "You've said music cannot lie. Can music mislead?" Seeger Sr. hotly denies the possibility, and they go back and forth for an embarrassingly long time without ever using the word "context," as if by unspoken rule. From a staunch leftist who, by this time, has written "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "If I Had a Hammer," and been blacklisted by HUAC, I'm inclined to cede Pete's position some experiential weight, but Charles Sr. is not. He puts his foot down with "the music has no effect on the use, and the use has no effect on the music." Readers, would you agree?

Anthony Seeger, now a UCLA ethno professor, postulates that culture is a "skateboard" which individuals customize and travel upon. Given the year and the looks from some at the table, I'm not sure everyone knows what a skateboard is. Mantle Hood, the founder of the program at UCLA and a very eminent ethnomusicologist, is asked for his opinion with an unspoken appeal to be a tiebreaker--and he says, "I'm overwhelmed by skateboards, tools and crutches." If only the video had just ended there.

V. Last thing. My friend Molly plays in a Balinese gamelan, and I went to see a performance in SF in which the gamelan accompanied dancers--dancers with bright, elaborate, glittery costumes, masks or heavily painted faces, and unwieldly gilded headgear. I've never had so much fun watching little kids scared out of their wits! During one dance, depicting a warrior before battle, the dancer depends on sudden movements and menacing eyebrows--he reminded me of a pitcher hoping to catch a base-stealer off guard--and patches of toddlers (they seemed to come in packs) all over the lawn would squeal and bunch behind their adults when ever he whirled toward them. Remember when you were so safe that it was the most fun to be scared?

light housekeeping, heavy-handed titles

I'm sorry, it just had to be done.

In response to a gentle reminder from our haunting rabbinical friend, I've moved around and added a few links on the sidebar. Please note that today the Progressive Principles Project unveils their voted-upon Declaration of Progressive Principles. Even if you haven't contributed to the discussion so far, please take a second to visit the site, read the statement, and post on everything from the Principles themselves to the future of the project to the structure of the current website/debate forum. (It can get very meta and very pissy, but such enthusiasm.) Despite my usual commitment to consensus-led actions, I think the diction of the Declaration is far too vague, and easily available for "reframing" by anyone on the right, however well-meaning, who may feel s/he agrees with the spirit of the assertions (for who doesn't?) but disagrees with the methods the label "progressive" might imply. But you go see what you think.

Americorps has been added to the sidebar, though the website is weak on general content. For those who might not know, my job (at a specifically nameless non-profit) is sponsored by Americorps VISTA.

Otherwise, dear readers, I'm worried.

Many of you already know that I've been accepted to Berkeley and UCLA for graduate study in Ethnomusicology. I've also been wait-listed to Harvard, but assured that the list rarely, if ever, moves. So I spent my mid-tax-season break, this past weekend, visiting Berkeley. The campus, the town, and the weather were so beautiful it hurt. Berkeley's infamous hills blazed green--the bright snappy yellow-green of spring shoots--and I strolled the winding campus paths and downtown sidewalks in a tshirt, beaming at everyone. If I hadn't left my camera in my desk drawer at work, I'd be posting pictures of succulents as tall as my shoulder, my grad student host's cats, and the spectacle of twenty-odd daffy middle-aged ethnomusicologists learning Panamanian dance steps, all with the sunniest backdrop this Chicagoan has seen in months. I was so deflated on the flight home.

Since I had a great weekend and my future seems rather bright, I, of course, have some kind of problem with the situation. It's not becoming a (very) full-time student again, it's not teaching, it's not moving to a new city--it's moving at this moment. I've been complaining for a while now that I feel transient, that I haven't put down roots since I left my college dorm. I want to be a resident of somewhere--to call myself a Chicagoan, and feel justified--and feel a sense of place, with favorite haunts, and comfort, and routine, in addition to the lovely certainty that new discoveries await somewhere in the city.

On the other hand, I could just go hasten my assimilation into the Bay Area, where it would be quite easy to put down roots, since I identify so well with the politics and the interests of most of the population. And why spend another year here, not saving any money, to be with my friends, when many would like to and might well move away? (I will certainly miss you all, but most of you have been insisting that I take this opportunity.) Especially when there's no procedure for deferment, and I would have to take my chances again next fall?

My host from this past weekend is 29 and a third year grad student, studying Afro-Cuban music. She spent a few years in Italy and Spain after college and before she returned to her native San Francisco, knowing, at that point, exactly what she wanted to do. She assured me, "You don't have to be ready just because you applied," but she also said "I think I'm looking forward to thirty, actually...my twenties were pretty rocky." My twenties already feel a little ridiculous, but I don't want to ignore them. And I know what I want to do. I just don't feel quite ready to do it yet.

Will I get used to this idea between now and August? Probably. Will I wake up the day after my birthday and feel that 24 is a few steps from the resignation of middle age, and that I'd better start my damn career already? Perhaps. More likely, being myself, I'll vacillate until I board the plane, consider hijacking my flight in order to turn around, and then--I'll land at SFO, and I'll step into the sun. I'll take the BART all the way to Berkeley, staring at my reflection in the black walls of the tunnel as we fly beneath the Bay. I'll ride the escalator out of the station into the heart of downtown. I'll point myself towards the campus--perhaps more than once until I get it right--and I won't look back.


In honor of a dear friend's birthday, I'm posting this, inspired (though all resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental) by a stupendous quote from said friend. See if you can tell which it is. Happy birthday again, sweetie.

lookit!

PSA: Aaron has just published a new blog: ventilatorblues. Also Becky, at Becky and Kona. Go see.

Week included Americorps training, drinking with DNC friends, more Americorps training--and when I say "training," I mean trust-falls-and-icebreakers training, complete with interactive gettoknowyous where you tell 11.5 things about yourself. I'll write more about that experience later. Meanwhile, off to the Mill, to say goodbye to a fabulous coworker who loves jazz guitar.