Friday, December 28, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Underwater
The problem I have most as a graduate student is maintaining critical distance from the material. This is not to say that I am not "critical" of the things I read or hear in class--I certainly am--but rather that I have trouble approaching them analytically, placing them in context, making comparisons between them and other things I have seen and read. I have no perspective--or, rather, my perspective is about two inches away from the text.
When I read, I pore over the words that are in front of me, picking them up, examining them, poking them, reciting them in my head and sometimes out loud, trying to make them reveal their secrets. It doesn't matter whether what I'm reading is literature, theory, criticism, or something else--I work sequentially, my consciousness located and fixed as much as possible in each successive moment of the text. This is McLuhan's "one-thing-at-a-time-ness" of visual space: my mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only: what is it saying? What does this particular sentence, this one right here that I am looking at and repeating in my head, say? I am able to situate sentences within paragraphs, and to a more limited extent I am able to situate paragraphs within pages and chapters, but that is about all. I have a hard time even thinking about how the words I'm reading relate to the rest of the book, let alone to any kind of larger context, such as my own interests and ideas, other things I have read and experienced, the class for which the reading has been assigned, the world.
The same goes for class discussions: I am always focused on the statement (or question or suggestion or whatever kind of speech act) that the current speaker is making. I rarely have a sense of the whole conversation, let alone the work of the entire semester. I have difficulty making connections between each speech act and the reading, or between the various readings that have been assigned. I can't remember relevant examples, counter-examples, theories, historical facts, cultural artifacts--things to say. I have lately taken to transcribing discussions that I realize I don't understand as they're occurring, so that I can look at them later.
This all impacts me greatly as a teacher, too. I look back at my class plans and notice not only that I didn't follow them at all ("no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" and all that), but also that what they contain is what is most lacking in the class: perspective, a theoretical framework for the material, historical background, connections between things I assigned. I look back now at my plan for the first day and the thoughts I had about the class when planning it over the summer, and I see the biggest flaw in the way I actually taught the class: I was unable to maintain a consistent lesson, and unable to say much that wasn't in the readings.
Naturally, this affects me in the rest of my life, too. I think this is why when I remember specifics of history that I learned once and then forgot (the formation of nation-states in early modern Europe, the growth of Manhattan, whatever) it strikes me like a bucket of cold water when I'm sleeping. Exactly like that. It is an experience like coming back to the world from a prolonged sleep. Oh, yeah! That's the world . . .
When I read, I pore over the words that are in front of me, picking them up, examining them, poking them, reciting them in my head and sometimes out loud, trying to make them reveal their secrets. It doesn't matter whether what I'm reading is literature, theory, criticism, or something else--I work sequentially, my consciousness located and fixed as much as possible in each successive moment of the text. This is McLuhan's "one-thing-at-a-time-ness" of visual space: my mind is focused on one thing, and one thing only: what is it saying? What does this particular sentence, this one right here that I am looking at and repeating in my head, say? I am able to situate sentences within paragraphs, and to a more limited extent I am able to situate paragraphs within pages and chapters, but that is about all. I have a hard time even thinking about how the words I'm reading relate to the rest of the book, let alone to any kind of larger context, such as my own interests and ideas, other things I have read and experienced, the class for which the reading has been assigned, the world.
The same goes for class discussions: I am always focused on the statement (or question or suggestion or whatever kind of speech act) that the current speaker is making. I rarely have a sense of the whole conversation, let alone the work of the entire semester. I have difficulty making connections between each speech act and the reading, or between the various readings that have been assigned. I can't remember relevant examples, counter-examples, theories, historical facts, cultural artifacts--things to say. I have lately taken to transcribing discussions that I realize I don't understand as they're occurring, so that I can look at them later.
This all impacts me greatly as a teacher, too. I look back at my class plans and notice not only that I didn't follow them at all ("no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" and all that), but also that what they contain is what is most lacking in the class: perspective, a theoretical framework for the material, historical background, connections between things I assigned. I look back now at my plan for the first day and the thoughts I had about the class when planning it over the summer, and I see the biggest flaw in the way I actually taught the class: I was unable to maintain a consistent lesson, and unable to say much that wasn't in the readings.
Naturally, this affects me in the rest of my life, too. I think this is why when I remember specifics of history that I learned once and then forgot (the formation of nation-states in early modern Europe, the growth of Manhattan, whatever) it strikes me like a bucket of cold water when I'm sleeping. Exactly like that. It is an experience like coming back to the world from a prolonged sleep. Oh, yeah! That's the world . . .
Friday, September 28, 2012
Like slowly coming out of the ocean
I fell out of touch with music at some point. I would still listen to it when I was bored (like in the car or while working), but I rarely just put it on to hear it.
When I was a teenager, I absorbed as many albums as I could from the sixties. This was in the glory days of Napster, when you could find absolutely anything if you were willing to search frequently enough. (This is, as far as I know, still true of Soulseek.) I would spend hours organizing my files into folders, first by band and then by album, changing the file names so that they all had the same style of label, playing each track to make sure there were no blips or gaps. When I wasn't arranging my files, I played Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire for hours just so I could keep watch over the downloading files.
When I had complete albums, I would burn them onto CDs so I could listen to them in my room on my good speakers. I would even search for the album art, front, sides, everything, so I could make my own cases. I never adjusted to CD books. Even now, I have about three hundred CDs on my bookcase.
As an undergraduate, music was everything. I would break into song for the sheer joy of it, bonding with friends doing the two-part harmonies to "A Quick One While He's Away", each taking a role in the dramatic "You are forgiven" portion. I joined a band without knowing how to play anything, and sort of learned drums. We met to practice multiple days a week, and talked about what songs we wanted to play whenever we got a chance.
People who didn't know the same music as me, well, they just weren't fully real. People who knew more music than me, on the other hand, were demigods, gurus, the older brother I never had (sorry, Jeff).
After college, music was still my vernacular. I wasn't ever particularly interested in knowing the newest new thing, but I was right up there with the people who write for Pitchfork as far as snobbery goes. Learning about a new great band from the eighties (Spacemen 3, The Replacements, Hüsker Dü) would set me off on hours of research on All Music Guide, Wikipedia, record stores, and even interlibrary loans.
This all changed after I turned 25. I wouldn't be surprised if on my birthday itself I woke up and just . . . no longer cared that much. I still went through the motions. Every so often I would scour through some encyclopedia or other, or some encyclopedic music blog or other, and try to soak up knowledge of new bands, but it became a self-conscious activity. I only did it because I realized that I hadn't done it in a while. I no longer learned the track names on new albums or read the lyrics. I still remembered the order in which albums came out and the chains of influence between bands, because my mind has always been suited to that kind of thing, but I rarely found any albums that I loved. I didn't add any new artists to my pantheon. I started to realize that some of what I thought were my old favorites, I only listened to because I believed they were "important" or "classic".
I also had a roommate under 24 who did just what I used to do. Seeing him sit in the living room for hours wearing headphones (when I was lucky) and playing the same album ten times in a row is when I truly realized that I had changed. I still thought that if you didn't know The Who, you weren't quite worth knowing, but music was no longer an everyday part of my life. It was no longer the medium through which I knew the world.
If you've read enough essays, you probably expect some turn here, some "veteris vestigia flammae" moment. But no. Rather, I realize that new albums can get through the cinder blocks of my skull if I play them often enough, and I truly appreciate the work that artists put in to their music. But that's it.
Or am I being too hasty? Yes, actually, there is a bigger change. Something that deserves its own blog entry, really. Song lyrics finally started calling to me, repeating the thoughts in my head, just this summer. But that is for another time.
When I was a teenager, I absorbed as many albums as I could from the sixties. This was in the glory days of Napster, when you could find absolutely anything if you were willing to search frequently enough. (This is, as far as I know, still true of Soulseek.) I would spend hours organizing my files into folders, first by band and then by album, changing the file names so that they all had the same style of label, playing each track to make sure there were no blips or gaps. When I wasn't arranging my files, I played Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire for hours just so I could keep watch over the downloading files.
When I had complete albums, I would burn them onto CDs so I could listen to them in my room on my good speakers. I would even search for the album art, front, sides, everything, so I could make my own cases. I never adjusted to CD books. Even now, I have about three hundred CDs on my bookcase.
As an undergraduate, music was everything. I would break into song for the sheer joy of it, bonding with friends doing the two-part harmonies to "A Quick One While He's Away", each taking a role in the dramatic "You are forgiven" portion. I joined a band without knowing how to play anything, and sort of learned drums. We met to practice multiple days a week, and talked about what songs we wanted to play whenever we got a chance.
People who didn't know the same music as me, well, they just weren't fully real. People who knew more music than me, on the other hand, were demigods, gurus, the older brother I never had (sorry, Jeff).
After college, music was still my vernacular. I wasn't ever particularly interested in knowing the newest new thing, but I was right up there with the people who write for Pitchfork as far as snobbery goes. Learning about a new great band from the eighties (Spacemen 3, The Replacements, Hüsker Dü) would set me off on hours of research on All Music Guide, Wikipedia, record stores, and even interlibrary loans.
This all changed after I turned 25. I wouldn't be surprised if on my birthday itself I woke up and just . . . no longer cared that much. I still went through the motions. Every so often I would scour through some encyclopedia or other, or some encyclopedic music blog or other, and try to soak up knowledge of new bands, but it became a self-conscious activity. I only did it because I realized that I hadn't done it in a while. I no longer learned the track names on new albums or read the lyrics. I still remembered the order in which albums came out and the chains of influence between bands, because my mind has always been suited to that kind of thing, but I rarely found any albums that I loved. I didn't add any new artists to my pantheon. I started to realize that some of what I thought were my old favorites, I only listened to because I believed they were "important" or "classic".
I also had a roommate under 24 who did just what I used to do. Seeing him sit in the living room for hours wearing headphones (when I was lucky) and playing the same album ten times in a row is when I truly realized that I had changed. I still thought that if you didn't know The Who, you weren't quite worth knowing, but music was no longer an everyday part of my life. It was no longer the medium through which I knew the world.
If you've read enough essays, you probably expect some turn here, some "veteris vestigia flammae" moment. But no. Rather, I realize that new albums can get through the cinder blocks of my skull if I play them often enough, and I truly appreciate the work that artists put in to their music. But that's it.
Or am I being too hasty? Yes, actually, there is a bigger change. Something that deserves its own blog entry, really. Song lyrics finally started calling to me, repeating the thoughts in my head, just this summer. But that is for another time.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Gruesome history
I am slowly committing fly genocide in my apartment. I hope this isn't setting me up for cosmic retribution, but there can be no end to the campaign. The homeland must be secured.
Containment was impossible given the flies' organic flight technology. Attempts to relocate the fly population failed when it proved difficult to force sufficient numbers out the open window. Escalation soon ensued: the flies continued breeding, and acid traps were placed on counter surfaces in retribution. No adult flies were captured, however, and more kept appearing. Human forces turned to mobile artillery, but were always outmaneuvered. In the end, chemical weapons were deployed in the form of an aerosol spray. Bodies are still being discovered, lying prone wherever the flies wings ceased to operate effectively. The population has been catastrophically reduced, but scattered flies remain. God help us all.
Containment was impossible given the flies' organic flight technology. Attempts to relocate the fly population failed when it proved difficult to force sufficient numbers out the open window. Escalation soon ensued: the flies continued breeding, and acid traps were placed on counter surfaces in retribution. No adult flies were captured, however, and more kept appearing. Human forces turned to mobile artillery, but were always outmaneuvered. In the end, chemical weapons were deployed in the form of an aerosol spray. Bodies are still being discovered, lying prone wherever the flies wings ceased to operate effectively. The population has been catastrophically reduced, but scattered flies remain. God help us all.