My iPod and my new laptop don’t seem to want to play nice with each other. You really have to work to make them work together. I’ve needed, for a long time, to remove some digital junk from my life (much of which has, in one for or another, found its way onto my iPod) and I’ve taken this opportunity to go through some of this stuff and cull it from my iPod and my life.
Even if I still end up with the same metaphorical amount of baggage, in the end I will be short some of my literal baggage. As it turns out, I am in possession of a number of backup copies of stuff from my latest ex. (”Latest” is perhaps the wrong word to use here, since we and I have not been together now for almost two years.) As it turns out, if you just keep adding things to your disc-space enabled iPod without actually checking to see what is there, this sort of thing happens.
Anyway, I loaded a bunch of my music from my iPod to my computer and then told iTunes genius to make me a playlist based on ‘Joga’ from one of my favorite Björk albums Homogenic. So, it played ‘Joga’ for me. All of Homogenic is complex with techno beats and strings and eerie and excellent Brörk vocals and lyrics that resonated with me when it came out in 1997 and that recently have come to resonate with me again. For example, I’m going hunting/I’m the hunter/I’ll bring back the goods/but I don’t know when from ‘Hunter’ (which it played later down in the list). I’ve been working on my qualifying project (so that I can eventually progress to the dissertating stage of the PhD) these lyrics just seem to fit. I have this idea, this hypothesis. And, from here I have to go hunting. I have to figure out if anyone else has blazed this trail I’d like to be on. I have to collect data and see if it supports my hypothesis. I’m going hunting. I’m the hunter. I will get the goods. But, I don’t really know when.
So, iTunes plays me this song and it follows it immediately with Bill Frissell’s “I am not a farmer” from his album Disfarmer. With no techno beat. With no vocals. Just guitars and some eerie strings at the end. This combination made me smile. I would never have thought to put these two things together. Yet, here they are. Different, yet alike. But, while I would say “I’m a Hunter” of myself, I don’t think I’d ever say, “I’m not a farmer”. In a literal sense, I do grow herbs and orchids in my apartment. And, I’m considering (have been for awhile now) expanding my little venture to include window boxes. (I think I might get enough sun to grow swiss chard, which would be lovely.) It seemed to me, when I first saw this that two things, namely hunters and farmers, were different. But, perhaps not. Perhaps, you would have to specify that you are the kind of hunter that gathers all of the necessities via hunting. I am a hunter and I am not a farmer. The alternative would be to say that I am a hunter and also a farmer, so someone who does a little cultivating and a little hunting. I am now intrigued by this.
Album: Homogenic
Artist: Björk
Song: Hunter
Album: Disfarmer
Artist: Bill Frissell
Song: I Am Not a Farmer
So, I enjoyed putting together the mix tape last month and I was thinking that it might be fun to do that again in March. It wasn’t the best mix tape I’ve ever made, but sometimes you just have to jump in with both feet and hope for the best. February was a little like that. Between being sick and figuring out where to put prospective graduates students and who was riding with whom where, I did a lot of trying hard and then just hoping for the best. And, now its March. Five days into March. The semester is half over. I only have one more day of classes until it is Spring Break and I’m sitting on the couch with a glass of lemonade and trying to come up with a theme.
I have some potential candidates. The first is Spring. It was a gorgeous today (and nearly 45 degrees out!) and that reminds you that Spring is just around the corner. The equinox approaches. Seed money has been paid to the local farms with community sustained agriculture programs.
The second potential candidate is podcasts. I come from class late afternoon/early evening and I unwind a little usually before I dive into the night’s work while I eat dinner. This unwinding often consists of messing around on the internet or watching the news and then maybe a little TV. It occurred to me this week, though, that I have an inordinate number of podcasts and that maybe instead of watching another rerun of Bones, I should give some of these things a listen. So far I’ve only tried this once but it seemed to work pretty well.
The last potential theme for March is “odd combinations”. The theme for the month from the good people on NaBloPoMo is “strange”, and I like that idea but I feel I need to be a little more focused in my investigation of the strange.
Now that I have written all these things out, I feel like the third option is my favorite (who knows if winter will rear its ugly little head again.) But, I’m open to comments or suggestions.
Right. So, I’m the president of my department’s graduate student association. I have various duties in regards to this post, but the biggest of my duties is likely the organizing of the student run activities that go on in association with the Open House for Prospective Graduate Students. I’ve organized places for people to stay. I’ve planned fun “get to know Buffalo (and the other graduate students in the department)” activities. The weekend, I think, has gone pretty well. There have been seven extra people around checking things out (by things I mean the graduate program to which I currently belong) and keeping track of where these seven people are and how they’re getting where they need to go (in case their hosts don’t have cars or have some other time commitment) is tiring. Oh so very tiring.
But, the fun didn’t stop there. There are old and sketchy windows in my bedroom that are due to be replaced. And, my landlord informed me on Wednesday that they were on the schedule to be replaced. On Friday. Seriously. So, I figure, that’s okay. I won’t be home to let them in, but I can let them know they’ll have to let themselves in. I would lock my cats in the bathroom, which is sort of a big deal but it would need to be done.
The prospective students started arriving around 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon. This was a good 3 hours earlier than I expected and threw a bit of a wrench into the works. Of course, no one would be home then to actually take care of letting the student in and what not. Now, I could have sent the kid to campus, that was an option, but that brought up further complications because people would be in class and someone would still have to be around to meet them (because I wasn’t going to make the department secretaries entertain him. I need them to continue liking me.) So, he came and sat on my couch and watched Harry Potter while I finished up some laundry.
A few hours later his hosts picked him up and I had a few hours of quiet before I had to go collect my own prospective student, a young man from Tennessee who was an excellent house guest.
The weekend went, more or less, without a hitch. On Friday we had a brief misunderstanding about how one of the prospective students was going to get to campus and the art museum/bar evening event we had scheduled and there was an incident involving slippage and the ice that caused us to end an afternoon of winter games early in favor of Buffalo wings and being indoors. The weekend was just looong… and, I’m still playing catch up. (Case in point…I started this post on Sunday and I’m just finishing it now.)
So, usually when you put together a mix CD, you try to have a theme. Or, at least I do. I try to put together a cohesive unit of music that say something (often to someone) about a topic. Not to get all Rob Gordon here (although, its probably too late for that) but music moves you, it speaks to your soul, or maybe just your head, but there is something about the power of music that is amazing. I’m not a musician, I can’t write songs or play an instrument (well), so my only opportunities to use music to let someone know something, to influence how they feel through the power of song is a mix tape. And, this mix seems to be about love and unhappiness. I wonder what that says about me?
NPR is freaking amazing, in case you didn’t already know that. I am a devotee. I have driveway moments all the time. Back when I lived in Iowa City, I was listening to a music show that was broadcast from the station at the University of Northern Iowa. I remember I was driving home from work, actually. And this song came on about religion. No, spirituality. No, life.
So, the song was just a guy with his guitar (and maybe a backup mandolin) in the studio singing this song about the miracle that is living. The song is about how when you’re little, you’re told about all these amazing things that happened back in the day and you think, “Gosh, why doesn’t anything cool like that happen now?” I mean, Joshua and the army of Israel brought down the walls of Jericho with their trumpets. Moses parted a sea. But, the older you get you come to realize that the world is full of things that are incredible and improbable and how wonderful that is.
And, to think, if I hadn’t been going home from work at that moment, I might never have heard the song at all.
Album: Million Year Mind
Singer/Songwriter: Peter Mayer
Song: Holy Now
I have to tell you, if it weren’t for my sister (and the good people of iTunes and their free tune a week), I would be sonically stuck in 2005. But, that being said, the song that I’m going to talk about in this post Beth probably clued me into around 2005.
I figured, even though I missed that week or so in the middle because of the *shudders* sinus infection, I stay get back on the blogging train and finish out my mix CD. After thinking about “Divorce Song” yesterday, another song about love gone wrong popped into my head. Back in 2004, my sister clued me into a band called Low Millions with their song “Eleanor” off their album Ex-Girlfriends.
So, this is another catchy tune with resignation. I won’t call you baby anymore and I can’t relate to what you say I’ve done and, I wish you’d release me from your spell. Because I wish this wouldn’t end, but you seem to want it to and I want to make you happy so…alright.
More recently, my sister has fueled a love of the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Duffy and Lady GaGa. But, its nice to go digging through the archives for catchy tunes about bad breakups.
Album: Ex-Girlfriends
Band: Low Millions
Song: Eleanor
And, while we’re on the topic of love gone wrong, I figured my little mix needed a song about patching things up again. I discovered Loquat during a fit of sleeplessness while living in Wales. They had a few songs uploaded to a site that used to get reviews (and the occasional free track) from (if I remember correctly…).
What I like about this song is just this idea that there are two strong willed people in this relationship and that is why the singer has to say, “I know what a jerk I am, or a pain in the ass you are.”
It is a soft, melodic song and it is enjoyable to listen to. Its the apology after the fight.
Album: It’s Yours to Keep
Band: Loquat
Song: Take it Back
Do you know what the best part about calling off an engagement is? You don’t have get divorced. I get nostalgic around this time of year…no, that’s not the word I’m looking for. Is there a word that means “nostalgia” except instead of meaning a wistful desire to return to a previous time in one’s life instead means an intense joy at making a decision that changed the course of your future and allowed you to not live in utter misery? If there isn’t such a word, there should be.
So, I was reading and listening to music the other day “Divorce Song” by Liz Phair came on and it made me think about my ex-fiance, and how happy I am that he’s not my soon-to-be ex-husband. (Because, seriously, that relationship existed way beyond its expiration date.) Divorce Song is on that excellent album Exile in Guyville. I didn’t really discover angry girl music until I got to college (preferring more industrial/punk in high school) and I was introduced to Liz Phair by a gay guy (of course, right?) I like “Divorce Song” because it should be angry but its more resigned. Like Liz has realized that it doesn’t matter how mad she feels about this break up, this relationship is over and there were things that they both could have done better but it doesn’t matter because sometimes over is just over.
Liz tells us that she would have stayed if she’d known how not staying would have sounded.
Album: Exile in Guyville
Artist: Liz Phair
Song: Divorce Song
In the class I am teaching, we have been talking about Grimm’s and Verner’s laws (or the first sound shift, if you will.) I was looking for some more examples to show my students and I found this:
Pandora has this way of playing songs that worm their way into my ear and then stay there. Forever. This happened last summer with the song “Tell it to the Volcano” by Miniature Tigers. This is a fun little ditty about getting your heartbroken. And, then letting your former beloved pay for what they’ve done to you. “You can summon all the Gods that your black heart desires/they can not help you because they’re starting fires…to burn you alive.” The last relationship I was in can be categorically summed up in the word “awful”, so I take a lot of comfort, even now when we broke up almost two years ago, in knowing that other people have been burned and come out the other side…with something pithy and upbeat to show for it.
I would hate to wish misery on another human being, but if its going to inspire something that makes people smile, maybe the misery is worth it.
Album: Tell it to the Volcano
Artist: Miniature Tigers
Song: Tell it to the Volcano
