Recently in Music Makes Me High Category
I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around that in a month's time, I'll have done a whole year of grad school. April is shaping up to be the busiest month so far. Last week was a bit shit as the motivation fell out of my life in a big way. All I wanted to do was avoid work and feel free and daydream about the money I could be making soon or strolling through Paris (if the damned school doesn't cancel the program like I've heard grumblings about,..). My mind was everywhere at once and taking that time for total irresponsibility had me working twice as hard this week.
I discovered the new Pantha du Prince album the other day and I've been happily rocking it, especially the song above. It's definitely struck a nerve.
I've been examining recently my feelings about the program. For a long stretch, I hated it. Last semester (and 2009 in general) was all about life upheaval and I really did end in December wanting to quit. My program can be very alienating because it seems like there's a culture in place where you're expected to give up everything else you have going on to hang out on the floor and exclusively with program people. With the exception of a friend or two, I just didn't click with anyone there and instead of running headfirst into it, I stepped back and carved out my own path. It hasn't made me the most popular 1st year, but at 29, I'd rather have a life I can happily call my own than be miserable trying to fit in. And this semester has felt different as I've followed my own passions more to take some non-typical classes and create a schedule and life balance I feel happy with. I might scream if another person asks me if I'm a part-time student, but I feel like the intellectual satisfaction I've had lately really keeps me from giving a shit what the average fellow program person thinks.
I'm at the point where I can always think of something else that I would like to have that I don't (a bigger apartment, being able to avoid the end of the semester poverty, a nice guy to indulge me in my nerdy talk), but the abject misery I felt as a cog in the corporate world is one thing I do not miss. It feels nice to smile and laugh and mean it. And I wouldn't trade making it out of the last crazy few years well-adjusted for anything else.
I have about six weeks until the end of my first year of grad school.
I'm firmly standing on the line between relieved and petrified. Relieved because one of the most roller-coaster experiences I've had well, probably since senior year of Wes, will soon be behind me. Petrified because I've got 3 projects, 4 papers, and what I'm sure will be a shitton of stress until the end. Especially since getting accepted to the Paris program was the easy part. Now I've got to figure out exactly how long I'll be in Europe (gotta buffer time to visit Alex and maybe other friends scattered all about plus hopefully hit up a festival or two), buy a ticket (all hovering around $900 which makes me sad), do all the school paper work, line up a summer job to save enough money that the euro-dollar exchange rate doesn't make me cry, figure out what to do with my apartment for 2 months, and then go! My mind is reeling with every logistics thought that pops in.
It was really just one of those weeks though. My SF trip high faded fast once I realized my desktop got fucked up somehow while I was gone. The system recovery disks I ordered still aren't doing the trick a week later and I'm dreading having to take it to get repaired and get a $500 bill. I didn't even pay that much for the damned tower! But, unless I find some miracle fix online, I'm basically shit out of luck. And the weather was especially crappy this week. My old lady bones needed tons of drugs to base level function and the never-ending throb just made me really stressed and irritable. It thankfully cleared up as the week went on and I felt sorta like normal by last night.
All I really want to do is listen to some music and ride around on my bike on some nice spring days in the park. I have to keep reminding myself to breathe at this point and not feel like everything needs to be handled all at once. But I do need to hack away at this stuff bit by bit. After all, they sleep, we grind.
Heatwave - Ain't No Half Steppin'
Now that things feel infinitely more settled at school, I've been on a concert binge lately. My initial show buddy was The Director and we marveled that we still rolled like we met yesterday instead of six (!) years ago. (An aside of a hilarious SF trip moment: driving to the East Bay from the airport, Fizzie says: "what ever happened to that dude we used to hang out with who seemed young, but was really old, partied like crazy, and took us to weird parties with his friends?" And I drew a serious blank for a long time until he added "and joked that Trendvickster was a heroin addict to his friends." I laughed and said "The Director! We just hung out last week and he asked about you!" And we laughed some more. My friends are amazingly awesome and weird.)
The shows we caught together were Anti-Pop Consortium (epic!)/Rain Machine (eh...with the worst caterwauling backup singer); French Horn Rebellion (joke)/Hot Chip (okay but kinda boring...I think the first disastrous two times I saw them years ago still inspires some bitterness in me); and Golden Triangle (sounds like every other Siouxsie electro influenced group out nowadays, but they did a really inspired cover of Hardest Button To Button).
The other week was 3 shows in 6 days. I started off on Thursday, using my student discount to check out Man Man (and some other bands who were total crap). That was completely strange since I haven't seen them play in a very long time. After going on 7.5 years of being a fan, it still takes them 10 years to setup, the energy is still infectious, and I still love their shows. The difference now is that there's just a lot more other kids who love them with their youthful energy and dress up in facepaint and act crazy. I'm just the old lady hanging out on the sidelines. But we're all still plugging away. I talked to Ryan after the show and he said "I'm the same as I always was...a little older and more tired" and I replied "aren't we all?"
Saturday's show was RJD2/Break Science/Happy Chichester at Music Hall of Williamsburg. The venue always trips me out a bit because it's the all metal bizarro of my fave venue, The Bowery Ballroom, without half the character. Top notch show all around. I'd never heard of Break Science before, but I'm all about them at the moment. They killed it and then RJD2 came out in a robot suit, very reminscent of a Daft Punk show, so those were some fun moments before he got behind the decks and later did a band thing. Videos I unearthed below:
Then the night after my birthday, I went to the Bowery to see Dam-Funk with a live band and Peanut Butter Wolf doing a VJ set. Definitely my favorite show of the year so far. If only initially because it exposed me to what is the song I plan to play this spring until I make everyone else sick:
As for Dam-Funk himself? Ripped it. Seriously, the second someone comes out with a keytar, you know only epic things are going to happen. It's just a fact.
Life has been way better than my next to last post might indicate. School has emerged as fun once I was able to clear the past six and a half years of working insanely out of my brain a bit. I'm even going to Paris this summer to study video, walk around, and pinch myself because I'll have finally made it to Europe.
I've taken two great trips so far this year: the first was a long-needed vacation to Miami and then a cruise to the Bahamas with my buddies PrincessNella and Banana. I just hung out looking at beautiful water, feeling the sand on my feet, and having few cares in the world. I came back to New York so clear-headed and refreshed. Everything has been (mostly) awesome since.
Then I just came back Tuesday, half kicking and screaming from San Francisco/the Bay area. I visited the long-departed Fizzie and kicked it with him in the East Bay, making new friends out there. And also hung out in the city with my friend S (who just moved back there), wandering around town and marveling at the similarities (The Mission = Williamsburg) and differences (I felt way more unsafe in the Tenderloin than I've ever anywhere in NYC. Including the South Bronx). The highlight was definitely hanging out with B, as always too briefly. Chatting with him about the blog made me promise to be more active if only because he's more stoked about it than anyone else ever. Except for maybe me, circa 2003. My biggest regret about the trip was only staying for 4 days -- half of which I spent working on a paper (ended up with a B+). I was looking for cheap later flights up until I had to go to the airport. I'm definitely going to end up back there soon, especially if the fare specials keep going,
I'm on spring break at the moment, trying to motivate myself to work on projects for class and maybe something that can make the end of the semester show that my program puts on. It's more than a little scary that I've got about six weeks until my first year of grad school is over and then 2 months before I'm jetting off to France. Time flies.
Circlesquare - Dancers from Bienvenido Cruz on Vimeo.
I spent this year's Hallmark holiday with my friend Banana at the movies. We sidestepped the ridiculous line to see He's Just Not That Into You to see Taken. It was sufficiently fun and badass (though lacking the wonderful scene with the nails in the commercials) and that was almost enough to ease the bitterness of movie tickets being $12 nowadays. Now I remember why I go to the movie theater like once a year. Perhaps almost 28 is long enough to finally experience this movie date thing that other people seem to do. Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Afterwards, we successfully sidestepped couples grabbing burgers at a diner, then drinking at semi-divey Gramercy area bar. Good night overall.
I meant to go upstate for the day, keeping with my new getting out of town more often mantra, but that didn't work out so well. Instead of cleaned out my fridge and danced around the house to reggae. Life is so exciting right now!
Skeletons - Eleven (It'll Rain)
Roy Ayers - We Live In Brooklyn, Baby
Rae and Christian - Get A Life
New Birth - Dream Merchant
Herbert - You Saw It All
The flip side of being a random magnet is accepting that life rarely will ever proceed without some sort of monkey wrench. I enter mid-January 2009 laid off my full-time corporate job with a college interview scheduled for 2 weeks from now. The name of the game right now is ambivalence. I feel like I'm in the midst of a time where I can do whatever I want, but instead I sit at home in some sort of existential crisis limbo. You can lead a horse to water, but drinking it is another story.
I am going to DC on Monday though to congregate in the masses and hopefully gain some inspiration to bring back to frigid NYC with me. I started a new blog to document the WTF reaction I have to so many commercials nowadays. I am extracting myself from romantic limbo to wait for the person who can make me giddy and can embrace falling for me too. (That's the one area I'm tired of aiming low in.) I'm trying to remember that there's about 11.5 months ahead of me and this is just the start. This year hasn't quite played out the way I want and I can still change it for the better.
Just over 6 weeks left in the year and it's got some potential to trail off in an interesting way. Finally.
I'm channeling my employment fears into a grad school application due December 1st. Since I haven't had to do this type of thing in going on 10 years, the procrastinator in me really appreciates that I can submit my forms online...at 3am in my pajamas. The only thing I have to mail in is my transcript. I don't remember fondly trekking to the big post office on 8th Avenue in the middle of the night trying to get that crucial postmark before midnight. Gotta love modern technological advances.
The weeks leading up to the election were predictably insane and I spent just over an hour standing on line in the old neighborhood on the day itself. I was exhausted and finally getting around to a late dinner at the Raccoon when the official call came in. I only smiled and felt like I took the first deep breath of the whole day. The neighborhoods I passed through had fireworks and kids all over in the streets, but I just happily bypassed through the crowds to go home and sleep.
The weather is strange and wonderfully bipolar. At least I think so until the steam heat makes my apartment temperature unbearable and I dress like it's beach time instead of mid-November, then go outside and freeze in the cold. Not sick yet, but knock on wood. Then again, that's why I drink so much whiskey. Definitely for the germ killing properties.
I randomly heard Born Slippy over the weekend and it reminded me of how back in the day I'd never forget to stay up late to watch AMP on MTV. Then a few days later, I'd go to the basement of Tower Records on West 4th Street to go see if I could find the import singles. Ah, the days of pre-P2P. A few videos I was first exposed to back then plus the song my dad drilled into my head as a kid.
