The countdown to the end of the semester has officially started finally. Another week and a half of class and then finals time.
November went out on a not so bad note. I ended up withdrawing from my program to London, which I think is for the best. I still haven't quite managed to replace my laptop yet, so the last thing I needed to worry about was airfare and a shit exchange rate. Though New Year's in Europe would've been pretty awesome. I think I can be satisfied by spending two (mostly) glorious months there this summer and get over it.
Also got a bit of good news on the thief front. Finally they've got enough evidence to nail the guy. Adding insult to injury, I actually saw him last week, trying to sell a probably stolen Mac Book for $200 in front of my fave deli in Williamsburg. With zero shame. I'd be happy to see that dude under a jail, even though I've pretty much given up hope of seeing my stuff again.
This semester has been a hard slog, even without the recent bit of bad luck. I've got a full schedule of 4 classes plus the thesis prep seminar. I'm out there working hard. It's almost like being back at work...except no money. It's been a fun life interlude to be creative and have a shit ton of fun learning whatever I want for the past year and a half though. Going back to the real world is probably going to be a real bummer. Especially when Sallie Mae comes calling for my pennies.
I've had the disadvantage of two computer mishaps this year: the desktop had a meltdown in March while I was in San Francisco and last week's laptop theft. You would've thought that I'd learned to back up my shit every other day -- and you'd be right and wrong. My backup was in my bag with my laptop (D'oh!)
The spirit of making lemon garnishes for my drinks with the sour ass lemons life is serving up, I've been going on a music collection rebuilding kick since the weekend. I had external HD backups for my library pre-2007 (when I bought this now fixed desktop) and my laptop's reign of September 2009-now. Using my last.fm profile (currently the only site I love tracking the shit I do), I was able to check out what was floating my boat between 1.5-3 years ago which has been entertaining as hell.
For example, remembering the awesomeness of Rafter, Circlesquare, Skeletons, Doves, In Rainbows, The Cosmic Game, and Showtime which I almost forgot about totally since last year. Some video links to my rediscovered faves:
Life got insane rather quickly for me and I've just been trying to power through to the end of the semester. I'm planning to go back to Europe on another school program + travel in January (though life might have other plans currently). Next semester is going to be a little crazy with the thesis and school winding down.
And because there's always a monkey wrench thrown into life: on Wednesday, I got my coat and school bag stolen with laptop, glasses, house keys, and most importantly for me, all my notebooks. One of those books I've had for 3 years and had notes from every class, every random idea, and a lot of the just general thoughts I've had about this crazy whirlwind school program and life. The loss of that is pretty irreplaceable and I'm mega beat about it. The saga since the robbery has insane with all sorts of random leads on the thief and I'm trying to stay positive that he can get caught and hopefully I can get my stuff back.
I've been trying not to dwell on that and turned to music. A few weeks ago, I ordered the new Portable 12" record, This Life of Illusion and have been loving the tracks like crazy. A side story: I actually saw him on the street in Lisbon. Recognized him at 50 paces in the craziness of a night out in Bairro Alto, but let shyness get in the way of telling him how much I love his music. The dude is a genius.
The song I posted above is called Life Magically Is and the spoken lyrics are from a poem called To An English Friend in Africa by Ben Okri that I had to look up. Nice and inspirational:
Be grateful for freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships.
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all.
Do not think your ways superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
Do not condemn
But praise what you can
And when you can't be silent.
Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to re-create yourself anew
In order to transform time.
Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn a new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.
I'm trying to challenge myself this month to do more writing. Whether here, my paper journal, my school blog space -- just to do it. Life is swirling around me a bit fast with school gearing up to kick my ass and I've started to think about how good it used to be to write for fun sometimes. Especially since I keep running into people who mention this blog to me. It was (and still is) one of my favorite pasttimes and is overdue a revival.
I don't know if I'll ever go back to my oversharing heights of the days long gone (especially since I became keenly aware of the Wayback Machine and how the internet lasts forever, fuck!), but music and my random late nights should be fair game. I'm looking forward to the challenge.
I decided to spend my weekend making a mixtape instead of doing something productive like, I dunno, working on final projects or something. I found a fun open source widget and spent yesterday selecting tracks, then today putting it all together. It was fun, though I didn't realize how strangely love obsessed it was until I finished it. Dunno what that's about.
By Candicissima on April 8, 2010 3:17 AM
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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.
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.
I'd been thinking of a blog revival for some time now.
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.
