A renewed sense of purpose

I think for the most part, it takes talking to the right kinds of people to really settle a sort of direction for education and purpose.

I did not update yesterday. I felt pretty tired all day and did not sleep enough. I went through my last theory and aural skills classes for the semester, plus my last lesson, and then in Critical Thinking I made an improptu talk about my paper's focus of Marxism and structuralist related terminologies in the sense of music. I ditched Afro Am to work on my paper for writing class, and even then it was not very finished. Oh well. I am really interested in my work right now for the writing class, and it is only too bad that I have no class to share it with. I guess I can still talk with Rolf, though. The afternoon was spent going home and then going to the park to just get outside for a while. I walked over with a frisbee with the intentions of finding whoever to toss with, and I ended up just throwing with two guys for a while. After they left, I was on the swings for a while listening to the Shins and Modest Mouse and soaking in the afternoon sun. Back at home, I took a power nap before going out to the Med with the roomies for Andrew's birthday. It was a good night. We had some delicious food there before going to the Upstairs for a couple fancy drinks, and after an intermittent stop at Juanitas, we went to the Downer to get Andrew a birthday shot and to go have some PBR and to play darts. I had not done any sort of drinking in a long, long time with the fear of my throat this entire semester, yet somehow I chose to "ignore?" that feeling and instead focus on enjoying myself and the moment. I think it was a good decision, and though I did get kinda drunk pretty quickly, I had a great night with everyone. The night concluded back at the house with some more beers and hanging out at the neighbor's before hanging out in the family room for a while.

I might have felt a little hungover this morning, yet I was able to get up, shower, and go do my interview with Brenda again, which still rendered around the ideas of privilege and social classes that exist in the music school. It seems more and more that she sees a future in me for this whole changing dynamic of relationships of musicians, and I see her as a powerful mentor for my purpose and studies within the school right now. I practiced some piano afterwards, and then I went to Cafe Roma before going to the station for my show this afternoon. It was an enjoyable show, no big screw ups, and I enjoyed all the music, for the most part. I jolted home for a snack before going back to campus to talk with James Brody afterwards about my project, and what initially started as an awkward array of tangential explanations ended up turning into a deep conversation about the ethics and this sense of "cultural re-exportation" that exists within a lot of music. It seems that I may have ignited a whole new dynamic of music and musicology within him as well, as the interview was only supposed to be a couple of minutes, and it ended up turning into a swelled-forty minute to an hour conversation attempting to break down the whole dynamics and minds of all these music composers throughout history. Every point that was brought up opened other "cans of worms" for all these really sticky examinations of music and culture, and like said, I think my existence as a Native student and me going to him to ask all these questions may have brought a whole other perspective to him that is as new to him as it is to me. I had jazz rehearsal afterwards, and after running into Andrew in the basement, we biked home together while he was venting some frustrations to me, and the evening since then has been spent doing more interval-based study sessions for my papers, where like with piano, I spent twenty minutes working on the paper before taking some time off to spent twenty minutes at the piano, or sometimes just eating some food and regrouping. I wish I would have adapted to this program much, much earlier in my academic career. Oh well, nothing to do about it except to just keep doing it now.

I still am a little uncertain about the next week or so. I have a lot of obligations and errands to fulfill, but the one thing I am looking forward to right now is acupuncture with this community clinic tomorrow afternoon. I have been a little knotted up in my upper back, and I could still use some relief from the whole throat situation, but more then anything, it will be nice to treat myself to a new, relaxing experience.

-c