RETURN

Okay, so once or twice a year, I make a big to-do and say I'm going to return to regular blogging. Will this one stick? I don't know, 50/50 shot. But I am trying to concentrate on something BESIDES grad schooling. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Very.

I like to imagine grad school is like giving birth to a child. The pregnancy is that waiting period where you're spending all this money sending off applications, trying to convince people somehow, someway, that you are NOT an idiot and that they should not only accept you, but give you money to boot. And you wait, and wait, and the impatience baby in your tummy grows and grows and knots and knots until one day you get your first rejection, and then another (it's always the acceptances that come late) and then you finally get accepted and you think: okay, I'm going to begin this journey.

So you move to the school (you "have your baby") and it robs every piece of your life you once held dear...your relationships, your hobbies, your free time, your sleep, your temper, your patience, your sanity. It's all in service to this thing you are undertaking and you know you're going to be doing it for years and years to come. And you're happy, because it's what you've always wanted, but suddenly you're in this place where getting an A is all well and good, but probably not good enough, because you need to publish and go to conferences and be mentored by the right names and network and all that if you want to eventually have a job when all these old guys in these old departments start kicking the bucket about right when you graduate...and if you get a B, well, you may as well go home.

And yet, I'm so happy, because I feel forward momentum. It's masochistic, really, it's outright torture, the things that people are willing to go to get to a point where they think they'll be happy. And the real kicker is, while you're doing all this, at least in my field, you're reading all this Neo-Marxist theory that tells you "every desire you've ever had has been fabricated for you in advance" and you think, well, okay, there is a system, and I have to play into it or not. And it all becomes very very exhausting, Foucault telling you your government controls you through Biopower, Benjamin telling you you're manipulated by the phantasmagoria of the commodity fetish, Horkheimer and Adorno telling you you're a pawn within the Culture Industry, Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy saying there is only hope in a world where your singularity is subjugated to a plurality. It's exhausting and you frankly feel like you need a nap and yet, when you get a break, you can't help but read more and more into it.

So you can understand why I've fallen a bit behind on the blogs. But I'll change it soon, fingers crossed...

A Feature I'm Considering? Ten Songs On A Thought

So you know how cool blogs with lots of comment happy fans usually find some resourceful way to create common features? I tried the haiku polls, not sure I'll keep up with them since no one was cool enough to submit answers (if they're wanted, I demand that readers express demand!), but I thought I'd try this idea here. It's sort of like a mixtape. Sort of, I guess.

Basically, I'll present a thought or theme for the ten songs, and suggest the first ten songs that come to mind for that theme. There doesn't have to be any rhyme or reason to why the songs come to mind, they just do. I want to toy with the idea that music can provide a sort of sense memory or thematic element that isnt always present in the music itself. I then encourage you, the blog reader, to present your own ten. It's fun!

Ten Songs On A Thought
Songs That Feel Like Sweater Weather

1. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
2. Blacking Out The Friction - Death Cab For Cutie
3. The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us! - Sufjan Stevens
4. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
5. Us - Regina Spektor
6. No Surprises - Radiohead
7. The Dream Of Evan and Chan - Dntel
8. Crutch - Pinback
9. Blood Bank - Bon Iver
10. Oh, Comely - Neutral Milk Hotel

So what are your ten?

A Public Apology

I have done my attempt at becoming a famous blogger a terrible injustice by virtually abandoning my blog in a fit of busy-ness. This is no way to start an empire, or at least no way to capitalize on a forum I'd like to use to discuss various aspects of our changing culture.

That said, here in writing:

This is my solemn vow to begin normal, routine updates once more.