Well we’ve had our fun. The cabin was so great. Such a rejuvenating refreshing life fest. We also talked about our life fears, which is in its own way still a celebration of life. “CHOOSE LIFE.” Saw a lot of those billboards on the drive to and from. Rural communities sure do love babies. Or anyway, the idea of a baby. Also saw one that had a picture of a widdle cute baby on it and it said “at 18 days my heart is beating.” So I guess you can have an abortion before 18 days and it’s cool. People should be more careful with the wording of their propaganda. Like that part of the Prop 8 trial when the lawyer was like “can you please provide evidence for your argument that is not drawn from the bible?” and the other lawyer was like “No.” Hmm. Maybe should’ve thought of that before you TOOK YOUR ARGUMENT INTO A COURT OF LAW. I was so waiting for somebody to use a dream they had as legal evidence, à la 17th century Massachusetts. I am very disappointed that this didn’t happen.
Speaking of dreams, last night I had a really funny/sad one. I dreamed I was at the job interview for this dream job I really did just apply for. And in the interview the guy goes, “Well I don’t think we need to hear any more. You’re hired!” and I was so ecstatic and I grabbed his hand and shook it and then suddenly I said “this is a dream, isn’t it.” and he said “yes,” and then I gripped him by his shoulders and I said “But if this is somehow really you, like you are really the guy in my dream somehow, can you PLEASE PLEASE really hire me in real life?” and he laughed and laughed. Terrible.
Anyway, the cabin was great. My friends are great. They are all professional geniuses and I would rather die immediately than live in a world without them. We played so many games and so much poker and laughed so hard at each other. We made Dave explain in great detail exactly what happens in the morning in his house (he’s the only one of us with a baby). We talked about life fears. We sat around a fire. We roasted wieners and made lots of jokes about wieners. We drove around aimlessly and walked out into corn fields. We got yelled at by a mean trashy guy in a truck who called us “little fuckers.” We saw a guy in full camouflage walking down the highway carrying an automatic rifle, which Jamie said was illegal (wearing camo if you are using guns instead of bows for hunting (she’s from Montana)), and we got nervous. What a weird country we live in. In so many other countries such a sight would be cause for extreme alarm and police-calling. But here it’s like “oh, guy with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, guess I’ll just try not to make eye contact and hope he is not intending on walking into that grocery store and murdering everyone.” LIVE IN HOPE/CHOOSE LIFE
We played the songs of college on the guitar and sang loudly, which is one of our preferred activities. Dave made like a hundred pancakes. Katy and Nicole took a lot of naps. We played bananagrams. Katy built an amazing fire. Steve brought me the biggest bag of ice ever. We took pictures of jumping and victory pyramids. We got up early and drank so much coffee. We threw rocks into a river and stole corn out of a field. FRIENDSHIP. The thing about those guys is that we never have any plans or activities, we just sort of bum around, and yet somehow it is the most enriching and fun time in the world. The days flew by. We really could have used another day, actually.
Now I am home and doing absolutely nothing. I did apply for a job the other day, which took forever. But otherwise I have done nothing. I have generated four barfy pages of my conference paper. I haven’t cleaned the house or even prepared a meal. Partly it is due to my period, which always makes me lay around like a slob complaining and feeling horrible. Partly I don’t know what it is. I have twelve days to get my act together and then it will be too late.
The other thing I have done that I am part ashamed of and part proud of is that I spent probably a total of six hours going through my iTunes and assigning each individual song to a made-up vibe genre, so that I can do “shuffle” by genre and have rad extensive mix tapes for every vibe. Now each new incoming song will be assigned to a genre and so my genres will be constantly evolving. At first I skipped my gargantuan “Classical” folder and just focused on the modern stuff but then the second half of my six hours I made myself get into that folder as well. That folder was the hardest. There was a lot of shuffling around in the other genres (the subtle differences between “electro jammers” and “instrumental” were especially difficult) but the “Classical” delineations were just insane. Because, you can have a folder called “Romantic,” but do you actually ever just want to listen to a ton of 19th century symphonies all jumbled together with deeply pleasant Chopin piano pieces? They are actually not the same vibe at all–“Romantic” is a bit of a generic misnomer when you get down to it (as basically everyone always points out when they write about it). And yet if you separate out just the huge symphonies, then THAT’S a genre you’ll never actually want to listen to. It’s not actually a very fun genre, most of the time, these big intense terrifying romantic symphonies. But you can’t put them into the other genres because 19th century symphonies, especially their first movements, are SO INTENSE that they would be really jarring in any other context. I solved this by making a genre called “INDIVIDUALS & HEROS” into which I put first and fourth symphony movements as well as some of Mozart’s more daring concertos and Liszt’s more insane solo pieces. I think the Mozart and the Liszt will break up the sturm und drang enough to make that genre fun to listen to if I am in a loud and dramatic mood. Then I put the mellower 19th century symphonic movements into various other genres (Nice Art, e.g., which is mostly 18th century stuff, and General Mellow, which is right now mostly Marvin Gaye). So, here are my final genres, in case you are interested, which actually I highly doubt:
Crystal Vibrations
Dark Vibrations
Ecstatic Vibrations
Electro Jammers
Instrumental
Pop
Smooth Pop
Sad Pop
Smooth Fellas
Hip Hop
General Mellow
Fancy Ladies
Old Country
Blues Class
Folk
Rock
Nice Art Vox
Nice Art
Dark Art
Art Songs
Art Solos
INDIVIDUALS & HEROS
Masses
Medieval
Renaissance
20th Century Pleasant
20th Century Unpleasant
It’s great. There are a lot of crossovers. For example “20th Century Unpleasant” has not only John Cage but free jazz and also some of the more impenetrable electronic noise collages made by people I may even know personally. “Fancy Ladies” is Bjork, Meredith Monk, Kate Bush, and Enya. “General Mellow” has everything from Bach to Kissing Book. To say nothing of “Pop,” which has exactly 1,000 songs and includes Fleetwood Mac, Caetano Veloso, Dirty Projectors, D+, Neil Young, Michael Jackson, etc. All somehow unified by their collective “pop-ness,” which I can not explain. What is pop?
I think I really will listen to all of these genres. It will be a long project to listen to each genre in turn and figure out if anything pops out as not belonging. The one I probably won’t listen to much is “art songs,” because lets be honest that’s really just Schubert. I’ll probably listen to Erlkönig a lot, but in recognition of this fact I actually copied it and put it in “Dark Art,” which I actually will listen to a lot.
I think this was a great project for me but I also recognize that it was really pointless and a huge waste of time, and was probably insanely boring to even read about much less do. And yet I am glad I did it.
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I also bought a pair of galoshes.
