Category: Uncategorised

book deals

The top thing on blogger.com right now is people getting book deals based on their blogs. This, of course, causes me to become starry-eyed. Would Random House be interrested in the ramblings of a neurotic grad student who hasn’t changed her sheets since October? Then I remembered that I only post tired Marxist political rants and papers written for classes.

(I wear pajams. it’s not that bad. i’ve been busy. Like you’ve never done it.)

Elephant sounds on the web

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Lou Harrison biography

There exists a biography of Lou Harrison, which was written during his lifetime. It makes him out to be something of a saint, but this is perfectly alright because everyone makes him out to be something of a saint, and with good reason. the biography has an extremely good articles about his tuning systems and how he built gamelans and stuff. when I did my presentation on La Koro sutro, I borrowed the biography because I knew it would contain information on the tuning system of the piece and indeed, it did, which I then used in my report.

Well, at the beginning of the semester, i was assigned to read the biography and report back on it. The teacher told us that when responding to an author’s viewpoint about a work, we should “take them on.” So my report was about the weakest areas of the biography instead of the strongest areas. apparently, I misunderstood what it meant to “take them on.” but, despite being somewhat off-track, this was ok and I got to educate my fellow grad students on Esperanto.
The teacher of the seminar just sent me email saying that he’d talked to Lou’s biographer about what I said about Esperanto and she wants my notes.
pretty cool, if you ask me.

Let it snow!

So it snowed last week some time. I think I posted about this. It was very exciting when it happened, but then it started turning to slush and was a lot less endearing. I was told that the best time to make a snowperson is when it’s kind of warm, but I had a bit too much stuff to do. then thursday, it rained and all the now went away, for which i was glad.

Had a final concert wed night (which a lot more people would have attended had there been any pre-concert publicity), then a presentation on La Koro sutro on thursday evening. the three most important things about that piece are just intonation, limitted pitch material in the gamelan and other instruments, modality and drones. I guess that’s four things. alas. I was concerned that i would get off track and start talking about musical instruments in the time of Joan of Arc, but I did not. It worked out well in that I ran out of time just as I ran out of things to say. Aaron said it was a good presentation. then friday, I emailed in my joan of arc paper. There was a massive campus-wide toner shortage. So I gave up trying to find a printer.
Spent most of yesterday sleeping, but also went to the African Drumming and Dance concert, in which Aaron was playing, as he was the drum TA. It was a groovy concert. Woke up today in the afternoon (*yawn*) and snow was coming down like crazy. While slush is a bummer, snow is really pretty. So I went out and shoveled some of the driveway. then went out later and got a saucer sled and went sledding with Aaron and his gf Zoe. We came in when it started to sleet. Little sharp chuncks of ice fall from the sky when it sleets. but a saucer sled makes excellent head protection. Made my first snow angel. There’s a hill (called Foss Hill) that overlooks the school baseball field. It’s a prime sledding spot.
An internet search reveals that there is a musical instrument museum at Yale. Of course, they won’t have any 15th century clairons, but I want to go see it. Angela is still in town. Aaron is leaving tonight after Dan St. Clair’s concert. Dan was the CA for the course I TAed. (CAs are undergrad TAs, fwiw) He’s doing installations. They’re super cool. He’s doing grad-level work and consequently, has the respect of the grad composers. I dunno when Dan is leaving. Most everyone is gone already and those that aren’t are leaving very soon.
No more pencils, etc. Maybe I’ll get a chance to make a snow person.