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Jun 7, 2011 - 05:26 PM |
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Reflections |
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This is most likely going to be a rather long entry, simply because I've found myself having quite a bit of time lately to simply read and listen to podcasts about different things that I am interested in but often give up in times of multiple real world obligations. I'm writing this more as a means to go through everything that I've explored in the last two months or so (or whenever it was that the university semester ended), than necessarily to get comments on any of this, but I obviously will be glad if anyone wishes to discuss any of the topics I'll be skimming over in this entry. A big part of the reason why this is going to be so long is that I don't feel like I've had any of the long-winded conversations that I very much enjoy to have with people in the last few months, as much because none of the people I usually have these conversations with have crossed my path since then as because I didn't bother to phone anyone up. My girlfriend has been working a whole lot lately, and unfortunately it happens to be mostly late afternoons to evenings, which clashes quite a bit with my mostly night and morning shifts.
Anyhoo, here comes the Tangent Express, feel free to hop aboard anywhere, diagonal read, skip paragraphs, go straight to the comments page and call me out on my bullshit without reading any of this, whatever.
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The first thing that has been on my mind of late and keeping me up some nights is that I'll be starting my doctorate in September. I know what I'll be working as my main project, but I have yet to really start working out the details on paper. A big part of the reason why is that, since I'll be writing a large scale work for percussion ensemble and choir, I'll be needing a libretto to start my project, or at least part of one. For the last six months, I've been debating whether or not this was the best idea, since I don't really feel like handing over such an integral part of my project to another person, yet I'm pretty sure if I wrote it myself it would be laughably absurd and not very good. This uneasiness has been somewhat settled since last week, when I called up an old friend who'll be moving to Montreal on the 1st of July and talked to him about it. He replied quite enthusiastically, which isn't typical of him, and I'm looking forward to working on this with him. He's just finished a Master's in literature, and I have great confidence that he will be able to provide an adequate text for me to work with. This also has the advantage of me being able to work very closely with him without ever feeling like I'm distracting him from his other work, since we have an open enough relationship that he would probably feel comfortable in telling me if it were the case.
The work I chose to write the music to is Ajax, a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. The reason is quite simply that I was rather mesmerized by the short tale when I read it, there's just something about a guy doing himself in for slaughtering cattle because of a goddess' curse and those who survive him fighting about whether he should get a proper burial or not that seems a bit epic to me.
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Sometime in the last year I came to the realization that I was an atheist. I had been an agnostic for the longest time before this. It is rather odd, since I have been quite interested in the world's different religions for quite a while, and I woke up to my atheism after a spell of simply not having the time to read up on spirituality and such that lasted about a year. I was brought up in a catholic family, though my parents never really forced religion upon us any more than taking us to church every Sunday for maybe the first 10~12 years of my life. My mom went through a phase of being part of bible study groups for a while when I was younger, but nowadays she barely ever goes to church, and I've had enough discussions with her to know that she isn't convinced that the bible is anything more than a book written by men to either gain an amount of control over the population or simply because they believed the stories to be true themselves. Either way, she's not much of a believer anymore, though I imagine she still thinks there is a god, which is cool. My dad has probably always been the kind of guy who just questions all of it when he has the time but doesn't let it influence the way he lives his life. He probably has certain beliefs, but he's the kind of guy who usually doesn't talk too much about this kind of thing.
So, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts that specifically discuss atheism, and I have to say it's interesting to see that there are so many people who actually are atheists around the world. It's also interesting to note that a lot have a real hard time being open about it to their families and friends. I'm lucky enough to be in an academic environment at the moment in which pretty much everybody is open to the idea or at the very least tolerant of it. I'm pretty open about it to everyone in my life, but I'll admit I probably won't ever tell my only living grandparents about it, because it might cause quite a bit of strain with them. To give you an idea, my grandparents do still go to church at least every sunday, and every year at Christmas my grandmother prompts my grandfather to ask god to bless our family for the coming year. Actually, this year they asked my eldest brother to do it since he has three kids now, and they wanted him to take up the mantle and be the one to do it. Maybe just this once, maybe it'll be every year. I'm not sure how my brother feels about religion and the question of god, but I'm glad I wasn't him at that moment. Knowing him though, he probably didn't fuss about it and just went through the motion to keep everyone in good spirits. He's rather like my dad on these kinds of questions, not much of a talker, and, as a corollary to that, not the type who would try and convince anyone away from their own convictions. Actually, out of the five of us, there two of us who are most likely to have these kinds of conversations, and a third who joins in when he has a chance, but is usually so all over the place all the time doing activities and organizing other activities that he only joins in on the rare occasion that he can hold still for more than five seconds.
The one brother I have with whom I most often have the long conversations that I referred to in the beginning of this post actually came to be somewhat convinced that there must be some kind of higher power around the time that I went the other way. He keeps far away from organized religion anyway, and we have such open communication that I can't imagine it would ever drive us apart. As for most of my extended family, I know that quite a few have taken the religious leanings of my grandparents and rolled with it to varying degrees, so I won't bring it up unless the setting is right. I'm not yet convinced that being militant about my beliefs is necessarily a good thing, though I certainly won't shy away if someone confronts me about them.
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Another podcast I really got into for a while is called The Partially Examined Life, which I came upon while searching for information about the concept of absurdity in philosophy. It's mainly three guys discussing different works and topics of philosophy, and the main point that makes it effective is that they run with the assumption that the people listening are pretty much clueless to what they are discussing. This is not to say that they dumb it down, just that they take the time to fill in the pieces when a point of reference is absolutely needed to understand what they are discussing. Philosophy was my major for one whole semester when I first started university, but I've kept on reading mainly works of philosophy since I changed to music, so this was a welcome accompaniment to my evening walks with my dog. I've come to the realization that the two main areas of philospohy for which I have a great amount of interest are Aesthetics (who would have guessed) and Ethics. Actually, I probably read about 4 or 5 works on Ethics for every other work of philosophy that I read. I just realized that while thinking of the things I've read lately.
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What prompted me to write this entry was that I've spent the morning reading a book of Fidel Castro's reflections titled Obama and the Empire, which is all writings that Castro has made about Obama's policy decisions and public adresses. It's a bit shocking to me to read this, since I had no clue that the man writes as much as he does. Now, I'm conflicted to a large extent because I feel a certain degree of admiration for the man in reading his thoughts, yet I've heard so many stories about how he is a dictator and has caused so much suffering to his people. I know a lot of this is probably little more than fallout from the United States government's stance towards Castro and the Cuban revolution, but I'm still having a hard time understanding what exactly is the truth in all this. Are the Cuban people really happy under their current government, or is it true that there's an iron-fist weighing over all of them? The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but I'll need to read up more on this, without a doubt.
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I say that I have a lot of time to read and think lately, but I do still have obligations. My main occupation this summer is working for a company that does lighting and sound setups for corporate events, though I work only on days when they have a need for me, which is actually frequent enough so far this summer to allow me to pay my rent/bills and not feel too squeezed for cash. My biggest expenditures besides my rent is cigarettes, which I'm starting more and more to feel is not very wise of me. I love smoking though, so this battle is far from won. There's something about just sitting on my porch, listening to music, sipping my coffee, and having a smoke that just makes my day.
The rest of my obligations have to do with concerts, though most gigs don't pay, or barely do. I'm part of a vocal ensemble and a choir at the moment. The choir is the gig that I'm paid for, though it's an hour drive from Montreal and it pays 10$ an hour, so it's not really something I can live off of, especially since every concert we were to put on this summer was canceled because of floods in the region where the choir is based. We are supposed to put on a benefit concert next week for those affected by the flood, and I hope that the director is able to find enough people to perform to make it feasible, since our choir probably wouldn't be able to get enough people to come to make much of a difference, without considering that we really haven't practiced much in the time since our concert two months ago. The director is a pretty fascinating guy from the conversations I've had with him, which makes it a bit difficult for me to break it to him that I'm going to be quitting the choir soon. The benefit concert if it happens will probably be my last gig with them since I won't have the time to take ~six hours of my week to go down there for a practice every week for 30$ when uni starts up again. Maybe if I can convince him to let me go once a month (which would be amply sufficient for me to get comfortable with the repertoire), I'll stay on, but I'm not even sure I want to commit that much time to it.
As for the vocal ensemble, it's starting to pick up a lot of steam lately, and it's encouraging to see that. The people in charge have started looking for financial support form the Arts Council of Canada and other such organizations, and the fact that we premiered a mass by a composer from Québec (he's part of the ensemble, but he's also a teacher at the Université de Montréal) should help to show the seriousness of the endeavor and help win us support. If all goes well, it should start to be a paying gig in the coming years. I really like this ensemble, and the fact that my girlfriend is also part of it makes it all the more enjoyable for me, as it provides a venue for us to socialize as a couple, which god knows is a pretty rare occurrence, considering our very different interests.
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I think the thing I admire and respect most about my girlfriend is her will to realize her dreams. In my view she's had a pretty rough time in the last few years, but she hasn't faltered in her drive to make it as a professional opera singer. It's been all the more hard on her since moving to Montreal because in her years working on her master's she's had to brush of systematic rejections by the university opera workshop, having only had the chance to sing in the choir one year and having a very minor role another year, with nothing in the year in between the two. The politics of the voice division of the music faculty is pretty messed up, with operas being chosen with specific singers already chosen in advance for certain roles, with auditions that are basically just for show more than anything taking place at the beginning of the year. Being the skeptic that I am, I had a hard time believing this when we my girlfriend first started telling me about this, but after being in contact with a bunch of other singers and teachers in my years here I've come to see the truth in it. A very sad state of affairs for an academic milieu that is supposed to be a place for students to live experiences that will help them in shaping their careers.
She's had a few audition since finishing university, though no jobs so far. She is singing pretty much every solo that is written for a soprano in the vocal ensemble, which is definitely a good thing. She's always had a bit of a confidence problem (which was worsened to the extreme by her years doing her master's), but she is finally starting to break through it, or at least it seems like it to me. I'm behind her one hundred percent.
If you are wondering why this is what I admire most about my girlfriend, it's because I've always been the kind of guy to just roll with it, and I don't really think about the future too much. Sure, I hope to be able to work as a music teacher once I'm done school, or at least work in something music related, but I can't say I've got any of the kinds of dreams that drives her so passionately. It's truly a wonder to behold, and I just love her so, for this and so many other reasons.
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The strategy game buff in me is starting to crave for a handheld gaming system. I've never really owned any kind of portable game system in my life. Okay, I bought a GBA from my GF's brother a while back for 20$ with a few games, one being Zelda: the Minnish Cap, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn't buy any games for it myself though. The reason I'm getting this itch is because of all the great titles I'm seeing going to the PSP and DS which aren't available on the PS3 and PC. Stuff like Fire Emblem, FFT and Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 to name a few. I probably will never have the money to shell out for one of either, which is just as well since I don't really need a portable gaming console to make me spend even more time doing stuff that isn't really all that productive.
What brought this on is that I blitzed through Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes HD on the PS3 this week and when I saw that it was originally on DS I thought to myself that the portable game systems are getting a lot of strategy game love these days.
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If you've made it this far, you deserve a good pat on the back. I swear I'll give you one as soon as they get those ehands up and running, or if we ever meet in person. Alternatively, give yourself one on my behalf.
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Response to:
) and dropped that off at the Post Office. 
