Sometimes you need a little pretention to insulate your self-esteem.
I just wanted to put that out there so i could be reminded of it at a later date.
I have been transformed, though not completely.
The assignments in my songwriting class have so-far been very involving, especially to me — a non-music major. For example: write a melody for a completely instrumental piece and turn in an accompanying paper discussing your use melodic contours and devices. Less perplexing (though still very involving): write three different titles for each of three different subjects, then expand each title into a brief synopsis of plot, and finally re-write each original title using idiom/axiom or assonance based on what you outlined in your synopsis.
I thought i would be alone in my venture into this musical territory, and went to the length of getting the program head and my own dean (a music major himself) to sign off on adding me to the class. Much to my surprise, there were a few non-music major in my section of the class by the end of the first week. However, their introductions went something like “Hi, i’m Bob, i’m in this band…”
They all dropped the class after the melodic contour project.
To the best of my knowledge i am the only student in my section who turned the assignment in complete and on time, despite harrowing and somewhat vague instructions including having to notate the entire melody and perform it in class.
This week we had a myriad of assignments due, capped by one particular task: write a song. By no means did it have to be a good song, or a very well-written song, but it was meant to make use of all the exercises in title devices and word-painting that we had been employing earlier in the assorted assignments. As directed, I wrote a song, but i was less than pleased with what i came out with. Having already made a somewhat big point out of all the writing i’ve already done, i was definitely hesitant to turn something so equivocal and boring in masquerading as a masterpiece. So i wrote another… not my best song ever, but something i really enjoy playing. Because of my extra work i wound up scrambling before class to photocopy the scribbled lyrics out of my poetry book and to pencil in the chords, but i still had it turned in on time..
To the best of my knowledge i am the only student in my section who turned the assignment in complete and on time.
Complete and on time… there’s something about that. In the past i’ve been one of those students who turns things in incomplete and begs for extensions to wind up with their A. So far this year i haven’t done that — not once, even when i had the opportunity to do it to save myself from a logistical mistake.
I don’t know what’s come over me… could it be that i was destined to suddenly become responsible at the age of 21? I’m still trying to figure it out, but in the meantime all that i can be sure of is that i’ve entered every day of class so far with the intent to prove that i am a capable student, if not the most capable student, when it comes to completing the work in an acceptable fashion. Not only that, but when people show up with excuses like “i was sick” or “i didn’t quite understand the assignment” or “i missed the roll sheet last week” i just roll my eyes and go back to taking notes. I’ve done all three, and i’ve still made it out with an A in each situation, but being smarter than everyone else is so much more satisfying when i am really being more intelligent.
I really am.
Elise actually had me convinced for a moment that i might be growing a tail, but after a few solid hours of slouching around reading Durkheim’s Suicide i’m starting to think that i’ve grown a tiny callous at the base of my spine to protect it from hard wooden chairs. Elise went on to point out that dinosaurs’ sometimes had “helper brains” located at the base of their tail to help communicate information to their brains in a more expedient fashion. This, she claimed, would mean the difference between “ouch, my tail seems to be on fire” and “mmm, do i smell cookies?”
Durkheim’s Suicide is a fascinating (and decidedly unmorbid) look at the Sociological phenomena that can be statistically correlated to the rate of suicide in late nineteenth century Europe. It works on the supposition that suicide can be view as an entirely unpsychologically motivated act — or at least that an individual’s reasons to commit such an act are entirely outweighed by the causal factors associated with their role in society as a person, worshipper, spouse, and so forth.
The remainder of this post will strive to address neither the topic of evolutionary adaptation nor the topic of one’s place in society can dictate behavior more than their personal intent. However, it is definitely about both. Sortof.
(If you don’t know me at all you probably should just skip down to the last post to avoid too much incoherent rambling).
As of two years ago today i had only completed three music courses on a collegiate level. None of them went towards improving my vocal skills. I was fully aware of that fact, and though i strove to improve both my volume and pitch on my own i had already begun to do the same through coursework. In 2001 i earned the ability to record in Drexel’s digital studio, and it was during the mixing of Relief that i became enamored with the idea of joining 8 To The Bar.
8 To The Bar is Drexel’s all-male acappella group. They’re about as close as one can get to being a certifiable Drexel Rock Star. I mixed Relief simultaneously with 8ttB’s studio album that Spring, sometimes literally finding both of our material on a single ADAT tape. The group’s then-president (and my co-producer) Bill spent the entire week coaxing excellent performances out of me, partially resulting in a tacit attempt to convince me that my voice could be used as more than just an implement of singer-songwriter angst. I, for the most part, disagreed.
In the weeks to come i found myself watching in jealously and awe as 8 To The Bar added new members — almost all of them in my singing range. It had never occurred to me to audition. The grace saving me from actual disappointment about this were The Treblemakers — 8ttB’s just-formed female counterparts. The Treblemakers were composed almost exclusively of my close friends (save for Selina), and as they began rehearsing i quickly became their groupie-at-large … locating errant members after practice began, fetching extra photocopies, and reserving seats for them at the 8ttB concert. By the following fall i was an actual member of the TM’s, albeit an honorary one, and i still gave no though to auditioning for 8ttB despite them adding two more people who sing the same voice part as me in addition to our collective friend Dante, to whom i cannot claim any semblance of vocal comparison.
As 8 To The Bar’s membership became updated, so did The Treblemaker’s … adding one of my roommates, one of the first people i met at Drexel, and one of my best friends. As the group’s membership shifted so did my honorary “role” … I went from being a photocopier to an arranger, and from fetcher of members to emergency practice percussionist. However, when the curtain went up i was still a seat filler rather than a performer — one role completely alien to me..
Yesterday night the girls held their yearly audition, and as of Monday morning they will officially be up to full vocal power. Meanwhile, 8 To The Bar is pretty much at full vocal power, but they’re also auditioning. In fact, auditions are Monday night right after Choir, as an email supplied by the 8ttB webmaster conveniently informed me this afternoon. From various grapevines i have heard that they’re looking for either a couple of exceptional tenors or as many as five or six new members. As tempting as this might seem, the odds really aren’t in my favor: i don’t have a stronger voice or range than any of the baritones currently in the group, and my reading and performing skills are equal at best to any basses who are planning to show up. But, for once, i’m actually considering the possibility of showing up.
Monday, effectively, is it. I’m in my second to last year at Drexel, and i vocally scratched and clawed my way into choir. Although i am by no means a fully qualified bass or baritone soloist, i am for the first time entirely capable of being a member of 8 To The Bar, and that leaves me with a choice: I can spend Monday night making them believe that i’m only not a part of the group yet because i haven’t tried out, or i can give it up entirely and get comfortable in my seat.
So many words to describe such an agonizingly small decision; it all comes down to a simple question of “will i, or won’t i.” Will is putting myself out on a line much more personal than the ones i’ve toed in auditions for theatre and choir, and won’t is admitting that after two years of becoming more musical i’m still not musical enough.
I really don’t want to grow a tail.
I thought that maybe she had gotten thinner since the last time i saw her, but as i stared at her from across the room the lines on the side of her face slowly began to resolve in my vision. Clever, i suppose, even artful. Not any thinner, though. Still, i would have never thought to so carefully sketch in a smooth jawline with concealer, gracefully feline, to separate my face from my neck. Really they’re still the same, one right after another, but the girl gets points for trying.
I was made to truly shudder by someone talking about how his friends should all switch to a BA program from a BS. Sure, i’ve conducted similar conversations in my day, but his line of reasoning was so incomplete that i think he may have entirely broken his point. Still, it wasn’t my place to interrupt him so that his friends could hear what a BA of Journalism really consists of, no matter how much i might want to.
Days are very systematic, consisting of: waking up, checking rank, working, learning, and walking. There are more repetitions of each depending on the day, and the only way i’ve been able to keep track of where i am or where i’m going are the people that i encounter in between. Last night on the train two girls were talking in Creole, and one of them noticed how my eyes kept peering over my copy of Suicide whenever i could make out a few words of French. They were from Immaculata, and we spoke briefly about Classical Sociological Theory and the continuous length of Lancaster Avenue before i got off … only to find that i had de-trained a stop early. At first i was a little nervous, but i eventually found my way back to Lancaster Avenue and began my walk to the concert.
While life is slowly becoming routine again, dreams are getting more and more disparate with each passing night. At the end of last week i fell asleep with a playlist of music on, and my dream seemed to take place entirely within a single play of “Seams“, though it seemed much longer than four or five minutes. The setting was plain, just walking around in my old house talking to my mother and to Elise. However, at the onset of each chorus in the song i slowly began to unravel — literally to come apart at the seams. At first i hardly noticed, as the first chorus is quite short; the sensation was not dissimilar to stripping off wet bathing trunks. It was during the second chorus that i began to become really alarmed, as with each line some small part of me would loosen and fall to the ground. Skin came unclung from my legs, it unwound from around my midsection, it came off like fallen leaves from my chest and back. My mother and Elise did not notice, though, still blithely talking to me as we walked around inside my house. Each line now was an eternity … long enough for me to lose another part of myself to the inexorable process of coming apart at the seams, and to watch that part turn into so much dust as it hit the ground.
As the final chorus began i was so weak that i could barely support my own weight for the walk into the bathroom to check the scale, and even as i read it the pointer was get lower and lower. Suddenly i was singing too, “i wonder if anyone will notice,” and as i began to move towards the next line i found myself sprawled on out on my back, watching in horror as the last of me fell away to reveal my ribs and the beating red heart within. In just whispers now i was keeping up with the lyrics, endlessly repeating “at the seams” until i saw movement in my peripheral vision. Elise was suddenly there, crouching beside me and reaching out as if to lay a hand against my exposed ribcage.
Instead she extended a single slim finger, which slipped between two bones and allowed her to brush her fingertip gently against my heart. My insides collapsed upon themselves at her touch, unable to properly communicate the feeling i was enduring. At that moment the song resolved, and my eyes opened.
The first thing Elise asked when i told her about it was if the effects were realistic or like stop-motion animation. My eyes must have widened a little — because they were the latter, and it had been the first thing i thought when i woke up.
I do not think we will be making videos for my Songwriting class, but i can ask tomorrow afternoon. Anyhow, that concept would be entirely out of my budget… and, for that matter, so would “Under My Skin.”
Why am i awake, again?
Well, whether you’d believe it or not from that rather hurried first Trio of the season, i am now officially a part of the Drexel University Chorus. As in, i auditioned — in a room with just Dr. Powell — and was accepted… albeit, not in the voice part i expected. So, there’s another hurdle in my life’s list of accomplishments down (and, my first “successful” audition for Dr. Powell ever). Yay.