I have to get used to people without formal musical training not being able to understand what I do. My roommate and I were talking about studying music, and I told her that sometimes I worry that I'm not doing anything IMPORTANT, I'm not doing something that can help people. Her response was, "Well, music is entertaining, and it's good that you can understand something that people love... I wish I could have learned to play violin." A couple of things about her statement bothered me. First, she doesn't understand (nor do I expect her to understand) what I am doing with music. Her idea of studying music is learning an instrument and playing music in an orchestra. My idea of studying music is reading articles, understanding theoretical concepts, being able to apply an analytic method to a composition, being able to articulate the function of harmony in a piece. Second, sometimes I am worried that I am wasting my time by working in a field that is, in large part, a form of entertainment. Then I got to thinking: even in the poorest cultures, people make music. Music isn't just something that is done for fun. Music isn't simply a luxury that people in richer countries have. Music is something else-- maybe a way to cope, a way to create community, a release of stress or pressure, a symbol of something higher, I don't know. I am drawn to that power that music has-- everyone, in every culture, does music, and I want to know why.
*********************** I can't let go of the past. It has been at least three years since I have even seen him, and still I find myself thinking about and remembering something from that relationship about once a week. Now they are having a baby. That hurts, for some reason. I still feel like that is my life they are living, she is living. I feel like my place was stolen, taken from me-- that I was replaced. I know that I am a different person now and he is a different person now. I know that it was better for me to leave that relationship and take the path that I took. But still I have this nagging feeling that I missed out on something. I wonder if he thinks of me like I think of him. I wonder if she is a better kisser than me. I wonder what they'll name their kids. I wonder if their inside jokes are as funny as ours were. I don't know how I can resolve this inside myself. I feel like I never got some bit of needed closure and now I'm suffering because of it. Sometimes I think that if I could just talk to him now and see that he hasn't changed, then I will be satisfied that I made the right choice. But what if he changed into a person I could love unconditionally, that I could be with forever? What if he was my soul mate, and I just wasn't patient? That thought terrifies me.
*********************** I have been in this town for about four months and I still feel sort of lonely. I'm just not close to people here like I was close to people at NWC or in Japan. Chi-chan is in Fukuoka, Lis and Becky are in Chicago, Aubrey is in Minneapolis, and my family is in Des Moines. And I am here. In an apartment with two roommates I rarely talk to. In an apartment complex full of noisy college co-eds. I have friends here, but no one I feel like I could cry to or randomly hug. I wish I was closer to people who are close to me. I wish the people I am close to were closer to me.
********************** I really think I might end up in Asia for a large chunk of my life. It's such a fascinating part of the world. I don't think I'd ever get tired of living in China or Japan. I really want to go back overseas, to either country. I want to see my friends in Japan again. I want to go back to the laidback lifestyle and awesome food of Southern China. This isn't to say that the US is boring; I just feel drawn to the Far East. I don't know why.
I have read about 300 pages of scholarly readings on music theory and ethnomusicology in the last week. Looking ahead at my course syllabi, this amount of reading will be the norm for the next 12 weeks or so, on top of writing reaction papers and reviews. I tried to pace myself during the school week by reading at least one article a day, but even then I ended up having to cram 7 15ish-page readings into the last two days. What I have learned is that I hit a wall after about three hours of reading. I can only absorb so much of the material after an extended period of slogging through and taking notes on very wordy, abstract journal articles and book excerpts. However, I have also learned that when I take away some distractions (namely, the television), I can work pretty steadily for three hours and get a lot accomplished. This is good to know.
This entry is probably not very interesting to mos of my readers. It does, however, represent a crucial part of the life of a grad student: reading. As an undergrad I half-heartedly, distractedly read through textbooks. I banked on really absorbing and understanding the material during the lectures-- and usually that paid off. In grad school, however, when a teacher assigns a reading, she intends to discuss it as a class, not give the class bullet points about what the authors said. If I don't do readings for class, the potential for making a complete fool of myself by not knowing what everyone else is talking about increases greatly.
My aim in writing this entry is not only to give my readers a taste of grad school. I hope the act of writing this down will help me remember the hard work I've done this past week. I also hope that I will look back on this entry in later weeks to find that I'm working even harder to read and retain course material.
And, I'm blogging now because I have hit the three-hour mark for today. I've hit input threshold and can no longer read and retain any more information. But I'm not worried about it-- tomorrow is another day.
I think I have finally found a way to marry all my various passions: East Asia (specifically, China and Japan), ethnomusicology, learning languages, music theory, and traveling. I'm thinking about doing some sort of comparative study of Chinese and Japanese music: how Japanese culture has borrowed from the Chinese music tradition, how various folk styles are similar and/or different in the two countries, what impact a pictorial language has on music-making, etc. I'm going to graduate from my current program with a master's in music theory and a minor field area of ethnomusicology. The next step might be a doctorate in ethnomusicology. I don't know. But I'm excited about all these possibilities.
I have noticed recently that there are little cliques scattered throughout the music school. My perception of these cliques is as a theory major, but probably other theory majors have slightly different perceptions than I. Still, from listening to my fellow theorists talk about other music majors, I've developed a social schema:
The Theory Majors: Nerdy, bookish, spend lots of time in the library, music know-it-alls. We generally have really good ears and get easily annoyed with "bad" music. We get along with musicologists and composers pretty well. We despise most voice majors.
The Musicologists: Even nerdier than the theorists. Spend almost all of their time in the library. Tend to be fairly socially awkward. They know tons of esoteric facts about which composers had syphillis and in what year a certain symphony was performed. They tend to talk less about the actual music and more about what cathedral the piece was performed in or who was having an affair at the time or if a certain manuscript was really written in 1648.
The Voice Majors: The dumb blondes of the music school. They're not usually good with theory or history of music. They generally can't sightread well, and they resent having to take classes that don't focus on vocal music. They don't know how to talk about music intellectually, though that doesn't stop them from attempting to contribute to class discussion.
The Composition Majors: The cool guys, the artists. Maybe a bit socially awkward, but somehow that works to their advantage. Usually great at theory. They know the craziest, coolest, up-and-coming music. They seem to get along with everybody.
There are other groups at the music school I could expound on (bassists, trumpets, education majors), but these are the groups I tend to have the most contact with. And, of course, there are people who are in the above groups who are not representative of the stereotypes. There are also--believe it or not--very intelligent voice majors in the music school.
Last Wednesday I performed Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles. Last Friday I went to a concert of "the scariest organ music ever written" in a concert called Pipes Spooktacular. Last Sunday I heard Tombeau de Couperin at a student conducting recital. Yesterday I went to an orchestra concert and heard excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. This weekend I'm going to the New Music Ensemble concert. I go to about two concerts a week. This is my favorite part of life in grad school. My least favorite parts include, but are not limited to, grading stacks of music theory homework, paying what feels like a bazillion bills, and reading boring musicology articles about 15th century motets.
I spend all of my academic time on music. All of it. When I'm not listening to a mozart piano sonata or a motet by Guillaume DuFay, I'm analyzing a Brahms intermezzo or correcting music theory homework. Granted, I'm studying very diverse aspects of music at the same time (analysis of music from the Classical/Romantic era, pre-Baroque motets, and analysis of post-tonal music after 1900). However, I'm not studying English literature. I'm not studying math. I'm not learning a language. I'm not in a science class. I am exclusively in the music department. I don't even know where other departments are on campus. All my friends are music majors.
Since lately I've been spending so much time learning a lot of stuff about one subject, I've been feeling a bit... pigeonholed. Even within the music department I feel pigeonholed. I want to learn about anatomy and Japanese and American history and British literature and anthropology, but my degree doesn't allow for that sort of diversification. I only have room for music theory classes, with the exception of two classes in an "outside field," and usually people just choose another area of music. What if I want to be a Jane-of-all-trades? What if I don't want to end up an expert in music theory but no nothing about choral conducting or jazz or French poetry?
I know I can't know everything, but is it wrong to want to know a little about a lot of things?
I put an ad on the university classifieds offering my experience as an English teacher to any international students who are interested. Today I met with a Korean student to talk about starting some conversation "lessons" twice a week. He is a piano performance graduate student. I'm very excited for the opportunity to learn more about Korea from him, and also to abate some of my Japansickness through teaching English again.
On my Graduate Student Orientation Schedule Sheet, listed for today was the following:
Dean's Welcome, 11 am-12 noon Please join us for an informational hour presented by the Dean of the Jacobs School of Music and followed by a free pizza lunch!
Several of my new friends and I sat together, most of us thinking the same thing: "I hope this meeting doesn't go all the way to noon, because I am hungry for free food!" Sure enough, the meeting ended shortly before noon, and we were dismissed-- without being told where the lunch would be held. All the music grads (about 75 people) wandered out various exits looking for a line of pizzas. Most of us ended up in front of the music library, standing around wondering where our food was. Finally, I decided to take action. I went back to where our meeting was held, only to find a few other students being told that neither the dean nor the director of graduate studies were aware that there was supposed to be free pizza. I laughed so hard at all of us poor students who only came to the meeting to get a free meal. My friends and I ended up having a very nice (but very un-free) lunch across the street. Though none of us ordered pizza.
Name: Ruthie Home: Japan About Me: I want to know who God is and what his truth is. I love getting lost in beautiful music and cloudless star-filled skies, especially in the fall. I hate being bored. I like big cities. I want to travel the world. read more
Name: Ruthie