I'm alive...

just busy. Dad has been here since Wednesday, so I've been occupied with him most of the time. We went into NYC Saturday and came back yesterday, and Dad seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit. It was only his second time going to the city. We went to see the Sat. matinee of The Phantom of the Opera; I wasn't too crazy about the idea, but I didn't let on because he really wanted to see it. Sure enough, I thought it was overblown dreck, but Pop was into it, so what the hell. Hey, what's three hours of abject misery among family?

On the way out of town, we stopped at Zabar's so I could get olives and smoked mozzarella, then spent a few minutes on the Columbia campus. While I did feel a little nostalgic for last summer, I was very glad that I wouldn't be having to face a magazine workshop in a few weeks. This year's publishing course starts today, so I did see a few people lugging gigantic suitcases up the steps into Furnald (another task that I'm glad I'm avoiding this June). If I'd known I was going to be there, I'd have brought copies of arielmeadow's tips for publishing ingenues.

So anyway. Two more days of work and I head south. I'm still trying to decide if I'll try to leave Wednesday night so that I can get far enough to get to Mississippi on Thursday. I guess not; I probably shouldn't make the old man go through a 900-mile day. He will, however, have to suffer through two 600-mile days (Dad is violently opposed to driving more than 300 miles per day) and non-stop Iron Maiden as payback for Phantom. Hey, come to think of it, Iron Maiden has a song called "Phantom of the Opera." Funny how these things work, eh?

Gah. I have to go home and finish my proofreading project. I'm glad to be getting the extra money, but I wish it had come at a less busy time. Oh well, I'll be done with it after tonight. Or the early morning, or something.

this is the kind of thing I'm reading

MUSI 845a, Methodological Issues in Music History and Analysis.

Foundational concerns in confronting a piece of music and the context in which it is embedded. These include: the nature and status of the artwork as an object of interpretation; the existence of multiple voices and layers of implication within a single work; the role of the observer in producing aesthetic or cultural meanings; contending constructions of history into which the work might be interwoven. Carl Dahlhaus's Foundations of Music History serves as one of the texts from which we radiate outward to several issues: phenomenological hermeneutics, cultural materialism, structrualism and poststructuralism, postmodernism, claims of aesthetic autonomy and relative autonomy, objectivity and evidence, political interpretation and advocacy positions, and so on.

I love the "and so on." Like it should be obvious where you go from there. Post-poststructuralism, I suppose. Ugh. That's the kind of thing that I don't miss in the least about grad school.