Summer Update: Getting From Here to There and Music, Music, Music

Life as the world’s Oldest Living Ph.D. student has its ups and downs; the downs are usually missing family and friends, and the ups are times like this week when it hits me how incredibly lucky I am to be doing this, and how much I love academia (and, like all great loves, it is not perfect and does drive me nuts sometimes). I started the Graduate Survey of Music History this week, and as always when my schedule changes (usually at the start of the semester but in summer there are five sessions when new classes can start) I face a new challenge in the logistics of getting to class. The best possible solution involves several issues such as where to park, finding the optimum route whether by bus or walking or some combination, timing, etc. and is complicated by the weather and how much my backpack weighs. Now that I have a 9:30 class Monday through Thursday, as well as Latin MWF at 11:00, I find that I can’t avoid a rapid trek across campus from one to the other, in the middle of these 98-degree days, uphill most of the way with two enormous texts in my backpack. Fortunately I only have to make the Bataan Death March twice a week.

For over a year I’ve been passing this building and wondering what it was like inside. When one of my humanities classes was held in the Dance building, I really enjoyed prowling its halls, looking in at rehearsal studios, seeing its displays of costumes and notices of upcoming presentations and visiting artists. Now I have a legitimate reason to wander around the Music building, passing one room full of cellists, another with a chamber group, and various individual practice rooms with sounds of a harpsichord or clarinet filtering under the door. A divine cacophony resounds in the halls like a celestial orchestra tuning up. And I get to be in class with graduate Music students – future musicologists or performers or music teachers. This Music History class is a diverse group; there are several women my age, music teachers working on their master’s during their summer hiatus or "unpaid vacation" as one refers to it.

Thanks to the nature of my program, I’ve been able to enjoy going into the different departments and discovering their respective cultures. I loved being in class with the English grads, very pleasant people with their verbal pyrotechnics and phenomenal writing skills. Although I liked them personally, I didn't enjoy sharing the pain of the tense and high-strung Art Historians, a visually-oriented group who were up to their eyebrows in facts and could recite the history of research on any major artwork at the drop of a hat; and now I’m observing the Musicians, a slightly eccentric group who are apt to break into a 16^th –century madrigal in the most un-selfconscious manner as they walk down the hall. They appear to be having as much fun as the Humanities grads (who always seem to enjoy themselves hugely no matter what they are taking). And this fall I’ll go further afield and find out what the History grads are like.

The Graduate Music History Survey really must of necessity speed by, since it covers Western music from antiquity to the present day in just six weeks; but it’s still very exciting and I know I definitely want to teach Music Appreciation in addition to my standard courses when I get out. This week we studied Antiquity through the Middle Ages and once again, I find the Latin classes helpful as well as the Catholic upbringing. Professor Kite-Powell was describing the recitative type of plainchant and I knew it at once as “how the priest used to sing High Mass.”

He asked if any of us knew why Music was included in the medieval Quadrivium of subjects that made up part of the original liberal arts curriculum, along with Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy, and I had my hand up faster than Hermione Granger. Music is all about proportions, relationships, and intervals. It’s corny, but I like to think of it as Liquid Math.

I had known that Guido of Arezzo instituted the first standardized system of musical notation in the West back in the tenth century, but I didn’t know about his Hand – an instructional system he used with his sight-singing students, a method kids still learn by in some places. Maybe it would have helped me. Sight-singing was the only college class I’ve ever taken that so completely defeated me that I dropped it. I was taking it, Music History, and Music Theory for fun back in the early 80’s. I had no problem with Theory I & II; Sister Mary of OLV had taught us so well that I already knew much of it; but sight-singing was another matter altogether.

Rock Around the World

On Wednesday I found a glass top for my Earth Garden coffee table – made out of a copper firepit base and filled with sand and rocks from around the world. Some of its contents are linked to parts of my life: I have rocks from the shore of Lake Michigan and Virginia Beach, commemorating Sophia’s birth and infancy and shells from a trip taken with Sam to Miami Beach.

Others are just from interesting places. People are usually very accommodating when I ask them to bring me a little bit of sand or a rock from a trip they’re taking; sometimes they forget and that’s okay, I hardly expect it to be a priority, but more often they remember and are glad to do it. I keep a log of them all and one of these days intend to make a book to keep on the tabletop.

Mom sent me rocks from White Sands and Roswell, and the ranch in Decatur. Patricia brought me sand from the Valley of the Kings and a rock from the shrine of St. Sophia in Greece; nephew G3, a rock from Germany; classmate David said he spent much of his recent trip to Samara, Russia with his head down, staring at the ground and choosing just the right rock to bring me, finally deciding on one from the banks of the Volga. I told him I appreciated his devotion to the task but now felt as if I had ruined his trip. Susan, an art history professor at Rollins, brought me rocks from Museum of Medieval Art Herb Garden in Paris, when she was doing research on the portrayal of Africans in 19^th-century European art. A former advisee brought me stones from various castles in England, Wales, and Germany. A new friend here brought me sand from Costa Rica and Madrid.

Most recent acquisition: Bailey selected a small stone from inside the Florida Caverns last weekend.

I let visitors rearrange the sand and rocks and use zen garden rakes to make paths and designs; I have some old British currency and other items that can be buried or arranged on the surface.

Copper Firepit: $50 on discount from Big Lots

Bag of Play Sand for base: $3 at Home Depot

Glass top: $24.99 at Big Lots

Rocks and sand from around the world with their stories, from friends and acquaintances: Can’t put a price on them.

Keeps me off the streets.

When Harry Met Sally

I had a wonderful time this past weekend because Haley, Andrew and Bailey came to visit. We went to the Florida Caverns State Park which is less than an hour away (but in another time zone) and though they hardly rival Carlsbad or the ones in Kentucky, they’re still pretty cool (literally and figuratively). We had fried oysters at Crystal River, spent two fun hours or so at the fantastic World Market, and went to see Pixar’s Cars. It was a fun flick but I was distressed at the end to see that Joe Ranft died last summer. I must have missed it in the news.

Haley and Andrew introduced me to Phase Ten which is a good card game – I probably think so because I won the very first time I played. I have a sinking feeling I never will again. Bailey and I gathered pears and looked for (but didn’t touch) mushrooms, and tried to guess flavors from a box of Every Flavor Beans; as always she made numerous short-shorts using my camera. Maybe she’ll be the Sally Potter of her generation. Which reminds me: she asked me, in reference to the film poster from Orlando that is in what was my study and is now her bedroom: “Is Sally Potter married to Harry Potter?”

Next week I start Music History so the slackin’ days will be over until August. I’m really looking forward to it, though. Still keeping up in Latin but very glad I took it credit/no credit. The first exam wasn’t the bloodbath I feared it would be – an A-, which is just fine by me.

You're In Direct Range.

Ever since 'cane season opened, I've been jumping up and down and waving my arms and yelling "HEY! Over here! Over here!"

Guess it's working. Hi, Alberto!

Imagine

Okay, I have to put my speed skates on and get an avatar.

But first I have to figure out what that is.

http://www.avatara.org/essay.html

It appears to be a concept borrowed from the Sanskrit word for “the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu)” and watered down to mean an “embodiment” of some sort – in web context, the little image you choose to be associated with your forum or blog posts or instant messaging, so people have a visual to go with your text. It’s another little layer on your web identity. Some people take them seriously, using actual photographs of themselves; others play it for fun, using favorite characters, or photographs that amount to visual jokes; others use a symbol or icon of some sort. The possibilities are endless.

http://www.avatarity.com/

Haley introduced me to this picture, which comes up when you google for images with the word “imagination.” I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use it this way and will conveniently avoid an aggressive investigation into that point . . . for the moment I am using it because I just really, really like it. It embodies how I feel about books. It could also illustrate Zora Neale Hurston’s description of her first taste of moonshine: “I took a sip and the back of my head blew off.”

It loses most if not all of its impact when reduced to avatar dimensions but being in love, I don’t care. Maybe one of these days I’ll change it for a cute dachsund or a sunflower, but in the meantime I'll keep imagining.