Ow, my brain. Or, adventures in doctorate-level classes.

So, once upon a time, I got accepted into a doctorate program in higher education. I'm taking two classes this fall, just because. By week three of the quarter, I'd surpassed 1,000 pages of heavy reading. I found out that my "not-practical" music and literary translation degrees involved a lot more action. As in, you learn history and theory, and then you sit your butt down and practice (or sit your butt down with some tequilla and translate 200 year old Spanish poetry into modern English) for hours and hours and hours over years and years and years. Somewhere along the line, you associate tequilla with Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (an old-time poet) and sitting down with good cello posture.

It turns out that a lot of other college majors don't have nearly as much action. Yes, there is a ton of thinking and writing (by the end of this week, week five, I'll have written 60 pages worth of papers), but there is a lot of focus on different ways of nit-picking on other writers, or nit-picking ways of running things, or nit-picking your own results when you study something. But instead of nit-picking, it's called critical analysis. Because nit-picking sounds a lot more like what it really is.

And when you get people nit-picking each other, they even get nit-picky about what they want to call the nit-picking. So. You've got your post-modernism. Post-structuralism. Post-colonialism. Feminist post-structuralism critical theory. And onward with a LOT of different post-things. And after much reading about all these different posts, I decided to come up with my own. Because I can be nit-picky, too.

My first one was called "Post" 1960's Batman Critical Theory. I put the post in sarcastic quotes (sarcasti-quotes! patent pending), because in all these theories, the post doesn't mean after, it means without. Because nit-picky people can't just use words the same way that words have been used for all of ever. But my theory does involve 1960's Batman, hence the sarcasti-quotes.

Anyway, this view of the world is that everyone is good, except the Joker. And you have to sometimes throw in a "Holy _____, Batman!" and that if things were looking grim, millionaire Bruce Wayne would be able to pay for cool gadgets. Things were going fine with my new little theory, until Chris got all post-modern critical theory on it and pointed out that my idea was really a post-modern, neoliberal economic critical theory with some "Holy guacamole, Batman!" thrown in. Dammit.

My new theory is the "Post" Kitty Critical Theory. It boils down to two things: boxes are good, closed doors are bad. This works for everything I've tried so far and Chris hasn't been able to crack it yet with post-modern critical theory. I have five more weeks to go in the quarter. And that is what taking doctorate level classes looks like. Because boxes are good. Closed doors are bad.

An Erinku:
My apartment:
flat boxes everywhere
an Ikea explosion
in all the rooms (some assembly required)

My 5:00 am Problems

I've been up since ugly-early this morning. And, since I had some free time, I was going to write some status along the lines of "Hi Lars. I can't sleep.Inner demons." And the appropriate response, obviously, is (said with a Swedish accent) "Ah. Your mother's beef tornadoes. If I hadn't of stopped you, you would have eaten mine, too."  But then I realized that those are lines from my favorite movie, (Psycho Beach Party, obviously) which no one seems to have watched. Except for those folks who I've forced to watch it.

It's a super odd movie and the first time I watched, I wondered the entire time if they meant to make a movie like that. Yes. Yes, they did. It gets better each time I watch. One critic whined that you can't tell the truly bad acting from the pretend bad acting. Which is fine by me, since my favorite t.v. shows are terrible 90's dramas with a similar problem.  Anyway, it's obscure enough that I can't even find the exact wording of my beef tornado quote and I don't have enough time this morning to watch the whole movie. My 5:00 am problems are very sad. INNER DEMONS/BEEF TORNADOES! And now I'm off to orient some new students.

An Erinku:

Too early

for coffee

too early

too early

Sort-of like being a spy

My night-long dream last night had me sneaking into darkened rooms, looking around sleathily, and tip-toeing up to the toasters I could find. I'd sneak in a bagel, hit the magic toast lever, and wait. Over and over again, just before the bagel popped, someone would come in and catch me. Instead of being angry about my toasting in the dark, they were always looking for me and would talk & walk with me out of the room. I'd go with, sadly looking over my shoulder at the popped-up toaster. I'd eventually get away but couldn't get back to my previously popped bagel and the sneaking would start again.

After waking, I wondered what symbolism my quest for a bagel had. The answer was: I want a bagel. I have a long history of very literal dreams, which makes it hard for me to talk with folks about hidden meanings and what symbols mean in their night-time adventures. Anyway. I'm going to go live my dream and toast a bagel...no matter who may wander in looking for me. LIVING THE DREAM!

An Erinku:

So early

So distracted

I seriously

seriously want a bagel

Mindless at the Frozen Yogurt Place

So I decided to walk the three blocks to the local frozen yogurt place. I dressed like a Coloradoan: flip flops, summer skirt, big sweater, umbrella. After seeing my breath for a bit (brr!!), I finally made it to my yogurt destination. I grabbed a yogurt cup, filled it with flavored goodness, topped it off with a bunch of fruit, and got in line to pay. I was so distracted by my yogurt, I did the thing I try not to do there: I put money in the tip jar.

Now, I've worked places with tips. And I tip pretty well when I'm in a situation that needs tipping (meals out, coffee shops, hotels, etc.) since folks are doing things for me specifically. However, at the frozen yogurt place, I grabbed my cup. I filled it with yumminess. I walked it through the store, I plunked it on the scale, and a bored colleger/teenager rang me up.

So...what do they have a tip jar for anyway? Rinsing and cutting up fruit? Chopping the Heath bars up? I'm guessing their employer pays them more than the $2/hour local waiters get paid by their employers (who fully count on tips to make up the difference). And cutting fruit is a lot more fun than chopping onions for kitchen prep. And so, the last time I got yogurt, I decided I wasn't going to tip, which feels weird because I tend to be pretty tip-happy.

Anyway, I suppose I'll need to go through this same argument with myself the next time I'm at a fondue restaurant (I cooked my own food!) but until then, I think I'm going to be stingy the few times I end up at the yogurt place. Unless I get distracted again.

An Erinku (full of yogurt):

barefoot

air conditioner on

sweater still on

Colorado is weird.

I'm like a bird!

This morning, when I accidentally woke up at 4:00 (not recommended; definitely unwholesome), one consolation I had while trying to fall back asleep was the birds outside started to wake up. It was quiet and then a little bird would sing a little snippet of song. There'd be a bit more quiet and another bird would sing a different little song back.

It was lovely and I wondered if that's how morning people feel. They wake up singing and talking and bouncing around. Then I was sad that I don't wake up singing. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I actually DO wake up singing...I'm just singing the song of my ancient ancestors. I sing the caveman grunt each and every morning.

An Erinku (at a more realistic time in the morning):

My front room looks like

a giant sock war

casualties everywhere

Two weeks until summer

You're in the wrong place

There is something that has been bothering me for a long while and this morning, I was finally able to put words to it. It's having the wrong mindset while doing what you're doing. I don't mean this in some deep metaphysical sense; it's more concrete than that. 

When I first started my day job, I had just come out of years and years working in retail. My first week or so at the day job, I kept alerting my co-workers when I needed to go pee. Because, depending on the type of retail job, you need to have store coverage all the time. Potty breaks happen when they can and you dash in and dash out. Sometimes working by yourself means you don't get a potty break. And it turned out that my new co-workers really didn't care about my bathroom trips. I finally figured out that my retail mindset wasn't right for my new job.

In my work world (two jobs, both non-profits, one a school, the other a choir), there are folks who come from the business world which, like the retail brain I had, is completely the wrong mindset. The business world is fine and those folks who work in it develop a certain type of attitude/behavior that makes sense in a business world. They bring these same attitudes and behavior to the school/choir world and it just doesn't work. Yes, there are PLENTY of ways to take advantage of non-profits and their systems and all sorts of politics you can create and play. But doing that doesn't come across as being business-savy: it comes across as being a jerk and ruining the workplace for everyone else. If you want big money, months of paid vacation, a job where you can push your workload onto others, what-have-you, please go work somewhere else. That type of mindset doesn't work here. In a recession world, I've been surprised at how some people are allowed to carry on while behaving pretty badly, but that's another beauty/annoyance of non-profits: it sometimes takes a looooooooong time for them to remove incompetent folks.

In the musical world, I see the wrong mindset happening a lot when folks cross genres. For instance, classical music is not competitive in the same way that rock music is. Rock music: super easy to start/join a band, paid gigs are difficult to get, and you're constantly competing head-to-head with other bands for money, gigs, attention (like a "Battle of the Bands" type of thing).  Classical music: professional positions are terribly difficult to get, with world-wide competition for each spot. However, the ensembles aren't competing. You don't see the local choir take on the local symphony, unless it's some sort of fun, fund-raising thing. Most of the time, ensembles collaborate on big projects and help promote each other's shows.

So classical musicians who join rock band are sometimes surprised and annoyed with the competitive, trash-talking nature of bands. It also doesn't help that a lot of bands expect that to be your only musical project....which is just not how the classical world works (where you gig for weddings, teach lessons, play in a large group, play in a chamber group, and the band is one of many things). And you're also absolutely NOT allowed to play for another band, because that's BETRAYAL (unlike when I've been in several orchestras at the same time...which creates exactly zero drama). Being in a rock band is a lot like being in a relationship with a super jealous significant other. I've seen a lot of classical folks play in a rock band for a while, get tired of the drama, drop out, and go back to the world they know. Their classical mindset is just wrong for rock.

When rock folks enter the classical scene, they also bring the wrong type of competitive mindset along with them. They purposefully create conflict with other ensembles (or with other musicians in their section), which comes across as being arrogant, unprofessional, and difficult to work with. The local symphony doesn't care you started a rock quartet and they aren't the least bit threatened by it. In fact, they'd probably be open to collaboration. But marketing it like this big conflict is just stupid. Classical folks tend to know each other and talk at rehearsals. And reputations spread. And playing classical with a rock mentality is just not going work long-term because eventually no one will want to play with you and your mindset.

All right, rant over. I've been dealing with a lot of wrong-mindset folks for the last however long. I don't expect an end in sight. And I'm totally assuming that my mindset is the correct one. It might not be. I just know that New Yorkers make sense in New York. Classical Erin makes sense playing with the symphony. Non-profit Erin doesn't manipulate the systems at jobs to benefit me at the expense of everyone else. And that I'm tired of stupid drama and feeling like a cranky goat whenever it pops up. I just like to work and play and enjoy the folks around me.

An Erinku:

goat-like

I sit, I bounce

I chew
I smack you with my head