Turning corners
Paper #2 (on Carmen, Carmen Jones and depictions of ethnicity) is just about done. My editor (read: Joe) has suggested a few things that I need to implement, but otherwise I should be ready to hand it in tomorrow.
I am now in the throes of studying for my Music in the US exam, which is difficult not because of hard concepts, but just because of the sheer volume of information. For the final, the listening is only going to cover the second half of the class (still well over 8 hours of music in iTunes, and that's not nearly all of it), but the essays will be cumulative, so everything going back to William Billings. I have been desperately searching for a thread that would tie the whole thing together (we pretty much stopped talking about the "cultivated versus vernacular" dichotomy after midterm, and have done minimal sacred music). So far, the only one I have come up with has been a discussion of European influences versus "indigenous" American styles. One of my classmates is convinced we are going to have an essay question about "The Unanswered Question," but I suspect that is a projection. It may have been an important piece of music, but we only devoted about 10 minutes of total class time to it. Plus, the classmate in question has a serious tendency to overthink things. He actually suggested that the topic might be "have any composers since Ives successfully answered The Unanswered Question?" Waaaay more philosophical than this class has ever been. This was at our quarter-end musicology happy hour, and I was tempted to pelt him with tortilla chips.
After this exam, there's the 20-minute Ethnomusicology presentation, the Romantic final, and turning in the Ethnomusicology project. I maybe should be more nervous about these than I am.
Still, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I keep checking the weather forecast for Friday, when I don't need to go anywhere and can work in the yard all day. They are predicting snow, which seems like some sort of petty vindictive move by the powers that be. Today the weather is overcast, but really warm. The daffodils started coming up in the woods about a week ago, and I cannot wait for them to bloom. I have every window in the house open. Not the same as actual gardening, but it's a start.
PS - The Blogger spell-check wanted to replace "tortilla" with "torridly." Hee!
posted by Alison @ 2:53 PM
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