First Published: 2023 December 5
What is science? The easy answer is what we were all taught in the early days of our schooling: science is the scientific method. That is, science is the process of following a rote set of instructions which begins in observation and ends in reporting a disproved1 hypothesis. Like most easy answers, however, this answer is wrong.
Science is fundamentally a method of learning truths. More than that, science is fundamentally a method of conveying truth. An individual’s experience can be noted and generalized to the universe at large.
Why does this redefinition matter? Hopefully, this redefinition frames science not as something one does but as an experience one has.
That is, truths are not created, which I think most scientists would agree with. After all, while we may not know the exact frequency of any given molecular transition, we know that it is not dependent on observation.2
More than that, truth is not an assembly of facts, but is something broader. That is, reductionism does not work as a philosophical concept. Although we can often make successful3 models which are reductive, these always lack some fundamental element of reality.
From here, I would go so far as to claim that truth should, in fact, be capitalized as Truth. That is, science’s goal is uncovering part of Truth.
Although every philosophy and religion has its own experience of Mysticism, all definitions tend to agree on one point: a mystic is one who sees Truth. Especially in Catholic Tradition, where I am most versed, Mysticism is an experiential reality. Mystics encounter the Divine.
Now, at this point,4 you may be thinking that I’ve pulled some clever slights of hand to make science into a religion. That is not my goal.5 Instead, my goal is to draw a connection between two fundamentally different methods of understanding reality.
Many philosophies have a metaphysics: a way of viewing reality. Scientific metaphysics can only ask, and therefore answer, questions about material reality. Christian Mystical Metaphysics can only uncover spiritual reality.6
Crucially, both domains believe that reality is both universal and describable. That is, the speed of light7 is not only constant throughout the entirety of the universe, but anyone can learn this to be true. In a slightly more abstract analogy, differentiation, once discovered by Newton and Liebniz8, can now be taught to students around the world. Similarly, mystics in the Church have taught us spiritual truths that we can know, even without having experienced them ourselves.
I know that there’s more to say on this topic, but at five thousand words, I think that I’ve exhausted my well on this topic for the day. I’ll hopefully revisit this again.9
Daily Reflection:
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today? I again forgot this in my car, which is fine.
Did I play guitar today? I did! I tuned it down to DADGAD last night, and it turns out that my voice is approximately 4 frets10 lower than I normally think of it. (Read: I started singing Oh No Not I and my voice kept breaking so I kept moving the capo lower until it felt nice)
Did I practice touch typing today? Oh gosh, I didn’t realize that C was supposed to be typed with my middle finger, so it’s very hard for me to start learning the letter. Oh well.
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? I finished one of the books on it! It was a weekly newsletter going through Screwtape Letters, but it finished this week. I should really get through Dracula Daily, because I’m about 2 months behind on it.
Did I read the book on craft? It’s in my backpack, so I should try to read it at least a little before bed.
Have I read the library books? I returned one of them, because I found the music in it that I cared about. So that counts kind of, for all that I do plan to read the other book sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow morning? Probably not, but who can say?
Writing
Did I write a sonnet? I will have by the time this posts.
Did I revise a sonnet? I learned how to revise one, at least. Apparently I should “see if the sonnet says what I want it to say, and if it doesn’t, then I make it say that”, which is relatively helpful.
Did I blog? Look at this wow. I even thought about it.
Did I write ahead on Jeb? I finished tomorrow’s chapter today, which is fun. I’d like to write a little of Friday’s chapter as well, but we’ll see.
Letter to friends? Nope!
Paper? I replotted the better data, and it does look better, which is really nice. Now I’m just confused about how distortion constants work.11
Wellness
How well did I pray? Terribly.
Did I clean my space? For a little bit!
Did I spend my time well? Eh, or so.
Did I stretch? Not a ton, but a little.
Did I exercise? I did! I did the minimal amount I’m doing on days with no other exercise.12
Water? I tried! Water didn’t taste so good
Modern philosophy13 describes truth as fundamentally a linguistic phenomenon. That is, we create truth by setting definitions.
More than that, though, truths do not need to be assembled, which may be a slightly larger claim. That is, while much of science, especially the fundamental work I do, relies mostly on reducing the error between prediction and observation, that is not the science that non-scientists mean. What they think of, and what I think every scientist truly wishes they did14 is the science that we read about,
As someone who has spent years studying quantum mechanics, one thing that I have learned is just how
These two domains intersect most cleanly in the human person. There are a number of ways to describe the way that we have souls, like angels, and bodies, like apes.
That is, just as the speed of light15 is not dependent on where in the universe we are, Salvation is not.16
In both domains, however, reality is assumed to be universal. That is, just as the speed of light17 is not dependent on where in the universe we are, the nature of G-d is not dependent on where or when we are. Crucially, as well, truth is transmissible in both domains.
Knowledge, like a virus, spreads.
No, too evocative.18
To study, one must first accept starting presuppositions.
Too pretentious.
Prometheus brought fire to man. Once gifted, man was able to reproduce this flame endlessly, and today nearly everyone over a young age can create fire of their own.
Maybe? Feels a little too anecdotal for me.
To be first is to break new ground and pave a new path. To be second is to follow.
Eh.
What is science? The easy answer, and the one that I, like so many others, learned in my schooling, is a six part process. It begins with an observation19, which prompts a question: the hypothesis.20 Once a literature review shows that the question has not been answered, an experiment can be designed which can disprove the hypothesis. Should a hypothesis fail to be broken, it can be presumed true, and then reported to the world.
Ehhh too bogged down, especially since I don’t really care about the scientific method.
What is science? The easy answer, of course, is what we were all taught in science class: science is the scientific method. That is, science is the process of learning knowledge via rigid and rote steps, where observations lead to questions lead to disproven hypotheses.
That definition, of course, does not hold for a lot of what scientists do. What I do, for instance, does not have a hypothesis, except at the most basic level. My goal is simply measurement, which allows us to ask other questions.
That misses the thread, let’s try to go “you might think science is scientific method, in fact, science is about transmission of reality” ope there we go
that’s what I need
What is science? Like many, my first answer to that question came from science class: science is the scientific method. That is, science is following a rigid set of steps to go from an observation to a disproved hypothesis. However, like most first answers, this answer doesn’t work.
Science, at its core, is about transferring knowledge from the few to the many. It is often remarked that the difference between messing around and science is how well you keep notes.
Nope that still lost the thread.
What is science? The easy answer is what we were all taught in our science classes: science is the scientific method. That is, science is following rote steps which begin with an observation about reality and end in a disproved hypothesis. Like most easy answers, however, that is wrong.
Science, at its core, is a method of describing reality.21
Science, at its core, is a method of uncovering truths.
Hmm, is it truths, truth, or Truth? Each of those has a slightly different flavor. I think that I’ll go with “truth”
Is it uncover, discover, or create? I think I like uncover, because it has implications of illumination which is always fun.
Science is a method to uncover truth. At its core, science22 is a fundamentally social discipline.23
Science is fundamentally a method to uncover truth. More than that, however, it is a method to convey truth.24 An individual’s experience can be generalized into universal reality.
What is mysticism? The easy answer is a religious practice of experiencing communion with the Divine.
Ok yeah, let’s see if we can’t go from there. I’ll stop wordsmithing at the end of each word from now on.
What is mysticism? Mysticism is fundamentally a method of uncovering truth. As a Catholic, who knows that our mission is to bring the whole of Creation to the Almighty, Mysticism also carries with it the goal of conveying Truth to the world. No ok this is bad. I know I said no more drafting, but that was a lie. This gets moved down.
Right now I feel like there’s a couple of ways that I could begin this musing.25
I could start how I did, musing on this musing’s genesis and its placement in the broader scope of me developing as a writer. It’s my month of craft, which does mean that there’s something to be said for doing so, but I don’t know if I really like that, especially given where I want to go.
I could begin as most essays recommend, by clearly stating my hypothesis. That has the benefit of being up front, at the cost of me not having the rest of the musing to explore what I mean to say first. Then again, I’m at well over two thousand words of thinking about it, so that shouldn’t really be an issue either way.
I could begin as second-level essayists recommend, and start with a metaphor or anecdote, such as the way that benzene’s structure was first hypothesized, or the way that the sewing machine was26 invented. I could ideally weave that with an anecdote about some mystic, for all that I don’t know if I know any of their stories well enough.
I could explain mysticism or science as though describing the other, or describe both using the same words. That could be fun, for all that I know that it will also be difficult to do.
As often happens when I enumerate27 my options, one seems most exciting, and that tends to be where my ability to generate new ideas stops. I’m going to try to describe the two methods of inquiry without distinguishing the two.
From there, I guess that I could start going into like how both work when they differ? I’m not really sure where, if ever the two actually diverge, but I’m sure that it’s somewhere. What else did I do in the first draft?
Oop, it kind of seems like that’s as far as I got in the first draft of this musing. Such a shame, but I wonder if the second draft might give me more inspiration once I have typed something slightly28 more coherent.
Nearly every book on writing I’ve ever read29 gives a lot of the same advice.30 Chief among them is to always have a small notebook with you to note down ideas as they arise. I’ve never really been a fan of holding a pen and pad of paper, but I do live in the twenty first century. I have another option.
And so, every so often I’ll open my notes app and type down a phrase that suddenly strikes me, or I’ll open my voice memos and sing something.31 Most of the time, I forget to ever look at them again, and the few times that I remember, I either forgot the context of a phrase or no longer find it striking. Every so often, though, I find something that strikes me even weeks later.
Today, I’d like to muse about one of those. This past Saturday, for some reason, I was struck by the connection of science and mysticism. A quick32 search doesn’t show that the field is full of people putting forth their explanations, so I’m going to do my best to try.33
The first paper I found34 seems to be discussing the concept of mysticism as a claim of inherent validity of a certain belief, at least in the first few pages. Since I don’t need to worry35 about considering whether mystics from other faith traditions are touching on the actual Truth, I don’t know how useful this article is going to be. However, it’s only 20 pages, and is probably worth at least a skim right now. As I get further into the article, it seems like the sort of article I generally love, where we dive deeply into the semantics of individual words. That being said, it’s the sort of article I love reading with a group, where someone else has already done a deep dive to distill a lot of the useful information out.36 I’ll have to reread this article later, but it is absolutely not related to what I want to discuss today. It’s a fascinating dive into the way that we can, without acknowledging certain truths as better than others, make sense of disparate mystical experiences and scientific theories.
The second paper37 explicitly focuses on Eastern Religion, and so is not relevant to my discussion here. I’ll probably read it too, since I’m curious what it has to say, but that’s probably a problem for next year me.
Now, because I am aware that I am incredibly easy to prime38, I’m currently thinking about definitions. What is mysticism, and what do I mean here by science?
As with all people, I find that the methods I use to approach the world change as I continue to grow and live. I had a very long period where my preferred analytical technique was constructing definitions. If something cannot be rigorously defined, the logic goes, it is not a meaningful category.
Of course, this implicitly binaries the world. Defining music, for instance, is not something that can be satisfactorily done.39 Much of life, as it turns out, exists in the hazy in betweens that are not clearly labeled and defined. Nonetheless, it’s useful to have an idea what I’m talking about, if only to aid in shared meaning.
When I speak of science, I am not referring to the scientific method40 that I and so many are taught is fundamental to the life of a scientist. As a professional scientist, very little of what I do fits neatly into those boxes, and yet I do not believe that the way that I do science is lesser for it. A fundamental part of science is simply observation and measurement.
However, I am also not really speaking about the rote parts of science. Instead, what I’m probing at is the way that so many scientific discoveries41 are described. The discovery of the shape of benzene, for instance, is described as coming to the scientist in a dream.42 There is a joke I’ve heard a few times talking about how the great discoveries in science take place when sleeping, and the great discoveries in mathematics take place when sleep is removed. As I think about it, both versions are actually helpful for my thinking about mysticism.
Now, this does raise a question: what is mysticism? Adapting from Wikipedia43, mysticism is a connection with greater forces. Depending on the tradition and the specific interpretation the mystic has of the tradition, it is equally a form of being taken away from themselves as becoming fully themselves for the first time. Regardless, mystics are revered in nearly every culture for the same reason: they have access to a fundamental and hidden truth about reality. By listening to mystics relay their experiences, however, the common person can see the truth of reality, if only dimly. If you’ve ever heard a top scientist or mathematician discuss their passion, it might be easy to see the connection.
I read Donald Knuth’s CV this past weekend with my brothers.44 One striking thing that I noticed is that he wrote a piece for Organ based on the book of Revelations. Now, that in and of itself is interesting, but not necessarily pointing to anything. The fact that he also wrote a book where he analyzes Chapter 3 Verse 16 in every45 book of the Bible. Even though that discussion came after I jotted down the note, it feels significant to the discussion.
Of course, as soon as I started to say that, I realized that I have a bias in what mystics I’m familiar with. As someone who’s taken music history46, the mystics I’ve been exposed to in detail tend to be mystics who also had significant musical output, such as Doctor of the Church Hildegard.
Ok so other than the simple point that scientists often describe breakthroughs as though they’ve suddenly received some divine revelation, and that’s picture perfect mysticism, what am I trying to say? I think that might be it, but I no longer know if I know enough about either subject to really write a whole essay about it. I would at least want to be able to point to two stories, one of a mystic and one of a scientist, to show the parallels in the narrative. Failing that, I’m not really sure what I can do.
I suppose that I could muse on the nature of mysticism? Like how we are generally willing to accept that there are people with special knowledge, especially in quantum mechanics. Might be worth riffing on that for a little, just to see what we see.
What is mysticism? Mysticism is a term generally used to describe a religious altering of mind. Of course, as with anything else used in religious contexts, the word is used to describe wide and sometimes contradictory examples. Many better writers than I have written about the difficulties in defining religion, especially given how averse some groups are to having their beliefs labeled as religious. As such, the fundamental part of the mystic experience for me is the belief that knowledge was given to the mystic, rather than the mystic discovering the information themself.
How, then, is a scientist a mystic?47 When looking at the world through the view of a scientist, a few things are fundamentally required to be true. First, the universe must be sensical.48 That is, things happen for a reason, and the same starting conditions will result in the same outcome.49 I initially was going to say that reproducible is a different condition than sensical, but I don’t know if that’s true anymore.
Second, the universe must be measurable. Russell’s teapot is an example of how science can fail to learn things.50
Let’s compare that to the world view required to be a Catholic.51 The universe was created by an all powerful, all loving Creator, who has given us what we need to understand the world, and by extension, learn more about He who created us.52 Of course, there’s the nuance of Catholic, so Christ is a requisite part of the world view, and that is certainly an important aspect of how Catholics and Catholic mystics view the world. However, Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice can be somewhat derived if you start with the first proposition and then follow it with “and G-d gave authority to his Church,” for all that it’s a bit of a hand waving explanation.
Ok, let’s refocus. Both mysticism and science53 require the universe to be fundamentally sensible. One fantastic secondary side effect of this assumption is the ability for knowledge to be distributed.
If knowledge is portrayed, as it so often is, as light, then each of us can be Prometheus54, sharing the fire and light of knowledge with those around us. Fire, like knowledge, yearns to spread.55 Taking a step back from the forced cliche, however, we do see that it resonates.
It is far easier to follow a derivation than to come to it for the first time. Calculus was something that two of the greatest minds of their generation were barely able to scratch the surface of. Now, the average college student is expected to be able to learn the sum of what took them years of study in a few scant semesters.
Similarly, many Catholics today pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, as St. Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament56 was taught in her revelations. We are assured of the same benefits, just as we are able to do as much with Calculus as Isaac Newton57.58
I still want this to be disproven↩︎
ignoring, of course, rest frames and the quantum uncertainty of anything molecular.↩︎
read: predictive↩︎
assuming that my argument about science even convinced you↩︎
even though many people do treat science as a religion. I personally am very in favor of science and the scientific method of discovering (almost said creating, but that’s sort of my point, isn’t it) knowledge↩︎
don’t quote me on this if that’s actually a heresy. Given that the Church tends to believe that Faith and Reason cannot contradict each other, it seems reasonable to assume that Mystics only reveal spiritual truths↩︎
in a vacuum, at rest frame velocity, for pedants↩︎
if it wasn’t clear, I do, in fact, fall into the camp which believes math is discovered not created↩︎
along with every other post I need to revisit↩︎
a minor third↩︎
or, more accurately, how they don’t work↩︎
one pushup, body weight squat, and 5 second plank per day of december, so today it was 5 squats then a 25 second plank then 5 pushups. If I can keep it up, by the end of the month I’ll be doing a 2 minute plank which would be cool↩︎
post modern, technically↩︎
maybe this is too broad of a claim, but I think it’s at least true for me↩︎
in a vacuum, for the pedants↩︎
ok but salvation does look different to different people. What’s a universal spiritual truth?↩︎
in a vacuum, for the pedants↩︎
I know that’s not the right word, but it feels like it↩︎
apparently. It’s been long enough since I learned it that I thought it began with hypothesis. Makes sense to begin with observation↩︎
wild! They make this two steps! Ope, seems as though there are a lot of different versions of the scientific method. I’ll use the one that I like, which is an abomination of a combination↩︎
hmm is it describing reality, uncovering reality, finding truth? I think finding truth is a good enough starting name↩︎
capitalize it? Yeah probably. Do that in the final draft↩︎
no↩︎
I think this truth needs to be one level of intensity higher. so eiether uncover truths and convey truth or uncover truth and convey Truth. I think the first↩︎
N.B. for the readers, if you have strong feelings about my including meta writing like this in future blogs (positive or negative) please do not hesitate to let me know↩︎
allegedly↩︎
hah, get it, because in LaTeX the numbered lists are generated in an enumerate environment↩︎
look at me, being so optimistic and everything↩︎
rephrase this in draft two to make it clear it’s any book that even tangentially discusses writing↩︎
wow, wild. spice this up more↩︎
I really need to clear that out↩︎
and admittedly fairly sparse↩︎
I will also be reading the two papers I found to see what they have to say↩︎
Mysticism and the Philosophy of Science by Anthony N. Perovich, Jr. (look at me actually using a footnote to cite)↩︎
here, at least↩︎
distill is probably the wrong word here, even though it’s the cliche. It’s not about a reduction and concentration, but repackaging to make understandable. I’m sure I’ll find a better word by the second draft↩︎
Mysticism in the New Age: Are Mysticism and Science Converging? by Richard Jones↩︎
whether I’m easier than anyone else, I won’t make a claim here. Still, as far as I can tell, it’s among the easiest psychological effects to reproduce, which is fun↩︎
in that every definition I’ve ever been given other than “you know it when you see it” includes things that aren’t music (ex: notes in time says that the dropping of rain on an empty roof is music. Since a fundamental part of music to me is observation (which I don’t remember if I’ve mused about before. If not, then my preferred thought experiment is: imagine writing and performing a piece on the piano for a friend. That’s obviously music. If you then remove the friend, playing only for yourself, it’s still music. If I use a DAW (digital audio workstation) to produce the music and play it back for me, I would still call that music. If I program a computer to fill in the chord progressions for me, I’d still call that music. If I program a computer to produce a convincing piece and play it for me, that’s still music. If it records an audio file that I don’t listen to, but someone else does, that’s still music to me. If the audio file is never listened to, though, is it music? If not, then how can the potential exist without the action? It’s at this point that I realize I need to learn more metaphysics. Where was I?), that is not music) or excludes things which are music (most often John Cage’s 4’33", which is a very often misunderstood work of music that I love as a conceptual piece↩︎
hypothesis, research, testing, etc.↩︎
breakthroughs, if you will↩︎
I found a citation on wikipedia, but the link is broken. Searching for the book again finds it on the Internet Archive, but not in any physical location I have access to↩︎
I’m watching a long video essay right now about plagiarism, and it’s making me more aware of how much I generally borrow ideas↩︎
add a segue. this is messy. Also probably do something with that long footnote. Maybe delete because, while interesting, not really relevant.↩︎
to the best of my knowledge, he’s Lutheran, which means that he probably doesn’t have every book in the bible, just the ones in his↩︎
it’s wild to me how often music history has come up on this blog recently. Must be something about the time of year we’re in↩︎
at first I had modern day, but part of my argument should be, if it isn’t already explicit, that the mystic experience still happens to religious today and happened to scientists in the past↩︎
I think my autocorrect wants sensible, which makes sense, because Google NGrams shows that sensible has had orders of magnitude more popularity over the entire corpus searched. OED notes sensical appearing a few centuries later than sensible, though does not in any way dispute the word as real or legitimate. Sensical is apparently used less than once per million English words, which I think means that my entire blog has a higher than standard concentration of the word just from the three times I’ve used it here. I think that my entire corpus might be higher than the English standard actually↩︎
Quantum mechanics puts an asterisk on that, but there’s nuance I can add if I want to be a sophist. Sophistry is a fun skill to develop, for all that I know it’s a bad one↩︎
I’m not getting into it here, but the long and short of it is that science is useless for making claims that it cannot interface with facts. I know that the point of the example is supposed to be the ridiculousness of religious thought, but↩︎
Yes, I know that modern science was inarguably (spell check wants unarguably, which has recently been overtaken for popularity) and obejctively inspired by the Church, but that’s not really the point of the argument here.↩︎
Hmm, I wonder how many heresies that sentence has.↩︎
I’m explicitly not saying scientism here, because scientism is, in my experience, at least, the belief that the world is nothing more than the measureables. As with every other form of inquiry, science is fundamentally limited in the sorts of questions it can ask and answer. It’s ridiculous, to me, at least, to claim that there’s a single method of inquiry that encompasses everything. Refocusing again↩︎
almost wrote Pythagorous, but that’s a whole different mystical thing↩︎
insert obligatory information yearns to be free↩︎
yes I needed to look up the name, no I don’t feel guilt about it. I wonder if the y versus i in the name is similar to what I remember seeing a bunch in the early days of the latest Ukraine and Russia conflict, where the choice of spelling made implications about the validity of Ukranian as a language.↩︎
he was made a knight by a false monarchy, so I will not give him the title of Sir↩︎
Shoot, I said that I wouldn’t get into specific examples, but here I am. Might be time to try draft two to see if I can’t make this at least a little more coherent. Should probably take a break and do other work first, though. It’ll be good to give my mind time to settle some of these thoughts.↩︎
First Published: 2023 December 4
It’s been almost six months since I last mused about feeling wrung dry. Then again, the absence of posts does imply something about the post that would’ve happened.
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today? Left it in my car, will try to remember to do tomorrow.
Did I play guitar today? I did! Not much, but I picked it up, which is good. I should probably replace the strings soon.
Did I practice touch typing today? I got through Y! That means my newest letter is C1
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? A little! I also started a new book which isn’t the point.
Did I read the book on craft? Nope! I brought it with me through the day, though.
Have I read the library books? I kept it by my bed in hope that I’d read it before sleep.
Writing
Did I write a sonnet? I did! It was kind of about my research, which is nice.
Did I revise a sonnet? I really need to learn how to do this.
Did I blog? Look at this blog post! Extant
Did I write ahead on Jeb? I finished the chapter due today and started the chapter due wednesday, so kind of, at least.
Letter to friends? Nope!
Paper? Realized I messed up a bunch of calculations, which is kind of sad.
Wellness
How well did I pray? Not well. I fell asleep before starting a rosary last night.
Did I clean my space? A little
Did I spend my time well? I tried. I focused too hard on research and lost track of time, which probably isn’t a bad thing.
Did I stretch? No
Did I exercise? I did the bare minimum, which I’m counting as enough.
Water? I didn’t drink enough water, but I tried to. It’s hard when I don’t fill my water bottles often enough. Things to think about I guess.
I should really figure out the order that they teach new letters in. A part of me assumes that it’s frequency, and that’s probably correct↩︎
First Published: 2023 December 3
One line in particular stuck out to me in today’s readings. In the first reading, the Prophet Isaiah says that “we are the clay and you are the potter.”1 Now, my mind immediately leapt to two ways that this can be interpreted.
First, despite the way that most modern people interact with clay, it does not come to us perfectly pure and ready to be used. Instead, it has to be refined more or less depending on the soil that it is in. We, the people of G-d are clay. Much like last week’s metaphor of sheep and goats, we can point to that in contrast to the silt and sand of sinfulness.
Once clay is gathered, however, it is rarely simply formed and fired. Nearly every culture has a tradition of incorporating dust from a previous, often failed2 project. It is at this point that I feel the need to reflect on the different “we’s” that the Prophet could be referring to.
First, we could mean each of us individually. We are all lovingly and perfectly shaped by G-d our Father. However, even as we are shaped, we are not alone. Pottery is a fundamentally useful craft. It creates objects to be used with others. Similarly, whatever the Almighty shapes us into, it is meant to relate to the rest of the world in some way.
Additionally, we are not the first to be born. Prayers from those before have their positive effects, like the powdered pieces of a previous project. Or, just as it is easier to shape a new pot once you’ve made an older one, it is also easier to find the Lord when your parents have known Him.
Of course, we could also be referring to the entire People of G-d. We are each a small piece of the clay in the pot of creation that the Lord forms. In that regard, the fragments of old pieces can be thought of as the parts of ourselves and our cultures we bring from times before Christ.
Nearly every Parish I’ve visited uses an evergreen wreath to hold its Advent candles. Why?
Of course, there’s the obvious answer of “we’ve always done it that way, and it’s pretty,” but of course, we can not have always always done it a certain way. Someone had to be first.3 Some among you might know that we took the concept of the Christmas tree from Germanic Pagans, for whom evergreen trees were a reminder that the depths of winter would pass. That sentiment lead us to using the same for Advent wreaths.
There was a truth in the pagan tribes that still resonates with the Church today. G-d who fashioned the entire universe can be seen in all that He has created. The beauty of evergreen boughs, especially in contrast to the white of winter, reminds us of so many different truths. In such a way, the beneficial parts of pre-Christian lives and cultures can enrich the lives of the faithful, just as the advent wreath enriches many believers’ Advents.4
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today? Yes! It’s been fun, and I got to spend like an hour working with friends, which was really great. I know one of my goals this year was to grow closer to the people I care about, and I think that this helped.
Did I play guitar today? Once again, a scale and my etude were the majority of what I played.
Did I practice touch typing today? I did a few lessons. It’s fun for me to see that I lose almost all of my progress each day whenever I log back on. I think that if I did more lessons I would probably lose less between days. Eh.
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? I read maybe 3 minutes today, which isn’t great, but today passed by so much faster than I thought it would.
Did I read the book on craft? I decided to take the day of from reading the book on craft, because it’s Sunday.
Have I read the library books? Last night I read a chapter. It was really interesting, and I’m excited to see where the rest of the book develops.
Writing
Did I write a sonnet? Did it! I think I’m doing better at imagery and stopping myself from writing into a corner with bad rhymes.
Did I revise a sonnet? I still don’t know if I actually know how to revise a sonnet.
Did I blog? Woo! I did it.
Did I write ahead on Jeb? I think that I’m still comfortable saying that I won’t work on Jeb on Sundays, for all that I know that means tomorrow morning I’ll need to panic write.
Letter to friends? I did not. It’s in my fanny pack, though, which means that I can in theory write it whenever.
Paper? It’s Sunday so I will not be doing work.
Wellness
How well did I pray? Not great. Went to Mass and did a rosary last night, both of which are good.
Did I clean my space? No.
Did I spend my time well? I think mostly! I had a day full of seeing people, and the content I consumed was mostly content that I intentionally chose
Did I stretch? I went diving! Which counts as both stretching and exercise in my book.
Did I exercise? See above.
Water? Drank a bunch during and before Mass because I needed to sing. After that, though, I have not been doing a great job remaining hydrated.
Happy new year! I was reminded today5 that this year is the shortest possible advent at three weeks and one day.6 That’s not really relevant to the rest of this reflection, but it’s an interesting fact nonetheless.
Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year. It is a time of preparation and reflection before the celebration of the coming of our Savior. Of course, as is often brought up, Christmas only has meaning because of Easter.
Yesterday’s first draft talked about iconoclasm and its opposite. Every year, I feel a little more frustrated at the state of discourse surrounding Christmas and its accompanying rituals. These days, both sides of the extremes7 claim that such beloved traditions as Christmas trees are inherently pagan. Of course, there is truth to that claim, at least.8
Christmas trees were, as reported by the early Church, used in Germanic pagan winter solstice celebrations.9 However, just as music can bring people to the Almighty, and just as people and nations can be baptized, the Church in her glory recognized that rituals can serve to help lead us to Christ. The Church never claims to be the only place that truth is found, just the best. Anyways, all this to say, there is nothing wrong with remembering that life will come again and that winter will come to an end.
Today’s readings remind us that everything will come to an end. Christ compares His second coming to a man returning from a voyage abroad. However, the Gospel is not where I want to focus tonight.
Instead, I would like to focus on a single line from the first reading. “We are the clay and you are the potter.”10 Now, when I think of clay today, I think of it almost exclusively in an artistic context. What little I’ve worked with clay has come from prepared and purchased material of high purity.
Obviously, this is not how all clay has been gathered throughout history. Clay can be gathered from nearly any soil, though some soil obviously has more or less clay in it than others. It needs to be separated from the silt and the sand that also makes up soil. I’m sure that someone wiser than me could connect that to the metaphor of sheep and goats from last week, but I can’t seem to make the leap tonight.
The other piece of pottery lore that I remember right now is that nearly every culture has a tradition of incorporating a small portion of an already fired work into new clay. There are some really interesting materials reasons for it, and indeed, having a small amount of reused clay improves the final product. Now, depending on what we means11, I can connect that to the reading.
Assuming we refers to each of us as individuals, it can be a reference to the fact that it’s easier to find the Truth if you are raised in a family who believes.12 It is not essential however, which is part of where the Church’s mission to convert the entire world comes in.
If we refers to the People of G-d, then the pieces of prefired clay are traditions like Christmas trees and gift giving. We are able to most fully express our love for the Almighty not by turning away from absolutely every part of our old life, but by baptizing and purifying everything we do. The best pot is formed by taking parts from a pot that did not work. Similarly, the best culture13 is not created from new cloth entirely, but incorporates parts of the previous.
I don’t know if that’s at all coherent, but it resonates with me. Probably worth revising and seeing if I can’t make it a little better.
Isaiah 64:7B↩︎
if only because the successfully fired pots would likely be used↩︎
I’ve just now learned it’s apparently initially a Lutheran tradition, which is fun and interesting and adds a whole meta level to my “The Church takes the best from everything that’s somewhat wrong”↩︎
wow this second draft went way better↩︎
reminded here meaning that I’m sure I could have pieced it together and may have in the past but it was surprising to hear↩︎
Christmas is on a Monday, which means that the fourth Sunday of Advent is one day before Christmas, making it the shortest possible.↩︎
horseshoe theory rears its ugly head↩︎
the claims that Christmas itself is a pagan celebration are less historically supported and mostly bolstered by people whose explicit goal in research is discrediting early Christian history, which is not what I generally consider a balanced source↩︎
the fact that the only thing we know about most pagan European cultures comes from the Church seems to get ignored sometimes↩︎
Isaiah 64:7B↩︎
I’m becoming the insufferable philosopher I dread aren’t I↩︎
I assume that’s true, given that most people historically followed the religion of their parents↩︎
I feel uncomfortable sometimes saying that some cultures are better than others. I think that it is kind of an objective thing sometimes, but of course there’s a lot of nuance that is needed↩︎
First Published: 2023 December 2
As far as I can tell, I’ve never mused about adoration on this blog. Matching the times in my life that I’ve blogged to the times in my life that I have gone to adoration, I suppose that there isn’t a lot of overlap. Last night, however,1 I went to my parish’s monthly young adult adoration event.
It was a really nice experience. I feel like every time that I just sit in a church and pray for an hour, my life suddenly seems much better. Modern psychology supports that idea, calling it meditation, and I don’t want to discount the value of just unplugging and focusing on where I am in the moment for a little bit. However, I’ve also gotten to the point in my life where I really do want to start exploring the spiritual side of my faith more. There’s more to prayer than simple meditation, and there’s something special about praying in front of Christ truly present.
Last night’s meditation was about the value of hope. For all that the priest demurred and said that anything insightful or thoughtful he said came from one of the great thinkers he cited in his talk, it was still a fantastic reflection and meditation. Hope is something that I’ve been struggling with lately. The priest connected hope to prayer, reminding us that to pray more is to become better at praying, and to pray better. I cannot remember exactly how he connected them, but I remember that it made sense at the time. One line that I do really strongly remember is him pointing out that when we pray together, as in Mass or even in that moment, it is not just a bunch of people individually praying. It is that, of course, but it is also so much more profound, for all that I cannot remember the exact words he used that resonated with me so strongly. During adoration, I found that my mind slowed down for the first time in what felt like months. It was not the muffled silence of my thoughts being drowned out by earthly distractions. Nor was I struggling to piece together fragments of a shattered idea from behind a murky window. Instead, I simply was there, and I was at rest.
I was advised to read Psalm 118 last night, and it is an absolutely beautiful Psalm.2 I think that helped me to focus my prayers in a more uplifting and positive direction, rather than the negative spirals I’ve tended to start falling into. There’s so much going wrong in the world right now that it can be hard to remain hopeful.
Of course, as the apologetics book I’m reading points out, hope and optimism are not synonyms. They can be as linked or unlinked as any other two traits. I’ve been trying to keep that in mind.
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today? I decided that I’ll take today off from embroidery, especially since the initial goal was just doing it more often.
Did I play guitar today? Yes! I played a quick few scales and did my normal warm-up etude.3
Did I practice touch typing today? I did a few lessons. For some reason, I keep struggling with my letter t. I’m allegedly working on learning y, but have to keep going back to try t again.
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? Yes! I finished one of the books and then pulled back up the oldest book on my currently reading shelf4
Did I read the book on craft? I read a bit more of writing well and have started to get to the point that I’m starting to feel a disconnect between what they’re saying and what I’ve found to be true. They say you write like you read, and the writing I want to do is the pulp fiction that I read, but that has a very different style than what they recommend. Still, I suppose that it’s worthwhile to try, if only because learning how to write in a formal register cannot help but aid me as I work on my thesis, even if it doesn’t necessarily help with the fun writing I do.
Have I read the library books? I did not do this yesterday, which is a bit of a shame. Once I post my musing, though, I will absolutely do so.
Writing
Did I write a sonnet? Woo! Just cranked one out. It was spooky and winter themed, which is always nice.
Did I revise a sonnet? I need to learn how to do this.
Did I blog? Look at this, revised and everything.
Did I write ahead on Jeb? Now that NaNo is over, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up on the no Jeb on Sundays rule. Mostly, the issue is that right now I feel very tired, and I’ve only written about 400 words.
Letter to friends? Nope! I might have time tomorrow, though5
Paper? I downloaded the latest set of computations,6 and will probably make time to look at them sometime soon.
Wellness
How well did I pray? Badly. I got home a little late last night, and so didn’t make it through a rosary. Slept through most of the afternoon which also didn’t help.
Did I clean my space? Only for a few minutes, but I did my best. I think that I’m slowly getting ahead of entropy, which is my only real goal.
Did I spend my time well? I spent a little more time on instagram and youtube than I wanted, but by and large I think so. I woke up at my standard weekday time and volunteered at a concession stand, where I did some reading and chatted with a friend. After that, it was home to eat, sleep, and then go lift.
Did I stretch? I did! After lifting. I’m very tight.
Did I exercise? I did a long leg workout with a friend that did not go well in the slightest.
Water? Absolutely not enough, as evidenced by the lift going so poorly. Still, I have hope that I will feel better if I drink more for the rest of the night. Update: I’ve continued to drink more water since coming home and do, in fact, feel better.
As far as I can tell, I’ve never mused about adoration on this blog before. Thinking about the times of my life that I’ve written this blog, though, I suppose it makes sense. I don’t think that I went to adoration a single time while abroad, and it wasn’t something I sought out while in undergraduate either.7 It was mostly something reserved for the occasional youth retreat.
As an older and more cynical person, I do respect how well the youth retreats I went to were scheduled. They encouraged us to just the right level of sleep deprivation and exhaustion where the final Mass would always feel that much more impactful. There’s a trend in modern Christianity to say that the emotional experience you feel in a situation like that is the only valid religious experience. That, of course, is wrong.
Definitionally, not every moment can be a highlight. At some point, our minds and bodies adapt to the situation we are in, treating the average as a new baseline. This is the same issue that creates addictions and overdoses, and can be just as harmful to our spiritual lives.8
As a result, there’s another trend in modern Christianity9 that says that the emotional experience doesn’t matter at all. People in this camp, I’ve found at least, tend to be very dismissive of praise and worship music and most of the new Catholic hymnody of the early post Vatican II era.10 Their argument is that the music is too sentimental and sappy.
That’s also clearly wrong. We are creatures made with body and soul. As a music major, the majority of what I learned about Trent11 is from a musical perspective.
One of the major controversies in the early Protestant era12 was a belief that the robust and intense polyphony and rich instrumentation of Mass settings of the era were bad. They felt the same about most of sacred art.
Interestingly, both sides framed most of their arguments on the average illiterate peasant, rather than the people actually writing the arguments. Luther himself said that the hymns he wrote should be used for laborers.13 The Catholic position was14 that G-d is Beauty15. To see beautiful things cannot help but bring us closer, in some way, to the source of all beauty Himself.
The early Protestant position is less unified, and more or less says the same thing that all iconoclasts say. Earthly beauty is bad, because it makes us focus on earth, rather than G-d.16 Because of the intense push back, the Catholic Church did strongly consider restricting or banning polyphony. In the end, though, the Holy Spirit won17, and polyphony was maintained in this Church.
Now, I’m sure that you’re all wondering whether the reason I have a whole diversion on how interesting the Church’s relationship with art, especially music, and especially early music, is is because I have a degree focused on early music.18 In part, yes. In part, though, it’s the same tension that we have today.
G-d is Beauty, Love, Truth, and Goodness. While the reverse is not true, and something beautiful is not inherently divine, there is a part of us that is always reaching out for the Divine. Especially in situations like the Mass, taking advantage of the fact that we can, in fact, use emotion to make people holier is a good thing that I think Churches should do. Of course, as with all things, it needs to be a careful balance. The music can never become the goal in itself, which is where the iconoclasts are right. However, denying the part of our divinely created and inspired souls and bodies that seeks music and beauty is just as wrong.
Tying this back to the actual post, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with the planners for youth retreats putting the most spiritually important moments at the places that we were most primed to receive them. That’s just good catechesis, leading people and helping them to be as open to the Truth as possible. But, how does this all relate to adoration?
Adoration, in case any of my readers don’t know, in this context refers to the Catholic practice of praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.19 Often, the Host is placed into an ornate golden frame on the altar. Some songs written by Thomas Aquinas are commonly sung at the beginning and end of the time, and the middle portion is usually reserved for silent prayer. In the diocese I’m currently at, most Parishes seem to try to schedule opportunities for Confession during adoration hours.
I’m realizing now that I haven’t been sure whether I want to write about adoration generally or my experience at adoration last night. I’ve been trying to split the difference, which is probably the worst version of each. I think that right now I want to reflect solely on last night’s reflection, so on to draft two I suppose.20
as I mentioned in the daily reflection portion of last night’s blog post↩︎
as, I assume, all of them are when given the chance. This one just has so many of the lines that I know and remember from my childhood.↩︎
composed by myself, and I’ve realized it completely avoids one of the strings (learned when I played it on a guitar missing a string)↩︎
started early 2022, which is a shame↩︎
I say that every day↩︎
that’s a word that bothers me. We don’t say computators, so why is it computations and not computions? Interestingly, people have asked the question, so it might be worth reading up on it↩︎
for all that I don’t really want/need to defend myself, it also was far less emphasized at my home parish than it is here↩︎
whoop, riffing a little too hard right now, tone it back and bring it back↩︎
yes yes, there’s no new heresies, only old ones in a new day. It’s still a modern trend, so I’m treating it as one.↩︎
I do think it’s funny that I will uncritically refer to the entire 300 years around Trent as a single period and refer to the less than 60 year old time since Vatican II as multiple eras↩︎
the famous council, not any person with that name or any of the other places, times, or events that could reference↩︎
calling it a revolution implies that I think they were in the right. Rebellion feels too dismissive, and so we use a nice little era. After reading a book talking about how much they dislike the postmodern (in the academic literary theory sense, not any of the thousand other versions) idea of how words define reality, I find that I’m becoming slightly more aware of the subtle tones of words I use in text. Of course, I do know that I already tend to pay more attention to the variations of semantic meaning than my peers, so this may not be entirely beneficial. Where was I? Right, Prots hate music↩︎
I don’t really want to get into the fundamental classism inherent and required in Protestant ideology, but I guess I might have to, at least a little↩︎
and is, for all that many seem to forget it↩︎
a claim I wanted to verify, and found that Pope St. JP2 wrote a book with that title↩︎
I think? I’ve never really been able to understand it too well, honestly.↩︎
saying that about council decisions I like, while true, always feels a little blasphemous. Probably worth making sure that I don’t only think that about the things I agree with↩︎
oof that sentence hurts↩︎
most commonly the bread that has been transubstantiated into the Body (and Blood? I think? the metaphysics are a little unclear to me) of Christ↩︎
there is an open question about whether that counts as draft two when I’m more or less throwing out all of this content. I couldn’t say for certain, but since I’m still planning to post this reflection, we’ll see↩︎
First Published: 2023 December 1
It’s another Friday, which means that it’s time for another edition of “I try to do Flash Fiction Friday”! This week, the friend I did NaNo with is joining, which should be fun. The theme is nebulous roads.
My initial thought, as always happens when there’s a word immediately preceding roads, is to do a parody of John Denver’s seminal work. I’ll keep the fun part of that energy in mind as I work on the actual project, for all that I don’t know quite what I’m going to do. I know that I need to do a sonnet today, so there’s a voice in my head that says I should work on a sonnet, and I might as well let that voice win for at least a little while. Unlike normal, where I hand write sonnets, today I’m going to try typing it out.1
What are nebulous roads? The prompt suggests they could be real roads that are obscured by fog as easily as they could be roads that do not, strictly speaking, exist.
I find that I am drawn to the idea of a desire path right now. They aren’t roads in the strictest sense, instead being passages worn by the repeated choice of people to take a shortcut. Most of the time, they are not a function of a single person. The single exception is probably on fresh snow. The way that a clear night on fresh snow looks is something completely unique and almost ethereal, and that feels like a good place to start.
One draft of a sonnet through, I already remember why I don’t always write in sonnet form. For all that it’s nice to have something so rigid, I do really like the option to have triple meter. There’s absolutely a part of me begging to delve into the fact that even time is now considered the standard, while in early music, triple meter was considered the perfect version. That’s too far from the prompt, though, so that lecture will be reserved for another day.
The rest of the day passed far too quickly, and so I will not be revising the sonnet again.
I think something that could be helpful for me2, given how long the daily reflection is, is to go through the list often throughout the day, so I have more reminders.
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today? I did! I did a few rows which was nice.
Did I play guitar today? I did! I played a few scales and did some warmups. Not very much, though, because I did it first thing in the morning and was tired.
Did I practice touch typing today? I did! Didn’t do a great job, but I tried, and that’s the only really important part.
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf? Yes! I read about a chapter.
Did I read the book on craft? I’ve chosen to read “Writing Well Ninth Edition” by Donald Hall and Sven Birkerts. It’s a fantastic book, and I’m in love with it from the first pages.
Have I read the library books? Not yet, but probably will when I post this.
Writing
Did I write a sonnet? I did! As you might guess from the fact that I blogged about it, I wrote on the theme of ethereal roads.
Did I revise a sonnet? I revised as I wrote, but I still don’t know if I really know how to revise one generally. Probably worth asking my poetry friend.
Did I blog? Look at this fun little blog!
Did I write ahead on Jeb? I finished the chapter this morning, which was nice.
Letter to friends? Nope!
Paper? Looked at some fun data!
Wellness
How well did I pray? I remembered to start the day with prayer, even if last night’s rosary wasn’t great. I then went to adoration for an hour which was nice.
Did I clean my space? I did! I went for the lowest hanging fruit.
Did I spend my time well? So far I have, but the day is mostly begun, so doesn’t really count yet.
Did I stretch? I did! This morning, which is nice.
Did I exercise? I did a pushup and a body weight squat which is good.
Water? Not enough.
First Written: 2023 November 30
Wow! Another month has passed me by. This month didn’t feel like it disappeared in a blink like the past few have, which is really nice.
I feel like I’ve grown as a person and in some of my interpersonal relationships, which is always really nice. It was a really chill month in many regards, if only because the only travel I did was for family reasons, rather than anything even slightly professional.
Relevant/notable things I did this month:
Started writing my first first author paper.1
Started playing DnD again
Got sick
Ran into friends from the past and present at random and unexpected places.2
Got auctioned off!3
Saw 12th night again!
Solo taught my first class
Had Thanksgiving with my family!
Let’s see how that lines up with my predictions for the month.
Going home for Thanksgiving. I did that, and I’m glad I knew it would be notable.
Doing NaNoWriMo with a friend. It’s been really fun to write with the friend, and it sounds like we’re planning to continue our morning writing sessions!4
I’m guest teaching a class, which is fun. It was fun! I don’t know if I did a great job, but I didn’t get an angry email or letter about it, so I assume that I did well enough. I suppose we’ll find out in the future.
I’m going to a cool discussion about Pascal. I ended up being too sick on the day of the talk, which is sad. I guess I did put that I got sick, so at least I have the event that ended up replacing it.
It’s always nice when I actually do the things that I planned on doing5. It’s even nicer when I also do things that are fun that I did not know I would be doing. Now that we’ve gone through the discrete events, let’s see how we did on the monthly goals for October. I always feel a little like I’ve let myself down when I go through my monthly goals, which is a fun thing to reflect on. It’s interesting that I continually think that I will suddenly be able to do things that I demonstrably have not been able to do. With that disclaimer6 out of the way, let’s see what we wanted to do, did, and how that overlapped. I’ll delete commentary in the initial goals, except where I want to comment on them in reflection.
Write 1700 words a day for my NaNo project.
Write a chapter of Jeb every day.
Blog every day.
Stretch every day.
Improve the cleanliness of my home.
Pray better
Write letters to friends. At a minimum, there are three people I owe a letter to and at least one other person I would like to send a letter to. We’re almost at the time of year that holiday cards become appropriate, and I could consider doing those this year.
Honestly, I did much better than I thought I would. I’m not sure if I suddenly learned how to set reasonable goals or if I just had an unusually good month, but either way:
Until yesterday, I did this with flying colors. I averaged about 1765 words a day, with minimal variance. I never went above 1800 and never went below 1745 words. Yesterday, I made the intentional choice to finish the book, rather than write an extra 3000 words, and I’m comfortable with intentionally changing my goals.
I didn’t do great on this. I managed to pull really far ahead in the early days of the month, and then immediately stopped writing more or less at all, and ended up with as much of a backlog as I began. That’s a little bit of a shame, but I do think that I’ll have an easier time writing in the upcoming months, since I now have the book plotted out at least a little.
With one exception, I wrote a blog every day this month. It’s nice to have a record of what I was thinking about for at least a little bit of each day this past month.
I stretched more than I did in October, but still not daily. I do feel like I’ve started to be more aware of my posture when I write, though, and I do sometimes even catch myself slouching too far over and sit up a little straighter.
I don’t quite remember what my home looked like at the start of the month. I think it’s a little better than then, but not markedly so. That’s probably a goal that’s worth having again, if only because I do want to start to clean my home. I’m a little surprised that I didn’t put it in my daily reflections. I’m sure there’s a reason for that, but I can’t remember why right now.
I don’t know if I would say that I have started praying better. I think maybe a little. It’s definitely a goal I want to focus on even more this month.
I wrote the three letters to friends, I think. Holiday cards still remain an option, and have the benefit of me being able to write the same letter, more or less by rote. Honestly, I could just type and print out the letters, but that feels kind of sad. I know that I greatly prefer hand written letters to typed form letters.
Let’s now shift from facing backwards to looking forwards. This month, I am excited for:
Consequences of the auction7
Getting better at prose
Going home for Christmas
Welp, the list is shorter once again. This is not because I do not plan on doing anything, but rather because I have much of the month open, which I’m excited for. It’ll be fun to see what ends up filling my hours.
Goals for the upcoming month:
Finish at least three of the books that have been sitting maligned on my “Currently Reading” shelf. There’s an app I use to keep track of my reading. This past summer I set the admirable goal of cleaning it out. Of course, that did not happen. Moving forward, though, I would like to start doing that.
On a related note, read two of the books that I’ve checked out from the library. If I divide the number of books I have checked out by the number months I expect to have left in the graduate program, I get a number I don’t like. There are absolutely some books that I’ve checked out to use as the occasional reference, rather than to read fully through. They are, however, in the minority. I would like to start spending more of my time intentionally, and part of that means reading more books to grow as a person, rather than just fluff to fill the hours.
Following that line of thought, I want to spend my time more intentionally. I know that I have a bad habit of just letting life pass me by, getting distracted by random things on my computer or phone. I would like to not do that
I want to write a sonnet every day. My poetry friend suggested that writing lots of sonnets was the best way that he knew to improve at writing meter. There was an implication within it that I should, or at least might want to consider revising the poems as well. I still don’t really know how to workshop and revise poetry, especially fixed forms like the sonnet. That could be a fun learning experience.
I want to read a book on the craft of writing start to finish. I know that this really bumps up the number of books that I’m going to try reading, but that’s probably ok. I like to read, and I’m getting faster at reading again. Then again, most of the books I have as reading goals this month are not beach reads, which might mean that trying to read them too quickly is a bad idea. Still, we’ll do whatever feels right.
Get better at prayer. Reading the book on apologetics is making me realize just how much I do still think of prayer as an emotional, rather than will-based experience. I think that shifting my mental conception might be really helpful
Clean my home. It’s at a point right now that I think I could leave it almost perfect when I go to visit family for the holidays. It would be really nice to be able to come back to something clean, and that’s a great motivator.
Stretch and do some other form of exercise every day. Even if it’s just a few pushups and a few situps, I want to get in shape. I have friends who I can, in theory at least, lift with. And, I do really value stretching.
Get better at touch typing. There’s a website I found which slowly introduces you to more letters as you learn them, so that you can start to rebuild the muscle memory of where fingers go and what letters belong to each of them.
Write letters to friends. I have a bunch of people I’d like to write a letter to.8
Get ahead on Jeb. Ideally, I would like to be five chapters ahead at the end of the year.9
Get better at embroidery. I’ve allegedly started to learn, but I want to spend at least a little time every few days. Then again, the best way to build a habit is daily. Maybe doing like a strand a day would be a good idea, at least until I go home for break
Play guitar every day. I want to start recording an album soon. I need to be able to play the music on it. Even if it’s just a few chords and a scale, I want to get back into guitar. Replacing the strings will probably help with that.
I want to keep up the daily blogging. That seems like an easy enough goal.
I want to finish a full draft of the paper I’m working on. Without having finished that, I feel like I’ll have no way of knowing when, exactly, I’ve finished the research for the paper.
I want to drink more water. I’ve been pretty dehydrated lately.
So, that’s a very ambitious set of goals. Let’s see what we can do for a daily reflection in a way that isn’t going to be a full musing in and of itself every day. I’m going to move some items around so that like elements are closer in daily reflection, as opposed to being in the more or less stream of consciousness order that they are right now. I think that a part of me thinks that higher items on the daily reflection reflect my own internal belief that it’s more important to hit the goals. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m changing enough this month that I don’t know if I really want to also add priorities. It might be fun to do nested lists. I’ll see if that works. Items this month will be in the order that I remember/find them in the list.
Hobbies:
Did I embroider today?
Did I play guitar today?
Did I practice touch typing today?
Reading
Have I made progress on my Currently Reading Shelf?
Did I read the book on craft?
Have I read the library books?
Writing
Did I write a sonnet?
Did I revise a sonnet?
Did I blog?
Did I write ahead on Jeb?
Letter to friends?
Paper?
Wellness
How well did I pray?
Did I clean my space?
Did I spend my time well?
Did I stretch?
Did I exercise?
Water?
Oof, that’s enough different items that I had to double check my list repeatedly to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. Still, I think that I’m at a place right now where I’d rather aim high and fall short than try to meet small goals. We’ll see if I still feel that way in the middle of the month.
Looking forward, I do want to start composing again, as I have mentioned. In January, I think that I would like to start doing a small composition exercise every day, but I suppose I’ll see how I feel at the end of December.10 Since I’m currently writing this post at the beginning of the day, I will wait to do the daily reflection until the end of the day. That also means that I’ll wait to post this until the end of the day, which might mean that I end up coming up with a second draft as I have different ideas for what, exactly, I want to spend next month doing. Just sitting here, I’ve found that the list has grown a lot in the past hour, which is nice and a little terrifying.
Coming back to the post at the end of the night, I didn’t really have much to add, which is nice. Time for my last November daily reflection!
Daily Reflection:
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I wrote about half of one, which I think is enough for tonight. I’m ok with going to bed a little earlier instead of writing a little more.
Did I blog? I like today’s blog. It does what the musings are supposed to do, which is refocus me.
Did I stretch? I did end up stretching after posting last night’s musing. Will do so after this one.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I did not make it very well focused last night. Maybe tonight. If not, I guess I’m still trying, which is worth something.
kind of. I wrote one in UG but that’s kind of just sat around for a bunch of years, and I’m unsure if anything will ever actually come of it↩︎
to be fair, I suppose that the existence of coffee shop AU’s as such a large genre does do a lot to make them seem like a place you might run into people↩︎
I don’t think I’ve talked about this. The reason for the auction is upcoming and feels like it might deserve a post all its own whenever it happens↩︎
where I’m currently writing this, interestingly enough↩︎
mostly, at least↩︎
for myself, not the readers,↩︎
this sounds much more ominous than it really is↩︎
this month I’ll try to be smart and write down exactly what friends I want to write a letter to and who I’ve written a letter to so that I can keep track and not accidentally forget anyone or spam them with repeat letters. As nice as a handwritten letter is, getting two identical ones probably wouldn’t feel great.↩︎
because five chapters is a common promotion that authors run to entice people to pay for their writing on the site I use. It could be fun to start monetizing my work.↩︎
it’s wild to me that it’s basically December now. That’s terrifying to think about.↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 29
Wow! I did it! One day early and sixty two words over, I have officially completed NaNoWriMo number 25.1 Having now finished the story, I feel like now might be a great time to do a post mortem on the process.
I think that breaking it into pros, cons, and things I noted is probably a great way to do it. I’m not sure if I want to do it in a list wise fashion or as they pop up, but it’s probably a good idea to do lists, if only because I don’t have to write each word successively2 and the three categories seem useful to me. The good, bad, and ugly, is another way to frame this.
First, the good:
I got to spend a lot of time writing with a friend. We tried to meet up daily, but that was a very soft goal. Still, I think that we ended up meeting up at least half of the days this past month, including twice online.3 I really enjoy parallel play4, especially with this friend, and I hope that we continue to do something similar in the future, for all that I know that it will be different now that NaNo is over. I also know that I had a much easier time simply letting bad words flow onto a page than my friend did, and I worry that it might have been discouraging to write next to me.
I proved that I can, in fact, write a full5 story in the course of a month. Even while juggling writing this blog every day, keeping up6 on Jeb, and doing my other writing in a day, I was able to keep the narrative in mind. This is my second NaNoWriMo, but last year I think that I ended up finishing the story I wanted to tell in less than fifty thousand words, so I had to extend it past where was natural. I nearly had the same issue this year, because I had two days left in the month but only 500 words left to write to hit fifty thousand. Deciding what I meant by doing NaNo was a difficult choice, but I’m glad I chose to have it mean that I wrote 50k, rather than wrote explicitly the book every day in November.
I got to explore writing a more explicitly faith based narrative. For all that I know I could have done a much better job of it,7 I enjoyed writing something that took place in the real world, where the Church exists, and where I could frame the Church as a good, if often human, institution. I don’t know if urban fantasy will forever be the genre for me, but especially since I have historically read a lot of it, there’s no reason for me to think that I won’t continue to do it at least a little.
I got lots of practice with first person. Almost everything else I write is in a third person so limited as to be almost first person, but the explicit difference is nice. I think that I could have been more intentional about the form, but I think that what intention I did use was nice.
I got to practice plotting and then following the8 plot. I found that setting a loose story goal early on and then filling it in each day before writing worked really well. I might do something similar with Jeb, since I currently have the one sentence part.
The less good:
I think that the book idea I had was better served as something that I wrote slowly and thoughtfully, rather than in the fairly rushed way that NaNo requires and expects. I don’t really have anything to add to this.
I don’t know if it’s that, or if it’s something else, but I didn’t really love the book. It might have been better as a short story. For all that it was a cool premise, the one sentence synopsis of the book9 was really about as good as I ever got. I don’t really know if anything I did in the book deserves a longer one.
I don’t think that I did a good job writing in first person. I think that I struggle to put thoughts to page in a cogent fashion, and that absolutely came up here. I couldn’t keep the character’s thoughts separate from what mine would be in the situation, not that I really tried.
I think that I used a lot of cliches and did far more telling than showing, to the detriment of the story.
I don’t think that I did a good job reflecting my faith in a positive way. The Catholicism was for more surface level to the story than I would have wanted.10
The things I noticed:
Every day it was far harder to start writing than to actually write. I ended up adopting the motto of “the only way out is through and the only way through is forward,” which I typed at the end of each day’s plotting session.
People get surprised when you tell them that you’re doing NaNoWriMo, far more than when you tell them you have a blog or put out a web serial. Not sure what’s up with that.
I have trouble writing specific sensory cues. This ties into the next item, so I’ll talk about it more there.
I became much more aware of the way that books I read this past month were written. The biggest difference between my writing and more or less everything I read was the sensory cues.
There’s a concept of how well someone can visualize something in their mind. It’s a spectrum, as so many abilities are. At one end of the spectrum are people who can close their eyes and see the world in, if anything, fuller color than with their eyes open. At the other end, there are people who see nothing when they close their eyes.
I’ve always considered myself more on the former end of that spectrum. However, as this month has progressed, I’ve begun to realize that there’s a difference between what I can do and what I do do.11 Visualizing takes mental effort for me. When I don’t put forth the effort, things do exist in a void.
Obviously, this shines through in my writing. Without meaning to, I simply elide through physical descriptors, simply because they are not relevant to the scene at hand. It’s something that a lot of commenters have noticed in my web serial, which is likely one reason that I have noticed it myself. I know it’s something that I should work on, especially if I want to really improve my craft.
I don’t know quite how to fix it, so that’s probably going to be one of the priorities in the coming months
I realized that I have finally shifted from being limited by the speed I can compose content in my brain to the speed that I can type. It’s kind of fun that the rate limiting step for me is now my ability to actually type.
Related enough that it doesn’t get its own entry, I’ve realized that I don’t actually know how to touch type properly. I’ve decided to start actually learning for real, which will hopefully go well.
Having one writing project makes doing other writing projects easier. There are flavors of productive procrastination to this, but I do really think that a large part of it is that once I’ve written one thing in a day, the next thing I need to write is easier because I don’t have to convince myself that I like writing before beginning the next one.12
A consequence of becoming more comfortable writing is that I am becoming less and less satisfied with the way that I write, even as I start getting more external praise for the writing. I don’t know if this is a “we’re near the move from conscious incompetence to conscious competence,” thing or just a “I’m now good enough that I see how much room I have to grow”, or what, but it’s kind of fun. I think that the main gripe I have with my writing right now is that it’s rambly. As I mentioned recently, I’m going to start working on craft in the upcoming months, and I hope that one consequence of that will be words that taste better not just one by one, but when taken as a whole.
Now that I’ve done a quick and dirty reflection of how I feel about my NaNo this year, I’ll go through some of the questions that I can imagine being asked about doing it13:
What is NaNoWriMo? National Novel Writer’s Month. It’s every November since 1999. The goal is to write a full14 novel in the span of the month.
How did you come up with your story idea?15 I read a text post somewhere talking about dos and don’ts for including the Catholic Church in a work of fiction, especially urban fantasy, and was inspired.
How did you feel about it?16 See above.
Why did you choose to do this? Great question!17 I think that really I wanted to try to stretch myself this year.
Do you plan to do anything with the novel?18 Probably not, at least for the foreseeable future. While I think that there’s something worth salvaging in the book, it’s deep beneath a lot of crud I’ll need to clean up, and I don’t know that I want to do that right now. I have the rest of my life, though19.
How do you do it? I have gotten good at sitting down in front of a computer and just typing. I find that it helps to have a minute or so of free journaling at the start of each writing session, where you just open a new note file and start typing exactly what you’re thinking, then slowly try to redirect your thoughts to the book. At that point, take another minute to quickly plot out what you want to happen, and then start writing.
As an example:
Let’s see, it’s about half past 2000 right now and I don’t really have anything else on my plate today, thankfully. Once I finish this blog post I’m more or less done for the day, though I do need to figure out the title. If I was actually going to be writing right now, I might be doing some planning for a short story I want to write. A reason I don’t want to write is (I don’t have one right now)
I find that writing like that really helps me kill the voice in my head that tries to stop me from typing, for all that the fiction I write is written far less informally.
If you have other questions, please feel free to ask, and I’ll respond privately. If I feel like it’s worth revising the blog over20, I’ll update it with the new questions. Thanks for following me on this journey! Hopefully this blog will continue.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did not today, but I finished NaNo21 this item gets to be deleted for the next year or so!
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I did not finish it last night, but did finish it when I woke up early this morning and couldn’t fall back asleep.
Did I blog? I feel like today’s was at least a little more coherent.
Did I stretch? Nope!
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I made it through like 2 mysteries last night without getting distracted, but made it through the full rosary, even if quickly.
I
This is apparently the twenty fifth NaNoWriMo, which is really cool!↩︎
in that like I can write a word and then go up earlier in the document to interpend (I feel like that’s the word for append in the middle, but I don’t have the time to look it up right now) more words↩︎
one of those two times is right now. It’s wild how much simply having someone on the other end of a Discord call does to keep me productively writing↩︎
doing an activity next to someone also doing an activity↩︎
if unsatisfying to me (this belongs in con, not footnote, oh well↩︎
and even getting ahead at first↩︎
see cons↩︎
admittedly very loose↩︎
imagine if there was a Catholic Order of werewolves with the charism of fighting vampires↩︎
of course, that probably ties to the first of the bad↩︎
earth shattering revelation, I know. I don’t do everything I’m capable of at every instant of every day. If you thought I did, I’m sorry to burst your illusions (using you feels different now that I receive comments from at least two readers fairly frequently. I promise I’m not targeting you with the footnote but non-parenthetical here)↩︎
yes, each day I do have to reconvince myself that I like to write. Yes, that’s as exhausting as it sounds, if not moreso honestly↩︎
and since I’m still on the voice call with my writing friend, may ask the friend for some questions↩︎
50,000 words, which is shorter than most modern fantasy, but well within the realm of most classical fiction↩︎
thanks friend for the question!↩︎
thanks again↩︎
do I see any irony in only calling my question a great one? nope↩︎
an adapted thanks↩︎
and to my future heirs, assuming that I am no more and you have a desire to edit it, go for it if I never got around to it and this blog post and the book for some reason still exist↩︎
i.e. if I have the mental headspace to revise the blog↩︎
as you saw in the rest of this post↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 28
Prereading note: Not only is this rambling, but it more or less is three blog posts stapled to each other, each of which was already rambling. I apologize in advance to my readers.
I do not remember exactly why,1 but I was considering revisiting my post about footnotes today. I spent a fairly long time revisiting many of the same paths that I trod a few years ago when I first set up this blog.2 In the end, I was unable to find any solutions to the issue of creating footnotes within footnotes.
Now, my readers may be interested in having nested footnotes themselves in LaTeX.3 If so, there are a few options.
Be better at writing, and find a solution that does not require having nested footnotes. That seems to be the critical consensus among TeX users, which I find dissatisfying.
Use the bigfoot package.
Pros: it lets you have arbitrarily deep footnote nests
Cons: Each nested footnote needs to be a layer deeper, which means that you can’t have like footnote 1 ref 2 ref 3 all on the same level. Given that the only legitimate4 use for nesting is editorializing on translations, that’s probably fine for its use case.
use \footnotemark within the footnote, and then \footnotetext out of the footnote, which allows you to nest the footnotes. If you use the hyperref package, the footnotes even reference each other like they should.
Write your own solution. I’m sure that those who know how to use actual computer science would be able to write their own package, should they so choose.
Now, of these options, I personally find the penultimate to be the best for my use case. I hopefully will not need to have nested footnotes in my actual thesis5, but if I do, using footnotetext and footnotemark works well enough, and fixes most of my issues pretty quickly. I don’t like having layers of footnotes.
That’s something that’s worth investigating. At a gut level, I feel like multiple layers claim that the point of a footnote is that it’s less important than the main text. I don’t generally agree with that line of thought. I’m bad at expressing thoughts right now,6 but I generally think of the point of most prose, even academic writing, is to convey a narrative. In an academic sense, then, footnotes are used to explain information which is essential to understand a claim but which is not directly essential to the narrative. For instance, if I was discussing how advances in rotational spectroscopy7 allow for better determination of molecular structure, the footnote there could have been nice for someone who might not know what rotational spectroscopy is.8 However, there might be information which is needed to understand the footnote. In the case of my footnote above, it could be useful to explain what quantized transitions are.9 Since the footnote level is already for context clues, context to context is still a context clue.10
Anyways, since I cannot have nested footnotes in the current way I’m writing, what can I do instead?
The obvious answer is to ask my father. I did, and learned11 that he writes his posts in markdown.12 Now, I was initially ready to immediately switch over to writing in markdown.
However, there is an issue. As you might have guessed from the last item in the ways to have nested footnotes, I do not have a great grasp of coding best practices, or practices at all. Readers may wonder how, exactly, I was able to go from TeX to HTML with an automated script, let alone set up an entire blog. To that, I answer, my dear sibling was willing to make the blog set up for me. Since the way I was writing 5 years ago13 is primarily in TeX, that made the most sense. To switch to markdown,14 I would need to change up some code in the make file. I don’t know how to do that, so I will need to beg and barter time from a family member who knows how to code, with hope that they will teach me.15
So, one thousand words into what was supposed to be a quick diversion, I suppose that I should start the actual text of this musing. Maybe I’ll just talk about markdown, which I’d like to learn, I think. It seems to have the benefits of TeX16 along with being more scalable17.
Both are markup languages, which is apparently where the term markdown comes from.18 Markup languages are just ways of turning plaintext into pretty text. Plain text is19 anything that you can actually type on your computer. You will notice that there is no bold key on your computer keyboard.20 In most word processors that my friends interact with,21 you have to click a button that bolds the text. In a markup language, you would instead do something like (bold) this text (not bold).22
Anyways, that is not where the similarities stop. The main differences between the languages come from the use cases they were created for. LaTeX was built to make TeX more useful. TeX was built because Donald Knuth23 saw a reprint of one of his books and was fundamentally dissatisfied with how the equations were set on the page. Rather than any of the other solutions one could come up with, he wrote a processor which engraves pretty pages.24 Given that he was a computer scientist25 he made it Turing Complete.
What, exactly Turing Completeness is, is not relevant here. The short answer is that if something is Turing Complete, you can make any program in it that you can make in another Turing Complete language. In theory, this does mean that you can program Doom in LaTeX.26
Markdown, by contrast, was written to make writing HTML faster. I vaguely remember hearing that HTML is not Turing Complete, which implies to me that Markdown would not be either. However, as I have repeated constantly, I am not a coder. This is not a relevant issue to me.
Since LaTeX was made for academic publishing usage, it is an incredibly powerful language. By default, it auto-numbers footnotes, has support to automatically make citations in more or less any citation style you like, and so on. When writing an academic paper, which often has a ridiculous number of revisions, number and locations of footnotes do not remain constant. As such, Markdown, which requires directly specifying what footnote a reference refers to, does not satisfice27 for academic purposes.
Still, for a majority of the writing I do, I do not actually need to cite, or to have autorenumbering footnotes. I also don’t really use equations28 For the academic writing I do, LaTeX is still superior, so that’s going to be what I stick with. For this blog, and most of the fun writing I do, however29 Markdown might be the thing for me to switch to.
Eighteen hundred words in, let’s learn Markdown. It’s a very simple language, which will be nice.
To make italicized text, markdown uses either asterisks or underscores on either side of the text.
To make a link, I put the text I want to display in square brackets, followed by the link in parentheses.
To make an ordered list, I have a series of lines where the first begins with 1.30 Indention makes nested lists.
To make unordered lists, it’s the same as an ordered list, though with dashes, asterisks, or plusses. Best practice is apparently to keep them the same, though that’s not always required.
You can apparently denote code by using quote marks. I’m not totally sure how to make quotes, but that’s hardish in latex.31
Ooh! I can strikethrough text semi easily in markdown, simply by using two tildes on either side. That’s pretty nifty.
Footnotes!32 To create a footnote, open bracket, caret, the number of the footnote, close bracket. To create the text for the footnote, the same, but then a colon and the text.
Highlight is double equals sign on either side.
Subscript is single tilde on either side.
Welp, as soon as I have the requisite makefile, and maybe before, I’ll switch over to our good friend markdown!
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? Almost at 50K!
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I will finish after this.
Did I blog? I mean at some point I should stop letting myself just put random words on a page and call it a musing.
Did I stretch? I’m sore at this point, which isn’t great, but I think that I’m less sore than I would have been if I didn’t stretch, so I should do it again today.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I made it through the whole rosary yesterday. It was a little rushed.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I think I’m good getting rid of this goal starting tomorrow, since I don’t really care about it for the next, um, day.
looking through the text conversations, I think that it was because a friend suggested that I could consider having a substack instead of my current blogging platform, which is, as best as I know, a heartily kludged together mess of so many different things (end result is LaTeX to HTML, with markdown and pandoc in the middle? I think? I don’t really know how to make a makefile, which is such a shame, because wow it would make so much of my life easier. I only really know how to read the highest level of coding languages, and even then only vaguely. As I continue to do more and more computational research, that becomes more and more of an issue). I don’t think I want a SubStack, though↩︎
for those who don’t know, my father has a blog of his own, which is apparently well enough known (a member of an affiliate department of mine with no relationship to him mentioned that they found his blog and started following it). One of the most famous parts of that blog (if you’re reading, father, I said one) is its relationships with footnotes, which are nested aggressively and sometimes recursively↩︎
if you’re confused about why this post is clearly a .html file when I said it’s LaTeX, please read the first footnote (which I can’t reference here, because the need to communicate between all the different programs means that you only get the options which work well between all of them. Nested footnotes, as you might be able to tell, are not considered essential to everyone, for all that House of Leaves and Terry Pratchett’s works rely on them. Apparently translating editorial editions also requires them for actual academic purposes, which is fun and interesting), where I explain (not for the first time, I do not believe) that these musings are initially written in Tex before being compiled into HTML↩︎
read: academic↩︎
which is likely to be the next major TeX file I use. I wonder if I can write my thesis in markdown (spoiler I guess). Hmm, there’s a markdown package which allows for writing in markdown in LaTeX. That’s fun and cool to learn↩︎
this thought, at least, given that I’ve tried rewriting it at least four times (hmm that does sort of get rid of my whole “I do not edit while I write” claim that I had in the first iteration of the blog↩︎
a technique where low energy quantized transitions of a molecule are measured↩︎
this is getting meta, and that’s kinda fun↩︎
normally reading my blog does not require the footnotes. That is really not the case here wow↩︎
I don’t know if people agree with this take, but it resonates with me, which makes it true enough↩︎
as an earlier footnote suggests↩︎
I knew that at some point, but shoved the knowledge to the side of my mind, where knowledge goes to be lost↩︎
and, frankly, now↩︎
which does seem legitimately better for most of my daily use cases, if I’m being totally honest↩︎
beg and barter is an aggressive term. I just had to ask↩︎
not being WYSIWYG, which more and more is something I prefer in my writing. I like the fact that all the text looks the same as I edit it, but looks nice when others see it↩︎
or whatever the word is for not having anything restricting me↩︎
computer scientists love puns too much↩︎
to a first order approximation↩︎
if you have a keyboard that has a bold key, I assume you already know what plaintext is. As such, you shouldn’t be reading this footnote or the actual text, and so I will not accept complaints↩︎
I say friends not family, because my family all use various versions of markup languages↩︎
I don’t know of any that use this format, but wow that would be fun, if incredibly annoying↩︎
the father of modern computer science↩︎
it’s this kind of dedication which explains a lot of modern computer science↩︎
the computer scientist?↩︎
I’m so glad I’m not the only one to ask this question (tl;dr yes)↩︎
that’s a fun word that my spellchecker doesn’t like↩︎
though Markdown now supports LaTeX equations, which is wildly fun↩︎
and, given how easy it is to interconvert file formats, even first drafts of the academic writing I do↩︎
interestingly, after the number one, any number is allowed, and the list will automatically change to be proper ordering. That’s another way that TeX is technically better, because one could, should they so desire, skip numbers in a tex list↩︎
I defined a macro to do it for me↩︎
wow it took me shockingly long to get to this↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 27
Five years ago today I mused about writing a song.1 Today, I updated my list of goals for the year, and saw again that I wanted to record an album. While I’ve written probably an album’s worth of music, a lot of it is either choral or instrumental in nature.
Some of the choral and instrumental songs2 would work on an album, especially since a few of my pieces3 have been recorded. However, as a person who loves the rock opera4 format, I kind of want there to be a narrative string tying my album together.
Is that demanding far too much of someone who is a Ph. D. candidate5 and has a rich and varied life outside of composing?6 Quite possibly. Then again, I find that I, like most people, do best when I feel pushed into my yellow zone.7 I also do want to write an album, for reasons that I don’t know if I’ve explored fully.
I think part of it is that I feel like my musical education is a little too academic. For all that I know a lot about music, and can produce competent music quickly, it kind of feels like a standard I use to judge an artist is whether they’ve created an album. Is that a fair judgement? Probably not.
Is that a prejudice I should investigate inside of myself to see if it really actually resonates with the deeper parts of me? Probably!
Will I? *shrug*
Accepting that elitism/populism8 is not a good enough reason to record an album, why else do I want to?
I’ve had friends ask to listen to my music on Spotify. I have so many moral objections to Spotify as a company, but I don’t know if they neatly overlap with my putting music on the platform. Certainly if my goal is letting my friends listen to the music I’ve written, it’s by far the past of least resistance. I know that more than a few of them refuse to install MP3s9, and so putting stuff on Spotify would make that accessible to them.
Doing things to please others is not a sufficient condition, nor is it even a necessary condition for doing something, for all that it’s nice.10 Especially since I know I have a tendency towards people pleasing11, it’s worth seeing if that’s a good reason.
Let’s take a step back. Rather than thinking about why I, personally, want to write an album, let’s see if I can’t find some reasons that a person somewhere could conceivably want to write an album.12
As mentioned above: feeling that they need to in order to comfortably call themselves a musician13
Also as mentioned above, pressure from friends.14
Monetary reasons.15
They feel like the world needs to hear their voice
Demonstrate musical proficiency
It seems fun?16
Hold yourself accountable.17
Let’s investigate how they relate to me:
Feelings of inferiority: they apply to me, but I don’t know if that’s a healthy thing. I can get over it either by deciding that I don’t need to write an album to call myself a musician or by writing an album. Probably worth thinking more on whether I should move past that thought generally, for all that making an album will never make me less of a musician.18
Pressure: I think that this is a driving force to me. I’m almost certain that my friends were just being polite when they expressed interest in me recording an album. Nonetheless, I still want them to be able to listen to what I’ve written.19
Monetary reasons: as demonstrated by my lack of monetization of the book I’m writing, despite explicit requests to set up a way for people to pay me, this is not a motivation for me. Honestly, I am lucky enough that I can afford to treat art as a thing I do entirely separate from the monetary compensation it could produce. I don’t think artists necessarily make better work when they don’t have a financial incentive, but I think that I, at least, do.
I don’t really think that the world needs to hear my musical voice. I’m getting a Ph. D. in part because I do think that I have something to add to the world. I’m writing a book, in some small part, at least, for the same reason. I don’t really feel like this idea resonates with me at all, which is interesting. The monetary one at least struck me as wrong. This just strikes me as irrelevant
Demonstration of proficiency: I can see how this seems similar to the first reason, but I can see a difference.20 I think that there’s something to this. I do love type two fun in retrospect.21 That’s at least one reason to record an album, I suppose. It would be cool to be able to point to it as something that I’ve written and composed, if only because it’s a cool flex.
Fun/other positive terms: yeah ok, as discussed above, this is a motivation. I think that I would learn a lot about myself from writing an album. I think that I would learn a lot more in recording one. I think that I would learn a ton more in mastering and mixing and releasing. I think that I’ve gotten a thick enough skin from my web serial to be comfortable putting out my music for the wider world.
Accountability: I think there’s also something about this to me. When the band I play in22 was more active, that was a reason to compose. Now that I don’t even go to open mics23, I don’t have much reason to do music. Having an explicit goal would, hopefully, at least, keep me accountable.
Ok, so I for sure still want to write an album. This past month24 has been really focused on my ability to output large quantities of prose. I think that it is an important skill to develop, but I think that producing better prose is also important. In an ideal world, I think that I, at least25 would benefit from alternating between phases where work on getting more words out faster and getting the words which come out to be better faster. The better my first drafts are, the less that I will need to revise them, which means the less time that I end up needing to spend on a project, which means that I can get through more of the infinite projects I want to write.
For all that I’ve already decided that next month I’ll really explore the craft of prose more, I think that it could also be healthy and fun to get back into the practice of poetry. I don’t think that jumping right back into composing songs would be my best bet, because that’s such a jump to go from nothing to full songs. Instead, I think that a month of intentional poetry practice could be really helpful and healthy. I probably want to do some sort of metered form, but I have a few days to decide what, exactly, I want that form to look like.26 So that’s December sorted.
I have vague memories of the goals I set for myself at the start of the year.27 Hmm, it appears as though they were more implicit than explicit. Oh well!
I remember that one goal was to do species counterpoint every day. I still would like to do that. Given that I’ve been able to find the time to write at least 1800 words28 a day every day today, I can certainly make the time to do a quick little counterpoint exercise. If I keep up the poetry into January, it’s not inconceivable that the process of daily composing music and writing poetry will cause me to explicitly create song. If not, however, I always have the option of making that a goal for February.
From there, I would have like 6 months to record the album, which means really that I need to dedicate a week or two to doing nothing but it.29 That really does feel somewhat realistic. What else did I plan to do this past year? Even though it’s not the end of the year, I still have time to make the resolutions work.
I have yet to take an improv class. I have one more chance to make it happen.30
Huh, otherwise, I think I’ve generally done ok with keeping up on the goals. Next year I do want to be better at getting the sleep I need. Very rarely are activities worth losing a night of sleep over, and I more and more realize that every day.
Well, while this post went on a long and rambly course, I guess I did reaffirm the fact that I want to make an album. I just need to write songs, compose music, and record and master it. I don’t need it to be perfect, just serviceable.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! Yesterday too. I’m so close to the finish line, which is cool. I still don’t really like the book, which is ok. I will finish it, and then I never have to look at it again.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I finished plotting out the rest of the arc, and I sent the arc to the beta reader. Beta approved it, so now I just need to write it.31 Edit: I realized that, due to the frankly nonsensical way that I structured my daily word goals, every extra word I write today drops my goals for tomorrow by at least a word. That’s probably worth doing, if only because I’m tired of playing catch-up, and setting lower goals is one way to do that.
Did I blog? I have! Look at this monstrosity. Gaze upon the madness.32
Did I stretch? I went lifting far too early today. It was fun, and it absolutely set me up for success today. However, I know without a doubt that I will regret not stretching if I do not. I’ll do it after this post.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I made it through a decade yesterday. I have higher hopes for today.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? No! I wrote the number of letters that I had hoped to this month, though, which is nice to realize.
I made it all the way to getting ready to post this before I realized that I did not, in fact, write that post 5 years ago. I wrote it 5 years and one months ago. Whoopsie! This one is certainly better than reflecting on bat out of hell: the musical five years later (probably, but we will never know, I suppose)↩︎
I used to be a pedant about how song only referred to sung music. I don’t know if I still am, but a part of me still thinks that it’s, at the very least, a reasonable way to distinguish kinds of music. Given that the piece I wrote was a chamber ensemble for two clarinets, an oboe, and a piano, it was very song like in its nature. Of course, as a person who now claims that his main area of study was historical music, all music has an element of being sung by its nature. The way that we think about music changing over time is a fascinating topic, and one that I would study if I had infinite time. (more and more I’m realizing that I don’t have enough time to learn everything I want to learn, and will have to pick and choose what I am interested in)↩︎
a much less controversial word↩︎
honestly, that might be my favorite genre, for all that I treat it, like most genre titles, exceedingly loosely↩︎
should that be capitalized? I never know↩︎
I sometimes feel guilty describing my life as rich and varied, but the number of people who disagree vehemently with me when I try to claim it as anything else keep me from doing it too often↩︎
a concept for describing mental wellness. Green zone is comfort, yellow is growth, but is uncomfortable. Red is dangerous. Many people struggle to tell the difference between the different zones, but that’s a topic for another musing↩︎
hard for me to classify the feeling without investigating more. I’m sure there’s elements both of “if you haven’t dedicated the effort” (elitism) along with the stated one of “you know so much but do nothing with it” (populist, for all that I’m not sure if that’s entirely the right term for what I want. I feel like I see it as contrasting elitism often enough that I’m ok with keeping it, at least for now)↩︎
which remains absolutely insane to me. Then again, I feel like the way that I interact with digital media is fundamentally different than a lot of my peers. The fact that I’m an active writer and musician might have something to do with that. I could get into another rant about how important I think creation is as a part of people’s lives, but I’ve made that somewhere else on this blog, and I don’t want to rehash that in the middle of another musing↩︎
a dear friend who is pursuing a Ph. D. in Mathematics introduced me to the idea of necessary and sufficient conditions. Something can be necessary but not sufficient, such as eating to stay alive. Of course, much is neither. I’m sure that there’s something in the category of sufficient but not necessary, for all that I’m not willing to put forth the effort to figure out an example↩︎
for all that there are so many people who would laugh riotously at hearing that claim↩︎
last night a friend said that he really enjoyed the way that one of my Gospel reflections had a list that I explored each item in depth. It feels like it could be a generally good way of approaching things?↩︎
that might be a better way of framing what I feel?↩︎
I use pressure much more liberally than most people do, I’ve realized. I can either change my usage to match the rest of the world or try to be influential enough that the world’s usage begins to match mine. Given this musing, I’m certain that you can figure out which I’m planning on↩︎
as I look up reasons to write an album, this appears to be a lot of reasons coupled into one. I’m still leaving it as a single bullet point, for reasons that will be clear later↩︎
I feel like this always belongs as a reason on any list. Fun can, of course, be replaced with your choice of nearly any positive word, like useful, informative, etc. (yes I’m well aware that I treat fun and informative as basically the same motivation. Yes I know that’s strange. No I don’t care)↩︎
that feels like a good reason. Goals are great↩︎
unless people think of it as selling out, but given that my expected profits are approximately 0 for the music, I cannot imagine that it will really be relevant to me↩︎
or at least recorded/arranged. I’m more and more leaning towards throwing at least a single traditional or public domain (the difference between the two is murky, for all that I acknowledge it’s academically important. As someone whose main goal is not paying royalties, they serve the same purpose)↩︎
I don’t plan to explore the difference. If you cannot see a difference, please feel free to message me through any platform we share (also hi! Thanks for reading. I appreciate you)↩︎
I’ve seen references to fun as either type one, which is fun because you’re doing it, and type two, which is fun because you have done it. I know I’ve mused about that before. Also, type two fun is explicitly supposed to be fun primarily in retrospect↩︎
first time typing this said “when I was in a band” but that feels too pessimistic. I have hope that we will return to being a band sometime soon↩︎
in large part because I want to sleep earlier than they allow↩︎
I know that November isn’t over, but it’s basically over, and I need to start planning for the next month↩︎
I don’t know how universal this experience is, and I don’t want to extrapolate too terribly much↩︎
I also have a friend I’ve recently learned got a degree in poetry, so may ask that friend (my avoidance of any identifying information is not constant, I’m realizing. I wonder why that is) for any advice on reading for poetry. Crud. I should also make an effort to read good poetry if I’m going to try to write better poetry. Eh, I can’t help but imagine that better prose leads to better poetry and vice versa. Much like this blog and the books I write help each other and my academic writing, I imagine any words on a page make me better at some part of the process.↩︎
I’m going to take a minute and read through them. If you want to click here↩︎
the fewest words I’ve written this month, which is an admittedly kind of small number I suppose↩︎
or, more realistically, an afternoon a week a few months↩︎
the class I was going to take is a monthly thing. I’ve fallen out of touch with the friend who I was going to do it with, sadly↩︎
I’ve been working on this blog post for around an hour, if not longer, so I don’t really have the time left before sleep to do it now↩︎
this is one of those musings that both requires a revision and that I don’t know how I could revise. The path is so meandering that more or less I would just need to cut out almost all the content to keep it on theme with the title “On songwriting” (which I did pick ahead of time this time. The way that I pick titles is probably something that’s worth musing on another time, but not now.)↩︎
First Published: 2023 November 26
Wow! The end of another liturgical year. Despite the fact that the Church more or less created the calendar we use1 and absolutely created the liturgical calendar we use, the two do not line up. There is probably some legitimate reason for that. Off the top of my head, the fact that Christmas is not on January 1st, despite arguably being the most important winter day in the Modern Church2, is already enough of a reason to know that the two would diverge. It does go further, though. The modern liturgical calendar begins with Advent, which begins on the first Sunday of November.3
I can probably think of some benefits of doing it this way. One obvious one is that it gives us, at minimum, two days a year that we can call the first of the year. For all that each day is special and perfect in its own way, there’s something intrinsically human about the desire to treat continuity as discrete. Hearing that it’s the end of the year spurs us to consider the next year and to think about how we might change for the better.4
Regardless of how important the fact that each year has ended in a new beginning, and will continue to do so until time itself ends, the fact that a year ends is equally important. It reminds us of other endings, most pressing of which is the ending of our life.
The Feast of Christ the King is the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year. Obviously,5 it concerns the end of time and the end of our own lives. It contains some readings that I’ve always struggled with, though differently as I’ve grown older.6
The first reading comes from Ezekiel. In it, we are told that we will be separated into rams and goats. Of course, I know that this does not mean that we are predestined, as is a common enough heresy in the modern age. The fact remains, though, that we will be judged. We are reminded constantly that only in accepting our own limitations and weaknesses can we truly be strong. The reading emphasizes this, saying: “The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy, shepherding them rightly.”7
The second reading comes, as they tend to, from Paul. Here we are reminded that all will be raised on the last day, beginning with Christ. For all that it’s very easy and settled theology now, I’m more and more appreciating the fact that he makes incredibly bold and outlandish claims by the standards of how the world is otherwise known to work.
Finally, we get to the Gospel. This Gospel passage is quite possibly the easiest passage to understand what we are called to do, for all that it is also one of the hardest to accomplish. In no uncertain terms, we are told that every time we see someone hungry, thirsty, a stranger, ill, or naked8 we see Christ. We can either choose to ignore Him, or we can choose to help Him.
Of course, there is clearly more to the Gospel today than just that message. If there wasn’t, then there would be no way that the Church could justify letting the hungry starve, the prisoner live neglected, the ill die on the streets, or immigrants be torn from their families. Where we are able to draw the distinction, I do not know.
However, as I write today’s musing, I am in my heated home, wearing warm clothes and a soft blanket. I know that there are far too many people right now who are not inside, instead huddling for warmth in the bitter winter air. Knowing that each of them is as Christ to me makes me feel like I need to do more. When I look at what’s happening in the world right now, it seems as though no one has heard this Gospel.
A common objection to giving money to the poor is that they might waste it on something frivolous. As a person who believes very strongly in medicine, the idea that someone with a mental illness might self medicate with alcohol doesn’t really bother me. After all, I have plenty of friends who use different substances to self medicate, and I don’t judge them for it. Why would I judge someone living an objectively harder life?
I’m late enough in writing this musing that I don’t really have the energy to see what the great thinkers of the Church have said about this passage, but I would be curious. Maybe I’ll look another day.
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? It’s far too late for me to start, but start I must. Yesterday I was in a similar boat, which is why the musing didn’t come out.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I said I wasn’t going to work on it on Sundays, and so I shan’t.
Did I blog? I think this counts, for all that I chose actively not to yesterday.
Did I stretch? Nope! I’m going lifting early tomorrow morning, though, so maybe that will count.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? I’ll try to do a rosary tonight, but very well may fall asleep during it.
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I met with friends yesterday and called a friend for like 2 hours today. Even though it’s not a letter, it serves much of the same purpose, which is staying in touch with the people I care about and love. I also got to see some other friends during catechesis tonight, which is always nice.
it isn’t the Gregorian Calendar for no reason. One of the Popes Gregory (should it be Pope Gregories? I never quite know what to do with anglicized titles) created it, or at least mandated its usage. It happened after 1050, which we know because the Orthodox Church doesn’t recognize it (honestly, the fact that I can use random facts to start dating things relative to each other is kind of fun)↩︎
ok, so pre Vatican 2, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of G-d (January 1st) was celebrated as the Feast of the Circumcision (which I have always loved as a title, for all that it icks a lot of modern listeners out (for good reason)), and that was (as best as I understand Second Temple practice) the day that Christ would have been officially named and brought into the Church. It isn’t seen that way anymore, and that is probably not a fight the Vatican wanted to start↩︎
I’m sure there’s edge cases, because there always are with simple rules. However, the edge cases were already dealt with, because we can, with total certainty, predict what day will occur when arbitrarily far into the future. There’s probably something to add about a post I saw recently talking about how modern society, having now given up belief in the Almighty, is almost required to fall into nihilism. Having just now watched a video from a science channel I really like exactly on how the universe will be mostly dead in a fraction of a fraction of the time that it will take to totally die, I can’t say that I have any real argument against that logic. I want to think about it later, but I’m not sure that now is the perfect time.↩︎
Or at least it does for me. The fact that New Year’s Resolutions are a whole thing implies that it’s at least a strong cultural cue, even if it’s not innate↩︎
well, obviously given the segue I used to get us here↩︎
the fact that I feel like most weeks I start the reflection with a comment similar to this about struggling probably implies something. Whether it’s dissatisfaction with the way the world is, lack of depth of understanding, or disagreement with the Church, I haven’t quite figured out. As it is, I think it’s good for me not to be complacent or comfortable. Growth only happens when you’re neither↩︎
Ezekiel 34:16↩︎
which I think almost entirely overlaps the corporal works of mercy, may discuss that in full text↩︎