First Published: 2022 January 30
1 Corinthians 13:3: “If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing”
As always, it’s fascinating to me to see how different my interpretation of the readings is three years later. Last time I read these, I was struck by the commands in the readings, especially the first reading. This time, I really hear the call to love more than everything. Without love, there can be no gain in my life.
Tonight was also the first RCIA1 class at my parish. It was really interesting in conjunction with today’s readings, because we talked about what our purpose in life is. According to2 the Baltimore Catechism, our purpose in life is to know, love and serve the Lord.
The part that stuck with me is that we love through helping our neighbor, and we serve the Lord through the liturgy. I always sort of assumed it was the opposite, but it’s really interesting to me how this ordering, service as liturgy and love as traditional service meshes more with Catholic teaching in my brain. I know I had something else to add here, but I can no longer remember it.
First Published: 2022 January 28
There’s a concept in mental health that’s been making the rounds in the internet. The concept is that of “spoons”. More or less, the idea is1 that many activities in the life of someone with a neurological condition take mental effort, which can be quantified as spoons. Some activities take one spoon, others two, etc. If you have no more spoons, then you cannot do the activity. It’s a metaphor for executive dysfunction.
I personally prefer a modification of that which involves the tabletop roleplaying game2 metaphor of spell slots. This explanation is nicer for me because it fits better with my lived experience. The concept is similar to above, but with levels. As an example, sending an email is a fairly low-level spell slot in terms of executive function. Calling someone about a misplaced order is a fairly high-level spell slot in terms of effort and functioning. However, if I run out of the low-level slots, a high level slot can be used for the task.
Anyways, the two paragraphs of explanation are mostly to say that I’ve been running out of whichever metaphorical storage I have a lot lately. I’m not totally sure why, but I have some ideas. I’m really hopeful that I can get back into having the space and spoons to not run out constantly. It’s really sucky to me that yesterday I didn’t even have the space in my mind to write this blog.
Writing this blog is something that I’m really becoming excited about as a retrospective. Even if I don’t think there’s anything good about the words, the fact that I’m writing at least five hundred words a day here is really helping me to think about how I could write my exams for chemistry or3 my thesis when that happens. Even without that, it fits with my goal of having more creative hobbies.
All that to say, it really makes me sad that I was unable to write a post yesterday, even though this is functionally a write-only blog. I’m pretty sure no one reads this4, but it’s still something that I sometimes look back on, if only the titles each day as I write a new one. I feel like it might be helpful for me to have a few concepts I can try to have more spoons in the upcoming days and weeks, so I’m going to brainstorm below.
I could try scheduling my day more. I find that when I don’t pay attention, I waste my hours away mindlessly scrolling Youtube.
In a similar vein, I could just find a time limiter and use it on Youtube, so that I can’t just waste my hours on there. Sometimes removing distractions is enough for me, though since sometimes it’s really an absence of energy, dissociating without Youtube isn’t really much different.
I could try sleeping more. Generally I find that when I sleep I do better mentally.
I could try eating better. I’m eating pretty well right now, but I wonder if having more snacks/food available might help, because I often get home and am completely out of energy.
Anyways, if I try any of these and they work particularly well or badly I’ll be sure to report back.
Words: 546 15
First Published: 2022 January 26
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m currently writing a piece which could be described as aleatoric lite music. More or less, my goal was to create a piece that can be continued for as long as needed. Then I decided to add constraints, because what’s the point of life without a little1 chaos?
My first constraint was that I wanted it to be a round and/or canon melody.2 Those are fairly easy to write, as it turns out, so that was great to learn.
My second constraint changed. Initially, I wanted to have each voice have the melody, writing four part voice leading to make that fit. However, the issue with that is that then you functionally have to write four different parts. So, I decided that I would add a new constraint: there would be one harmony set, and the voices would trade to produce the different arrangements for voices. I’m still unsure between my current plan of having 4 voicings and having 12, but since the tenor3 line and the bass line as melody currently are the same basically, I’m not sure what difference the audience might hear between the two options. Though, as I write this I realize that one of the goals was to keep it musically interesting moreso for the performers than for the crowd, so I guess the 12 options is more fun.
A new idea that’s come to me since writing this blog is to have non-even loop lengths. In all honesty, that should have been my first idea for aleatoric music. The general idea behind the concept is that you have, for instance, a three beat line, a four beat line, and a five beat line. If you start them all together and then let it run, with each voice looping as soon as it finishes, you end up with 4*3*5 =60 beats. From 12 beats of written music, that isn’t so bad. Of course, that scales really well. If you write a 12 beat and a 13 beat part, for instance, those 25 beats you’ve written generate 156 distinct beats. A 13,14, and 15 beat part gives you 2370 beats of music for 42 beats of writing. The issue for me is that generally if you want these beats to sound good, you’re pretty limited to a single chord, though I guess it isn’t at all uncommon to have them in the same diatonic world. Once I finish the four part writing, I might try generating something that doesn’t evenly go into 324, and see if maybe that sounds nice. The biggest issue there is that timing becomes harder, because unless you copy paste the same melody line over and over, people tend not to like phasing. I guess I’ll check with the conductress and see if she has any thoughts on the looping idea. Maybe she’ll like it, though I really doubt it.
Anyways, I’ve got the first two measures of the four part harmony written, and the whole canon is finished as well. At this rate I should be finished by the end of the week, but that’s a dangerous thing to claim.
Words: 532 and 28
First Published: 2022 January 25
Today is the first day of my new Spring semester. It was a fun day!
Out of the blue, I happened to see someone I care deeply about. I got to write a letter to that same person, which was claimed to be appreciated. I got a letter in turn from the exact same person!1 In my choir class I got to see a bunch of friends from last semester. In the same choir class, I got to see2 the new music that I’m going to be singing this semester, and found out that we’re performing at an early music festival3, which is incredibly fun and exciting. My ISM class4 met, and I’m learning interesting things in it/sure I’ll learn many more.
On the research side, a piece I needed machined in the shop was finished, so I got to spend some time playing with electronic-adjacent pieces5. I got to see my group and have long and productive conversations with them all about research.
In productivity, I got through more of my items today than I did yesterday, which is incredible and a little bit disappointing in how I did yesterday. I started a massive revision of a small choral piece I’m working on, which6 I will write about below.
The piece is designed to be performed during the Ash Wednesday ashing7. As a result, I want to have a piece which can be performed for some arbitrary amount of time, so that everyone who wants ashes can do so to the music, without it necessarily needing to repeat in a perfect loop. The easiest answer to that problem is to simply have aleatoric music, but simple answers aren’t always good answers. The biggest problem with aleatoric music is that I am almost positive the performers would hate it.
So, we then move to aleatoric music lite. My goal is a four part melody that can be sung as a round or as four part harmony, where each of the four voices can take each of the four parts. I am not going to be so extra so as to plan for the whole 4 factorial8 combinations possible, especially because most of them should be the same-ish sounding. There are some problems with that, however. The biggest problem is that there is a very small range that9 can be sung by all four voice parts. After that, figuring out the rules for inverting counterpoint are relatively easier.10 In the choir I’m writing for, the range I think that I can have all four parts sing is G-G11. Since it’s for Ash Wednesday, I want a sad tune, and since it’s liturgical adjacent I would like something modal. As a result, the piece is in Phrygian.12
Without this footer I’m at 461 no footnotes and 77 footnote words, which meets my goal. Maybe tomorrow I should keep writing about this, since it seems to be easy to come out
Exciting!!↩︎
the first set of↩︎
do I need to capitalize that?↩︎
Interstellar Medium, not a class on the concept of ism’s↩︎
read: I drilled some holes and screwed some screws↩︎
since I’m running short on words↩︎
wrong word, but when the ashes are put on peoples’ foreheads↩︎
12↩︎
octave transposed as needed↩︎
I hope↩︎
4-5 for sopranos, 3-4 for altos, and 2-3 for baritone/tenor and bass↩︎
E for white note scales and mi for solfeggio scales↩︎
First Published: 2022 January 24
There are days of my life which seem to fly by, filled with joy and productivity. There are days of my life where I feel sick, and feel myself recover, even though nothing major happens. And, there are days like today, where everything just feels slightly off. I’m hopeful that this time tomorrow I’ll feel like my normal, energized self again.
It’s the first day of classes, which is exciting and fun. It’s the second to last day that my upperclassman is in town for a while, which is sad. It’s1 the first day in a while I’ll get to leave a like letter. So, I really hope that I wake up tomorrow filled with joy and excitement for the day.
At the very least, I’d love to feel something. Today is one of those days where all I really feel is exhausted, which is sad since I did next to nothing today.
This is only one hundred and sixty2 words, which is nowhere near my goal. I wish I cared enough to keep going.
First Published: 2022 January 23
Nehemiah 8:8: “Ezra read clearly from the book of the law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read.”
According to the priest at Mass tonight, today is the celebration of the Word of G-d. If that’s the case, then the readings are especially appropriate. The first reading has Ezra reading the Lord’s word to the people of Israel. The Gospel has the Word made Flesh in the person of Jesus Christ reading the prophecy that he himself fulfilled.
There’s something beautiful about that to me. It’s really fantastic to see how so much of the bible is mirrored between the Old and New Testaments. Last time I heard these readings, I thought of them as “one of the more straightforward Gospels” It’s so weird to me how these readings used to seem plain and simple. Looking at them now, they seem incredibly deep, more-so to me at least than a lot of weeks.
The second reading in particular is something I feel that I should read more often. It reminds me of a quote from1 St. Therese of Lisieux which says something along the lines that a garden of nothing but roses is not more beautiful than a garden with all the flowers of nature, and a daisy is not made better by being a rose. There’s no part of me that was not lovingly fashioned by the Lord and Creator of all things, and I need to remember that more in my day to day life. We are not unloved beings in an uncaring universe, but deeply loved and beloved beings made in the image of the Lord, who is Love.
I believe↩︎
First Published: 2022 January 22
Prereading note: I’ve decided I’m going to try to shoot for 5001 words a post from now on so that I know what 1000 words feels like.
Today as I pulled up my text editor to work on the blog post, I realized that I was about to hit writer’s block. That is, I could not think of anything to write today. Thankfully, old Jonathan knew this day might one day arise, and helpfully gave me some ideas.2 One of them was to write about my newfound enjoyment of villanelles.
I’ve written before3 about how, among my many goals for self-enrichment, I have had a goal to write more poetry. When I began this blog, probably due to my location, I focused on sonnets. For whatever reason, sonnets don’t really speak to my soul the way other forms do. I just cannot connect to pentameter.
That being said, one thing that I loved about sonnets is their constraint. I found that having the very restrictive rhyme and rhythm helped me not only to write them, which was the first-level goal of my doing so, but also to write better outside of poetry, because I became more aware of cadence. When I wanted to restart writing poetry again, therefore, I thought it might be helpful to find another constrained pattern for writing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried searching the internet for a list of poetic forms and how they work, but I could not find a good list. So, I used my brain and thought about who in my life might have a list of poetic forms easily at hand. And so, I messaged one of my close friends, who was an English major.4 She pointed me to the villanelle, which is constrained in a very odd way.
A villanelle is a nineteen line poem, comprised of six stanzas. Five of the stanzas contain three lines, and the sixth contains four. The second lines of each of the stanzas rhyme with each other, which is fairly normal. The odd constraint comes with the interplay of the first stanza and the last line5 of each remaining stanza. The first line of the first stanza is the third line of the second, fourth, and sixth stanza of the villanelle. The last line of the first stanza is the last line of the third, fifth, and sixth stanza. And, the first line of each of the remaining stanzas must also rhyme with these lines.
As a result, you technically only need to write thirteen lines to fill a villanelle. But, the repetition of the lines means that you need to think about how each line can serve multiple story elements. The most famous example6 of “Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night” by Dylan Thomas.
Writing them has been really illuminating for me, because it has really forced me to improve a skill that I previously had left fairly undeveloped: revising and editing a poem. Villanelles almost require revision, because I at least will often realize that the rhyme I chose is too constrictive, or the line isn’t evocative enough. That being said, the cadence of a villanelle is incredibly moving to me, so I hope that I’ll keep writing them.
Not counting this text: 545 words outside footnotes, 58 with footnotes.
I said 1000 initially but that’s so many↩︎
side-note: I do really think of my past, present, and future selves as distinct entities, which probably says something about me/influences the way I act but↩︎
though I’m not looking for where right now↩︎
who I also met in London which is pretty fun↩︎
s↩︎
that I’m aware of↩︎
First Published: 2022 January 21
Sometimes there are perfect storms in my life, where multiple, seemingly unrelated events conspire to cause something to occur to my mind. Today I got to experience one again! As always, I’m very excited by the concept of metacognition.
First, the background. I’m reading a book called “Don’t Teach Coding (Until You Read This Book)”, a book about teaching computer science targeted to secondary and below teachers, many of whom do not have formal training in computer science themselves. Rather than being a manual of how to learn Java1, the book2 instead takes an incredibly high-level approach to computer science. It begins by defining computer science less as bits on the page and more as a formal language. Without continuing this digression, one important topic it mentions is the concept of extended memory.
Extended memory is a concept which more or less says that when you need to look at your phone to remember someone’s phone number, it’s not that you’ve forgotten it, it’s that your brain is using your phone as an external storage device for memory. I really like it as a concept, both because it appears consistent with scientific findings3, but mostly because it is anti-Ludditical. One extended memory I’ve been using since I started this blog4 is a series of journals.
If I remember correctly, I’m now on journal four, which was started November 24, 2019.5 Since switching many of my note-taking and artistic concepts to other media, I’ve struggled to find a use for the journal, which is a large reason why it’s lasted so long. As I’ve mentioned a few other times, I’ve recently started bullet-journaling lite. It’s been really helpful when I decide to do it.
But, what happens when6 I lose the journal itself. In searching for it, I realized that I would be out more than the pages of writings and art that I’ve made, but also my ability to keep organized. I don’t really have a good solution to that, but it made me think about my reliance on this medium. Hopefully over time I will need it less, but I’m not really thinking that’s likely.
First Published: 2022 January 20
Last night I tried switching browsers from metal to the browser which used to be FOSS other than its logo, which prompted the CS department at my local school to use a reskin with a non-copyrighted logo. I really hope I understand what that sentence means in three years.
First Published: 2022 January 19
I’ve recently been thinking about how to live my life more intentionally. Something that I’ve been having a lot of luck with in the past days is having a list of activities to do each day. I really like how well it’s been going for me.