Musings

I'm just copying my father

Home

Reflections on Today’s Gospel

First Published: 2024 December 15

Draft 1

It may have taken 6 years, but I’m finally reflecting on the same Sunday Gospel more than once. While reading today, the two things that most struck me were the fact that the first paragraph of the gospel was almost entirely secular advice, and the second half was almost entirely spiritual. I know that the distinction is not necessarily true, but an atheist should take no issue with anything in the first paragraph.

My other major takeaway was the wheat and the chaff. Since fire was used in reference both to baptism and the burning of the chaff, I read it as saying that we are the wheat whose chaff is being burned off. Chaff, as we all know, is not something independent of wheat. It is the outer covering, which we remove because we don’t want it. Likewise, the sin in us is the chaff that we need to not just separate from, but burn away entirely through the healing power of Christ.

I’m really fatigued today, so that’s all I have, other than a quick look to see what has changed in the past six years.

Ooh! I focused on the fact that it was Advent, and mentioned that we should focus more on the joy aspect of the faith. That’s still true, but it’s interesting how my takeaways have changed through the years.

Goals:

  1. Ave Maria and Salve Regina↩

Learning to Draw

First Published: 2024 December 14

Draft Two

Visual art and music have always felt completely separate to me, in a way that I don’t really think is true of most people. Given the fact that both are what people will point to as “the arts”, or “fine arts”, there’s at least some level of correlation. I can understand part of it. After all, both are endeavors which fundamentally require conveying something within ourselves to the world outside, in a way that isn’t as true for other activities. Both are seen as fundamental to humanity.

As I think about why I consider the two forms so different, I think that the artifacts of practice are incredibly important. When practicing music, there is no direct evidence once you have finished. The notes fade, sound waves dampened by everything around you. When finishing a practice of visual media, by contrast, the page is full of every mistake you’ve made.

The fear at the idea seeing my own mistakes, and the pain of actually witnessing the work I was proud of a day ago has certainly been a discouragement from my continuing the practice. I also don’t know that I’ve ever really figured out a good way to practice the skill. With writing, for instance, I know that everything I write will, on some level, improve all of my writing. I also have relatively clear demarcations for what practice will most impact what part of my craft.1 The same is true of music.

In drawing, by contrast,2 I know that line and shape and form are important, but I still don’t see how studying one thing inherently leads to improved ability to draw something else. On the same thread, I also do not have anything that has ever been a huge motivation as a relatively large project. Even to this day, a motivation for at least some of my music practice is upcoming public performances, which weigh heavily on me. I write as a part of my job. Drawing is not something I’ve done.

And yet, this musing is not about my historical struggles with drawing, it’s about my current goals to learn how to draw. I’ve been working on the skill since about the day that my mother died. I think that it was the next day that I got a sketchbook and started to draw. Primarily I’ve been focusing on figure drawing.

I don’t really know why that is. Certainly I like figures in art, and at least some of the art that I want to create has the human body as a part of it, but I think that a larger reason might just be that the media about learning to draw I’ve consumed lately has been focused on people’s own goals to learn to draw form.

As I continue to draw the human form, though, I am more and more finding the ways that small gestures really do mean the difference between something completely discordant and something pleasant to look at. Simply thickening a line where there is shadow in a reference image adds a surprising amount of depth to the drawing. All this to say, I feel like I’m making progress, even though I don’t really want to go back and see if it’s true. I’m hoping to dedicate some time as I continue to move forward in my life to actively studying how to do it better.

Draft One

Interestingly, it seems that I’ve only ever mused about drawing a single time, almost three years ago now.3 As my goals right now hopefully indicate, I’ve decided that right now I want to learn to draw. I don’t think that this is a new goal, but it’s never been something that I have put for a sustained effort on.

I’m really not sure why I never really learned how to draw. For reference, when I say draw here, I’m using it in the sense of still life or figure, or generally of something vaguely resembling realism. I’ve done plenty of nonrepresentative art4, and I have run up against the borders of insanity more than a few times constructing a knot. Despite this, I still don’t really think that I can draw a guitar, even though there is one sitting in front of me at this exact moment and I can perfectly picture one in my mind.

When reading about learning to draw, a lot of the stories end up similar to those that I see in music spaces from those who enter later in life. Someone, either an authority figure or the general air of authority, convinced people that they were not musical at some fundamental level. Probably because I am a relatively competent musician5, I do not think that was ever the case for me. I also do not lack inspiration for things I would draw. My mind is filled with countless fantastical images that I wish I could convey to the world.

Especially since I have spent the past six6 or so years working on my penmanship, it seems more than a little strange that I haven’t really spent a lot of time with drawing. Of course, paging through my old notebooks does show a good number of pages with different amounts of pedagogically sound drawing practice. Unlike the music that runs through the books, however, there is no through line.

Goals:

  1. at least in theory. Whether or not those are borne out by reality is another matter entirely↩

  2. i keep wanting to just say art, which I know is wrong, and also I’m only really interested in pencil or pen drawing or digital drawing, so might as well just use that↩

  3. I hate that 2022 is three years ago in just a few short weeks↩

  4. representative was the word I was looking for↩

  5. it’s wild what things I do and don’t feel comfortable claiming. I have never felt good about saying that I’m good at music, except when interfacing with someone who I think is wrong about their opinion↩

  6. Oh gosh this blog is old↩

Brain Training

First Published: 2024 December 13

Draft 2

Because I am actively trying to return my library books right now1, I’ve started to actually try to read them. A past version of me was incredibly optimistic, and thought that I would be able to read through tomes upon tomes of information about historical science and synthesiz it into my public facing talks. Of course, life happened, and I did not end up doing so.2 In attempting to read some books which are little more than collections of essays, I have come to realize that I’ve somewhat lost the ability to read essays, especially social science essays. Thinking about my brain as a muscle may have problems from a psychological standpoint3, but it’s been something useful for me in the past. Just like how swimming is harder after taking a break, so too is it harder not just to think, but to think in any particular thought pattern after taking an extended break from it. I recently noticed where my mental strength had waned on Sunday as I tried to write a hymn harmonization. For whatever reasons, I most often find myself writing polyphonic music, or at least homorhythmic music.45 Hymns, by contrast, are almost always homophonic.

That is, there is one single line that can be clearly pointed to as the melody, and the rest act to support it. At a more fundamental level, though, I do not work in the realm of tonal harmony that often.6 Sure, many of the folk songs that I write take the standard I IV V approach, but the music I listen to, cover, and especially write for choirs do not rely on that very limited harmony. Hymns, as a genre, however, operate completely within that sphere. Because I have minimal interest in writing tonal homophony, I was very comfortable with the fact that I have lost those skills.7 By contrast, I’ve realized that I cannot read essays, especially in the way that I used to, and that is something which concerns me, at least a little. I don’t know where the mental fortitude to slog through dense words that are written from an expert in a field to another expert in the same field has gone, but I do know at least a few reasons why I’ve lost it. First, scientific papers are rarely written as essay. These days, most of the time the abstract and conclusion are all that need to be read. If attempting to copy an experiment, than a brief skim of the experimental section is usually sufficient. I am also rarely attempting to do pure literature reviews, where I synthesize a number of papers into a single document without adding new information of my own.8 Now I guess I have to ask myself whether that’s a skill I want back, and if so, how much effort I’m willing to put into it.

Goals:

Draft One

I found myself struggling to think of a topic for today’s musing.9 Potentially relatedly, I’ve been trying to get through the long list of library books that I checked out from the library at my school. Among them are books that have come recommended to me and a number of books I’ve found by simply wandering the stacks. I often forget that History of Science is its own field, and that tends to be to my own detriment. Because of the fact that it is History of, the field’s output more closely resembles that of history than that of science. That does make sense, given that it is tools and techniques from history which enable the research. However, it does mean that I’m being confronted with a fact that I haven’t had reason to realize: I’ve lost my ability to read essays. Hmmm, this is a little too off the topic.

  1. there are a variety of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to me realizing that I’ll never finish if I don’t start and my research being a lot of start a test, wait for hours, check results↩

  2. Ok so to be fair, I don’t know if I can really entirely blame life, especially given what will follow↩

  3. that is a statement that is just obviously true, but↩

  4. I know that there’s a term for music that shares rhythm but is multiple melodies↩

  5. Oh cool the term was homorhythmic↩

  6. I use the definition of tonal meaning something approximating “a single diatonic scale at a time, usually through the entire piece, with emphasis on the I chord, the IV chord acting as sub dominant, V as dominant, and resolutions at I. Usually this means that the seventh resolves to the first and the fourth resolves to the third.”↩

  7. For those then asking why I’m practicing it now, the answer boils down to the fact that the conductor I’m hoping to write music for generally likes homophony and relatively tonal music↩

  8. that feels like it might have come off somewhat aggressively towards the social sciences. That wasn’t the goal, and I absolutely think that synthesis is value, even if it is not explicitly novel in the same way as measuring something for the first time.↩

  9. No, I don’t have any good answer for how I pick between calling it a musing and a blog↩

Donut Recipe

First Published: 2024 December 12

Draft One

Wildly enough, I don’t think that I’ve ever written a blog post with the word “recipe” in the url. I’m almost positive that I’ve given at least a few recipes, so that might be a bit of an issue. However, that is not the purpose of today’s musing. As the title1 probably indicated, I’m going to talk about my donut recipe.

As with most of the things that I cook these days, there was minimal measuring involved. In general, this tends to work out, because I generally work with continuous ingredients.2 That is, if the dough is ever so slightly too dry, I can add functionally any amount of water to the dough to hydrate it slightly more. In the specific case of the donut3 dough, though, I do somewhat regret not measuring anything, because I used one of the only discrete ingredients in the average baker’s toolkit4: the egg.5

As a result, rather than simply describing a texture, I feel somewhat as though I need to at least approximate the recipe I used. My best guess is as follows:

  1. Pour flour, sugar, liqueur, salt, vanilla, and first tablespoon of yeast into a large bowl.

  2. Crack in two large eggs

  3. Pour the milk on top and stir with a wooden spoon10. Texture should be about the same as slime, or slightly thicker. That is, it should be very sticky, but when you stir, you should easily watch it pull away from the edges of the bowl.

  4. Cover and let sit for two hours.11

  5. After two hours, remember that for some reason you can never get yeast to rise when poured directly in milk, so add final tsp of yeast into water in a small container. Wait until frothy and stir into the dough.

  6. Cover and wait 68 hours.12

  7. Dough should be approximately doubled in volume. Punch it down by using spoon to lever the dough off the rim of the bowl.13 Because it is a very wet dough, might take some effort to deflate.

  8. Cover again and wait until clearly risen once again

Now, I am always a fan of doing things a little extra. The previous time I made an iteration of this recipe14, I think that I wrapped the dough around oreos. This time, at request of the people I am feeding them to, I had three fillings: oreo, biscoff, and whole strawberries. With this in mind, recipe will continue:

  1. If filling donut with a solid, take enough dough15 to cover the object and wrap it. Because we used high protein flour, you can stretch the dough a fair amount. Don’t16 worry about that, the donuts will puff in the oven. The older cookbook I found recommends rolling to 3/8 inch thick and cutting from there, so if afraid, use that as a baseline

  2. As each donut is made, place it on a greased sheet pan17. It is ideal to wait at least five minutes after forming the donuts before frying them, though if you wait to heat your oil until you’ve finished shaping the donuts, you’ll likely be fine

  3. When filling, dough, or shaper is exhausted, heat a pot full of a good frying oil to 35018 Follow normal frying safety when frying.

  4. When oil reaches 350F19, add as many donuts as you see fit. I found that in my wok, 1214 was about as many as I could reasonably fit, though I did manage 20 at once.

  5. Using a wooden spoon20, gently stir the donuts as they fry, flipping them if one side appears to be blonder than the other.

  6. Pull from oil when golden brown21, drain, and let cool on paper towels.22

  7. When cool enough to handle23, dip in icing of choice.

  8. Allow to cool fully! This is an important one, because the inside will likely retain heat better than the outside.24

By mentioning the icing, some might wonder about the recipe. The oreo donuts were topped with vanilla icing, and the strawberry were topped with a lemon icing.

I think that about sums it up!

Goals:

  1. and likely URL↩

  2. can you tell that I’ve been thinking a lot about quantum chemistry lately?↩

  3. my spellchecker and the cookbook I used last night insist it’s doughnut. Hmm wonder what gardner says. Tragic, he’s on team dough because of ingredient. However, given that it’s a 15  to one ratio, I think that I’m going to feel justified with moving the lexicon forward↩

  4. I did absolutely sit and think for a long little bit about what ingredients might be in a baker’s kit that are functionally discrete. Chocolate chips are, but almost never will they be treated as such, since they normally are done by volume. (I also roped a friend into this) An entire whole spice, such as cinnamon bark or a vanilla bean, is similar. Fruits and vegetables maybe, especially if used whole (I never know what to do with onion)↩

  5. more accurately, two eggs, but↩

  6. because it’s what I had. Given the way I use it, probably not a bad idea to use bread flour or other high protein↩

  7. I think↩

  8. I feel a familial obligation to use Gran Marnier, but A: the grocery store did not have it, and B: the store brand was much cheaper↩

  9. entirely because I buy yeast by the pound, and I hate to measure↩

  10. you probably don’t have to use wood, but it’s what I did↩

  11. since everything I used came from the fridge, I put in a slightly warmed oven↩

  12. could probably wait less time, but like bed, you know?↩

  13. I generally assume you use a bowl that will be completely filled and doming when the dough finishes rising↩

  14. 24 May 2022↩

  15. I usually need to sprinkle a little bit of flour on the dough constantly, don’t be afraid of that fact↩

  16. a pun you can’t make with the “approved” spelling↩

  17. or something else↩

  18. There are so many schools of thought to this. If you have money to spare, I have heard great things about avocado oil. If you have slightly less, peanut oil is often recommended. I personally “splurge” (in the grad student sense) by buying canola oil rather than vegetable oil, because I like at least nominally knowing where the hydrocarbons are from. In general, high smoke point, minimal flavor is the goal↩

  19. I really hope no one reading this (lol) assumed 350 C and didn’t keep reading ahead. Oh well, not changing it↩

  20. again, probably optional, though I like to think that the wood is less likely to damage the donuts↩

  21. if in doubt, another 30 seconds probably won’t hurt↩

  22. J. Kenji Lopez Alt did find that they work better than cookie trays for draining oil↩

  23. so for me: immediately to 30 seconds later. To a saner person, a few minutes later↩

  24. why yes, I did have a mouthful of hot strawberry this morning, why do you ask↩

Goal Updates and Scheduling

First Published: 2024 December 10

Draft One:

I know that I literally made the goals less than a week ago, but I have already forgotten them. With that in mind, I think that it might be good to start going through the goals I’ve accomplished, and organizing the ones I have left so I have a reminder.

Having forgotten about most of these, stretching is really the only one I’ve been particularly good about doing. I did write a hymn harmonization on Sunday, though, which I suppose is a good thing! I think that now is a great time to begin putting explicit time markers on my life. I know that my schedule will change when I begin to teach again next semester, but the first of those is at 11 AM, so in theory I can schedule anything I like before then. It might be worth considering locales as well.

For those events which happen multiple times a week, that means setting aside multiple blocks of time. For writing the song, I think that one time on Sunday makes sense, since I’ll already be doing music, and the other maybe on Wednesday. Great, they’re in at 8AM those two days, and I’ll for now plan on doing them at home.

For pop science, I think that Friday mornings could be a good day, and it would be nice to do them in a coffee shop. That means I need to pick one out on Thursday and print it out, since I’d like to avoid having to use my computer.1 I’ve booked it an hour a week, starting at 8am this Friday.

When do I want to work on drawing? Realistically, whenever. I know that I want to do it at home, though, if only because it’s embarrassing to have others see my work. MTWR makes sense to me? I get a long weekend off of it, which would be cool. In at 7 50 am so that on Wednesdays it will not conflict with music time.

I have scheduled 3 to 5 pm on Sundays for reflecting on the Gospel and writing the hymn harmonization, and 4PM Saturday for prereading it.

That takes care of all the weekly events, so now it’s time to start scheduling the daily events! I recently got an app that asks me about my day at start and end, and I’m going to treat that as good enough for now. 715 to 725 will daily be guitar time. I haven’t quite figured out where musing is going to fit into my schedule, but I think that it might help to figure out what my days actually contain on a weekly basis first.

725 to 740 is booked each day for the first stretch, and the second will happen before bed. I don’t think that I want to do daily affirmations, and I’ll plan to walk to the pool daily at 1050 am, except for Wednesdays, when I’ll move it to 10 AM.2

Wow, it feels kind of nice to have the whole day scheduled out like that. I know that tomorrow we will not be able to follow the schedule exactly, because it takes me more than 20 minutes to get ready and to work, and I have to be at work at 850. Guess everything gets shifted back 15 minutes! I hope that I’ll find a way to make this routine both helpful to me and also maintainable.

  1. though I suppose the ipad might also be a good choice.↩

  2. and other days maybe, whenever I have an 11am meeting↩

A Few Happy Memories

First Published: 2024 December 9

Draft One:

As I mentioned in my last musing, I’ve run into the issue of trying to do highly emotionally charged musings at times and places where that is not necessarily conducive to finishing them. With that in mind, and keeping in mind the two desires that these musings result from: wanting to feel close to my mother still and wanting to muse more often, I thought that it might be good to just go through a few quick and happy memories I have of my mother while they’re as fresh as they’ll ever be again.

There is a slight issue in doing this, though, because so much of my relationship with her was about the constancy, so the many conversations we have blur into one cohesive sense of warmth. One memory that comes to mind right now, though, is from Hanukkah one of the years that I was in high school.

It was during one of the phases that either I or my father1 were in the space of connecting to our Jewish heritage, and so we were lighting the candles. On Wednesday, though, we2 had Religious Education, and for some reason my father was not available to watch the candles burn. So, she had me take the menorah to the church basement, and I lit them before class. It was shocking to me how many Catholics, especially confirmed ones, were so unaware of the Jewish roots of our faith.

I think that it ended up derailing the planned class discussion, because rather than talking about whatever the planned lesson was, we talked about Hanukkah and the Church’s relationship to Jewry.

The other memory coming to me right now is when she said something which more and more I’ve come to realize is both absolutely fundamental to my own faith and also not incredibly common: all theology needs to be rooted entirely in love. That is, when speaking against something, love has to be central to the entire argument. Rather than using fear of damnation and hellfire, using the knowledge that the Lord is Love and that love is our highest calling is not just the key to good apologetics.

Honestly, the more I think about those words, the more that I find them benefiting my life. The more I can act and speak from a place of love, and the more that I try to ascribe good intentions to others, the better the world seems and the better my relationships become.

I also remember the first time that I crocheted a basic hat for my mother. She was bemoaning losing hair from her cancer treatments, and asked me to make her a hat. It took me a few hours of half attention, but I saw her wearing it so much afterwards. I know that it’s so trite to talk about how the smallest things we do can have the largest impacts, but I do truly find that to be the case.

In short, I miss you mom, but I wouldn’t trade my memories for anything.

  1. or quite possibly both of us↩

  2. I and my mother↩

Reflection

First Published: 2024 December 9

Draft One Written 7 December 2024

It’s been more than a day since my last post, which is not exactly what my goal was. Alas, the world is what it is, and I became far too optimistic about how much mental and emotional energy I had and would need to write the posts that I had been planning.1 Still, I do know myself well enough to know that daily musing does, in fact, make me feel generally better about life, and since I want to get back to writing my web serial2, this feels like the good and gently way to slowly edge back into it. With that in mind, I think that I’m going to treat this like I treat the beginning of most periods of my life, and go for some goal creation. Unlike most of my reflection posts, however, I’m not going to be looking back at old goals.3

Also unlike most of my reflections, I don’t think that I’m going to focus on deliverables as much.4 I know that there’s a lot of research talking about how goals are best when they’re actionable and etc., but the most important of the things that I want to accomplish in the next few months aren’t really the sort of thing that one can break down piece by piece. Anyways, with that disclaimer out of the way, time to stream of consciousness some goals, which I’ll then organize into time frames, etc.

Ok well that feels like a good enough list, if one that’s probably both too vague and too specific at the same time. I know that setting really optimistic goals for myself rarely works out, so I’m going to try to avoid that if at all possible. With this in mind, what’s a good way to break up the goals? There’s something to be said for timelines, there’s also something to be said for actionable versus overarching goals. Maybe I’ll just go through them all and think about how I can work on them before the year ends? That seems reasonable enough. Other than that, I’ll compile the list so that I have starting material for the future. So, without commentary, my goals for the foreseeable future right now are:12

So, since working on all these things at once would be, frankly, insane, let’s set come up with at least one way that I could work on each of them as a goal before the New Year, and then compile a list of what I’ll actually do.

Huh wow, that was far easier than I expected.

Given how many of these seem to be schedule based, scheduling my life is clearly a must. Since none of these are things that absolutely have to be done before the end of the year, I think that it might be best to focus on the bigger picture ones, like compiling lists. With that in mind, my goals for year end are:

Well, that’s honestly not the worst list I’ve ever made. I do love how many of them are list based, if I’m being totally honest. For now, however, I’m going to step away, if only because I don’t want to burn out too early.

  1. Thinking I had far more and it would take far less, respectively↩

  2. I’m terrified to see what comments have been left while I’ve been away↩

  3. for the triad of reasons: I don’t want to, I’m worried about what I’ll find, I don’t know how applicable they are to my day to day these days↩

  4. or, at least, I don’t intend to.↩

  5. I always hate ending sentences with an abbreviation that uses a period↩

  6. which, by words, I have done↩

  7. maybe one for the parish (pastorate?) day, or else one for the Church’s patron? Will consider, and probably ask my fellow choristers↩

  8. I know that that is a relatively sad goal, but it is what it is↩

  9. not that I do not still have any number of motivators, just that they aren’t the primary motivator↩

  10. if only nominally↩

  11. that is to say, find a way to make it so I can make food that nourishes my body, doesn’t leave me craving, and is doable with the life I live↩

  12. feels so weird to say that, as though there’s nothing else that I’m hoping to strive for, but it is kind of true↩

  13. I think that I forgot to give this its own bullet point↩

  14. this one is new as I compiled the list, but I really hate the way that my life is a mess (physically speaking, if not metaphorically).↩

  15. I think that I forgot to give this its own bullet point↩

  16. that is, figure out what occasion I could write a song for that would actually get performed↩

  17. in general, I do want to get better at composition and music, and I think that writing the song was my way of saying that↩

  18. i hate that I’m not allowed to end a sentence with abbreviated I have↩

  19. lol↩

  20. That didn’t work super well last time, but maybe this time↩

  21. as two footnotes above↩

  22. I’m not putting any further details here, because I um don’t want to incriminate myself further/make it something problematic (not that I have any ill intentions, just writing something semi publicly makes anything seem more nefarious↩

  23. I know this one is new even here, but it is something I’ve always wanted to be able to do, and it’s something that I can absolutely do systematically↩

On Music Memories

First Published: 2024 November 12

Draft Three

My mother died between my last posting of this blog and now. Looking at the calendar, there were a solid two months between when I stopped and when we learned that her death was imminent. However, as I find myself avoiding both this blog and thinking about her, I find that I’m spending far too much mental energy that can no longer be used for anything I want to spend time on. So, today I want to use my musing to put down in writing some key memories I have with my mother in relation to music.

The first memory that keeps coming to my mind happened sometime while I was in high school or college. We were in her truck, driving to Williamsburg.1 We started listening to some music on my phone through the car speakers, and ended up on a Johnny Cash album. Eventually we got to his Christmas album, where my mom and I joked about the fact that he didn’t really sing so much as speak while a gospel choir behind him sang. What sticks out to me, though, is her discussing recording technology.

She claimed2 that, before mono and stereo had gained supremacy, there was a period of time that music was recorded to be played through four locations at once. Apparently a lot of Johnny Cash was recorded in that form, and the sound was somehow fundamentally off for only being stereo.

Although not a single event, there was a recurring conversation through my life. I would be listening to Harry Chapin, my mother would express how much she loved his music, and my dad would make some comment about how it was too saccharine or not actually folk.3 The music I find myself listening to when I want to just listen to music is so inherently shaped by the music she4 introduced me to.

Some of it5 may not have been the most developmentally appropriate music for children.6 Right now I can’t remember any specific instances of her singing along with the music, but given how much my brothers and I do, it feels like she must have, at least while we were younger.

Less a memory of her and music in particular, I do recall conversations we had starting in high school, where I really began to realize how close my family was. After one of my concerts7, she mentioned that another parent was shocked at how her children were always at their siblings events. My mother made some retort along the lines of “I don’t make that an option.” That framing doesn’t convey what she meant though.

To my mother, family was something that deserved our complete support. It wasn’t a question that we would be at each other’s events because it wasn’t a question that we would support each other. As she was in her final days, that was something that we returned to. Despite the fact that she was incredibly busy with her work8, she made herculean efforts to make it to every one of our9 events. It was this unequivocal and unconditional love and support that gave me the confidence to be who I am.

Returning to the subject of music, my mother would often have her coworkers over for holiday parties when we were younger. Once my brother and I were at an age where we were competent at music, she would ask us if we wanted to play for the events. We, being the attention seekers that we were10, took her up on the offer.

Honestly, the last two reflections do a lot to clarify to me why I have so much difficulty coming up with single instances of memory. The way she raised me11 was so full of love that any individual event falls into the general haze of positive love. I do remember her mentioning her mother’s love of bagpipes when I took them up, and that helped me feel connected to my family.

She played guitar when I was younger, though stopped as we grew older and she became busier. In her last months, she wanted to return to guitar, but I don’t think managed to do so. She’s the reason that I took up guitar.

Much as I miss my mother, I wouldn’t trade any of my memories of her for another day with her. Tears are starting to well in my eyes right now, though, which feels like a good reason to stop musing here.

Draft Two

I find myself realizing that I don’t recall ever truly spending time to reflect on my relationship to ordered sound.12 Right now, I find myself incredibly reflective on a lot of things, even as I find it incredibly difficult to think at all. There are any number of reasons for this, but the most crucial of these is the fact that my mother died a month and four days ago.

I know the last time that I said goodbye to her, the last time I said goodbye to her body, and the last time I said goodbye to the idea of her as a physical part of my life. What I cannot recall with anywhere as much clarity, however, is the last thing that she said to me, when she last said it, or the last time I saw her awake. My little brother and I both realized at her wake that, for all that we had done our best as a family to prepare for her death, we had forgotten to get her to record a short voicemail that simply said she loved us.

Rather than dwell on that,13 I will instead focus on something that she instilled in me from a very young age: a love for music.14 She often expressed shock that all three of her sons ended up as musical as we did, which never made sense to me.15 From a young age, she encouraged all of us to do a lot of music, especially vocal music.

However, my musing today is not meant to focus on my relationship to performing music.16 Instead, I want to focus on my relationship to listening to music, and what music means to me. I might also spend some time thinking about some memories I hold deeply with my mother, if only so that there’s a record of that. Actually, that sounds like a much better choice.

I’ll save the general musing for another day. Today we will muse on

Draft One

For some reason, I am convinced that I’ve written a musing on music and my own relationship to it before. However, a quick search does not bring anything up, other than a very short one which mostly discusses my own relationship with music. So, my goal here, in addition to restarting the blog again17, is to spend some time really thinking about my relationship to sound in general, and music in particular.

When I was younger, I used to have a constant soundtrack following me while I was at home. There were any number of reasons for this, but one that I had not realized until I found myself in the boundary waters, unable to fill my life with constant sound, was that it kept me from dwelling on negative thoughts.

Now, writing that brings me to something that’s been keeping me from writing here for the past month or so. Especially since returning to America and restarting this blog, I’ve tried my best to avoid identifying others, or even really to put too much of my own personal life in this blog. However, I don’t know if that really serves me. Without writing it here, I have seen over the past month that I just don’t write at all.

A month and four days ago18, my mother died. The soundtrack which followed me in middle school kept me from thinking about the death of my grandmothers. The constant sound I use right now doesn’t really feel like it serves the same purpose.

In part, I think that might have something to do with the way that my own relationship to sound has changed. Mr. Tanner, a song which once occupied the entirety of my mind, no longer stops me from wearing deeper ruts in my unhealthy mental spirals. Studying music for a degree has given me new ways to abstract myself from what my ears experience. And, I think as importantly, I am twice as old as I was then. My relationship to my mind and body is fundamentally different.

Still, though, I do and have generally filled my time and ears with constant noise for a while, even predating my loss. For a while, that took the form of any number of audiobooks, especially while I was traveling places or otherwise engaged in activities that did not require my full focus.19 I cannot listen to audiobooks when needing to read, write, or otherwise focus my mind, however, and so I have thought a lot about the music I can use to work, if only because people are distracting and I work in a shared office space.

Music with words shares many of the same problems that an audiobook brings, though to a lesser extent.20 I find myself listening to the words more than to what I’m writing.21

Classical music makes me remember my days as a student, and I find myself trying to follow the flow of counterpoint. Soundtracks, another popular option, never catch my interest enough to have playing for a while. I’ve always had an interest in minimalist music,22 and that helped for a little bit.

Music for Airports, in particular, gave me an incredibly productive little while to work. However, more and more, I find myself realizing that the music I truly prefer is process music. As I have written this musing so far, I’ve been listening to “Piano Phase” by Steve Reich.

It’s a really interesting exploration of what happens when two pianos play the same simple motif at slightly different tempi. It explores the phase space of each note lying in relation to each other, and has a real sense of tension and release, despite being so few notes. However, it is repetitive enough that there it lets me continue to focus on my work.

In general, I find that right now I’m incredibly interested in the way that art can become obsessive. Villanelles, which are often seen as an inherently obsessive poetic form, are the only kind of poetry that my fingers seem willing to type.23 I’m sure that I could psychoanalyze that desire, and how it relates to the loss that I’ve experienced, but we’ve already left the initial topic of this essay so much that it hardly seems worth continuing this draft.24

  1. why we were driving there, whether we stopped there, any other details about the event I cannot recall at this point.↩︎

  2. and I unquestioningly believed, and have to this day never really bothered to confirm↩︎

  3. because apparently if you have a full orchestra and gospel choir you can’t call yourself a folk artist↩︎

  4. and my father, who actually purchased the music generally↩︎

  5. the Bad Examples, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, among others↩︎

  6. Arguably Bat out of Hell, even if I didn’t really pick up on the sexual supertext (I don’t know what to call something that is more blatant than outright stating) until recently↩︎

  7. more accurately, a concert in which I was a member of the ensemble↩︎

  8. which her wake would have us think meant constantly causing formative positive experiences in everyone she interacted with↩︎

  9. objectively excessively many↩︎

  10. are↩︎

  11. not speaking for my brothers, though I am almost positive they feel the same way↩︎

  12. or disordered sound, but music is a much more interesting thing to talk about than just “I am easily over stimulated”↩︎

  13. Tears formed in my eyes, and it immediately became hard to breathe. While that is absolutely a sign that I should spend time reflecting on this more, now doesn’t feel like the time↩︎

  14. of course, she was not unique in this. My father, brother, extended family, schooling, and so much more did the same, but, potentially for the emotionally charged reasons, the most emotive memories I have of music are with her↩︎

  15. That isn’t entirely true. She had been told often that she couldn’t sing well, and as I think about it, she didn’t tend to sing as far as I can remember. That’s sad, though for other reasons.↩︎

  16. Small’s “Musicking” aside, I do still think that there’s a difference to me in being the consumer or producer of music.↩︎

  17. For a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I want to be writing a lot more words↩︎

  18. as of the day of writing this↩︎

  19. playing video games, knitting, embroidery, and so on. Unfortunately practicing scales never became something I could do that for. Stretching, on the other hand, has always been a great way for me to feel great about listening to a book.↩︎

  20. of course, the fact that I do not listen to music at three times speed might have something to do with that↩︎

  21. for all that I don’t think I have a mental voice when I read, I know that I do when I write↩︎

  22. maybe not always, but for as long as I can easily remember, at least↩︎

  23. outside of a few needlessly dark songs, but that’s neither here nor there.↩︎

  24. wow meta↩︎

On Writer’s Slumps

First Published: 2024 July 2

Draft 1

I’ve written at least a few times about writer’s block. Today, however, a friend asked me to write about being in a writer’s slump. Despite not being within the friend’s own lived experience, I do feel like I have at least a vague idea of what was being referred to.

Writer’s slump, as I see it, at least, is at least apparently different than writer’s block. In writer’s block, the motivation to write is there, even if the ability feels as though it is not. In a writer’s slump, however, the motivation to write has vanished.

Most of the time, what manifests as writer’s block is itself a form of writer’s slump, at least for me. That is, most of the time that I feel as though I cannot think of anything to write, I am really just in a position where I don’t want to write, for whatever reason. As such, I hope that my methods for dealing with writer’s block can be at least a little helpful for an acute writer’s slump. Given that the friend is in more of a chronic writer’s slump, however, I don’t know if the advice is as helpful.

Of course, the first question I find myself asking when a hobby that once brought me joy no longer does is whether I have an interest in anything. My desire to do any particular hobby often ebbs and flows due to life situations and my own experience with the hobby. Sometimes it isn’t the season of my life to be doing any given hobby, and I find that being intentional about setting it aside1 does a lot to inspire me to pick the hobby back up when the season is correct again. If, for whatever reason,2 nothing seems like a hobby I want, then I address that instead.

However, that answer doesn’t always work. As someone who has made a commitment to publishing a large amount of content, for example, I do not always have the luxury of setting it aside. More than that, sometimes writing in particular is something that needs to be done completely independent of my motivation. So, how do I keep up with a hobby when I don’t want to, especially one like writing?

One of the best things I’ve found is simply journaling a little bit, especially since my writing is usually done on the computer. Writing the date and then simply listing what I want to write and why often helps inspire me to writing. When that fails to inspire me, I often find that typing a motivational phrase3 helps me to remember why I’m writing. That leads to the best piece of advice that I have, which is to figure out why I want to write whatever I claim to want to write. If the goal is simply to write for the sake of writing, then I often swap between writing vaguely related to my thesis, the book I’m writing, inspiration for other books I’d like to write, and this blog depending on which feels best. When the goal is to write something in particular, however, I try to find a motivation that remains resonant to myself.

If all this fails, of course, I rely on external motivation in the forms of bribes and threats.

  1. often literally. If I have a physical project that works, I will move it a few feet away into a place where, although still visible (because anything I cannot see doesn’t exist), I have actively chosen not to engage with it↩︎

  2. cough cough, burnout, other things that aren’t going on the blog↩︎

  3. I’m partial to “the only way out is through, the only way through is forward, and the only way forward is going” myself, but that is because the phrase has taken an almost ritual meaning to me↩︎

Semi-Yearly Reflection

First Published: 2024 July 1

Draft 1

Well, it’s been half of a year! Despite the fact that I haven’t really blogged at all1, I do still want to keep making progress on all of my goals. Since it’s the first of a month, and the first of the quarter and half of the year, it seems like a good idea to potentially look through all of my goals and see where they’re at. My monthly goals2 were:

Moving to the yearly goals, I am somewhat curious about whether they still feel resonant and whether I’ve made adequate progress on them.4

Well then, with all this in mind, what are my goals for the month?

With this in mind, the daily reflections will be:

Given that the day isn’t quite halfway done right now, I’m debating between publishing this now and then adding a new draft later, and just waiting to post it until closer to bedtime. I’m leaning towards the latter, as it will give me more time to get items on the list finished.

Having now gotten to the end of the day:

  1. including after my post claiming that I would restart, whoops↩︎

  2. admittedly in January↩︎

  3. and I kind of want to plot out every chapter until the end of the arc↩︎

  4. Given that we’re halfway through the year, being halfway to the goal seems like something reasonable↩︎

  5. on? like it’s in works↩︎

  6. and I think that I lost another of them, though I have no clue where it could have gone (which I suppose is evidence for its being lost)↩︎

  7. technically still remains, because I do really need to drive up there sometime soon↩︎

  8. well a new to me one.↩︎

  9. meaning like decide that there’s nothing in the content that I need↩︎

Newer Older