Home

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.

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

why we were driving there, whether we stopped there, any other details about the event I cannot recall at this point.↩︎
and I unquestioningly believed, and have to this day never really bothered to confirm↩︎
because apparently if you have a full orchestra and gospel choir you can’t call yourself a folk artist↩︎
and my father, who actually purchased the music generally↩︎
the Bad Examples, Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, among others↩︎
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↩︎
more accurately, a concert in which I was a member of the ensemble↩︎
which her wake would have us think meant constantly causing formative positive experiences in everyone she interacted with↩︎
objectively excessively many↩︎
are↩︎
not speaking for my brothers, though I am almost positive they feel the same way↩︎
or disordered sound, but music is a much more interesting thing to talk about than just “I am easily over stimulated”↩︎
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↩︎
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↩︎
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.↩︎
Small’s “Musicking” aside, I do still think that there’s a difference to me in being the consumer or producer of music.↩︎
For a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I want to be writing a lot more words↩︎
as of the day of writing this↩︎
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.↩︎
of course, the fact that I do not listen to music at three times speed might have something to do with that↩︎
for all that I don’t think I have a mental voice when I read, I know that I do when I write↩︎
maybe not always, but for as long as I can easily remember, at least↩︎
outside of a few needlessly dark songs, but that’s neither here nor there.↩︎
wow meta↩︎

On Writer’s Slumps

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.

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

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

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.

including after my post claiming that I would restart, whoops↩︎
admittedly in January↩︎
and I kind of want to plot out every chapter until the end of the arc↩︎
Given that we’re halfway through the year, being halfway to the goal seems like something reasonable↩︎
on? like it’s in works↩︎
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)↩︎
technically still remains, because I do really need to drive up there sometime soon↩︎
well a new to me one.↩︎
meaning like decide that there’s nothing in the content that I need↩︎

Restarting (Again (again again again))

Draft 1

At some point I should really stop just appending a new again to the end of the title. Of course, at some point I should really either stop giving up on the blog or give up on it forever.¹ That being said, neither of those are happening now.

I’ve started to get the familiar summer itch² to restart the blog, and so here we are. Very few updates since last time, though of course, if you’re interested, they’re mostly available on my yearly goal tracker. In general, I think that I’ve been doing fairly well, which is nice to be able to say.

Anyways, I’ve now basically given up on the post for the day, so I’m going to post this. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be up to the rest of the reflecting I should do.

hmm actually no I do really think that there’re points in my lives wherein the blog is better or worse for me. That being said, I do generally feel like the majority of points in my life are at least not worsened by the presence of a daily blog post, and it does help me to remain more reflective↩︎
ok so scrolling through the calendar of my posts, it doesn’t really seem like there’s a rhythm or rhyme based on the pseudo solar calendar we all know and love↩︎

Thesis Appendix: Rotational Spectroscopy Primer

Draft 2

There are any number of texts which derive and define rotational spectroscopy from first principles.¹ The goal of this work is not to produce a thorough and mathematically rigorous derivation of rotational energy and transitions, but instead to provide a high level overview of the concepts and ideas which underlie this thesis. Rotational spectroscopy probes the lowest energy of the quantized transitions in a molecule. Most texts which derive rotational spectroscopy begin with the simplest case: a diatomic² molecule. These molecules have a simple and algebraic³ expression for both the energy of a given level and the energy of transitions between the levels. There are also fairly rigorous rules for what transitions are “allowed.”⁴ From there, the texts will move to the more difficult cases of a general linear molecule⁵ , a planar molecule⁶ , a spherical top, and then the two forms of a symmetric top: oblate and prolate. Only then will the texts get to the solution for the most common problems faced by spectroscopists: asymmetric tops.

One benefit of deriving spectroscopy in that manner is that certain assumptions and simplifications seem more sensible when presented in those orders. However, as mentioned, this is not a rigorous treatment, and so hand waves will be needed. First, what is a molecule?

A molecule, in rotational spectroscopy, at least, is something which meets two criteria: it is comprised of specific atoms⁷ arranged in a specific pattern.⁸ What can we do with that knowledge? First, we must assume that the molecule rotates completely rigidly. That is, the energy we apply to it does not change the structure at all, and rotational energy is completely separable from vibrational energy.¹⁰ Once we have done so, however, we can simplify the problem significantly.

A molecule can have any arbitrary number of atoms any arbitrary distance apart from one another.¹¹ Since we would like our solution to be generally useful, rather than starting from the beginning for each molecule, we then define an axis through which we hit the greatest mass of nuclei.¹² This axis is known as C. We then pick the axis orthogonal to this which contains the greatest mass of nuclei that we can still reach, B. At this point, there is a single axis remaining: A.

Once we have our molecule arranged in these axes, we reduce it to a three dimensional object by taking its reduced mass. That is, we look at the distance each atom has from each axis and multiply it by the mass of the atom, then sum over the entire molecule.¹³ We do the same with the expected position of the electrons, and this gives us the dipole in each direction.¹⁴ The dipoles are only relevant as a scaling factor for the expected magnitude of a rotational transition.

Having now reduced our molecule to three moments of inertia, we can define the rotational constants, which are simply the inverse of the moments of inertia.¹⁵ You may notice that A is definitionally smaller or equal to B and the same for C. When B is equal to A or C, we can treat the molecule as a symmetric top, which has a general analytic solution. If none of the constants are equal, however, we can only solve for the energy in matrix form.

What does it mean to solve for the energy of a molecule in matrix form? Tl;dr, there are three diagonals that we fill in, and the quantum numbers are only vaguely meaningful anymore.¹⁶ Along the main diagonal, the matrix adds a minus E. When setting the determinant to 0, you can solve for E. It turns out that every rotational level J has 2J+1 energy levels available.¹⁷ Because the matrix can be rearranged into a tridiagonal matrix, the solution is far faster.

In general, the rotational energies of a molecule are almost never solved for symbolically. There are a variety of reasons for this, most of which come down to the redundancy of doing so. Solving a numeric matrix is something that computers are famously optimized for, and A B and C can be at least roughly estimated given a molecule.

Of course, even slight errors in calculating A, B, or C will result in lines being shifted from their predicted locations. The goal of fitting a spectrum, then, takes a guess for A, B, and C and a known spectrum of the molecule, and forces the two together. In general, the constants can be predicted with fairly high accuracy using modern computational methods.

Of course, the earlier assumption about rigid rotors is not entirely accurate. Those familiar with vibrational spectroscopy may be aware of the harmonic approximation used in that spectroscopy. As most rotational transitions have been historically assigned within the ground vibrational state of molecules, quartic distortions, which account for the quadratic shape of the energy well, are often needed. In fact, as Gordy and Cook note¹⁸ , by solving for quartic distortion terms, the slope of the well can be found. As higher energy transitions and higher sensitivity instruments are used, corrections to the quadratic well can be added, though only on even powered terms.¹⁹ Add in a few selection rules, and tada you have rotational spectroscopy.

² and therefore inherently linear. There are so many ways to prove that any two points can be connected with a single line, and given the whole “this is not meant to be mathematically rigorous”, it is left as an exercise to the reader to prove that the molecule is linear

³ meaning you can write one expression once for all values that the energy can take

⁴ scare quotes because forbidden transitions still occur. In much of astrochemistry, the forbidden transitions are actually the most easily detected

⁵ there are an infinite number of ways you can construct a line from any number of atoms in a molecule

⁶ two dimensions! Spicy. Also yes, we will ignore the fact that these molecules are not infinitely thin, and so are never inherently linear or planar

⁷ the fungibility of atoms will not be discussed in detail here, but isotopes and other charge differences are actually relevant, which sometimes throws people off

⁸ that is, structural isomers⁹ or even different shapes of the same molecule will have different rotational spectra

¹⁰ that is an assumption we do correct for later, but note that it is a correction, rather than an actual solution

¹¹ there is a question about how well rigid rotor approximation would work on like HeH+ infinitely far apart, but if you assume rigid rotor, it does work, I suppose

¹³ it feels like a centered molecule should have 0, but it turns out that we do not end up with that, which is pretty dang cool. There might also be a square somewhere, distance rather than just displacement, but I’m not being rigorous at this point

¹⁴ wow look at that handwave. what do we mean by expected position of an electron and everyything else I said? ask ur chem prof bruh

¹⁶ this is way too handwavey, but it’s getting to be bed time and I want to just post this more than I want to get through this rigorously right now

¹⁹ i think that this might be too handwavey. Should read again in the morning, even though I know that I probably wont

Draft 1

a] Rotational transitions are the lowest energy of the quantized ways that a molecule can absorb and emit energy. There is probably more to say about that, but I don’t have the energy to do so right now.

There are any number of texts which derive and define the way that rotational spectroscopy works¹ , and the goal of this work is not to go through a thorough and mathematically rigorous definition of a Hamiltonian, let alone a rotational Hamiltonian. Instead, the goal of this appendix² is to provide a high level overview of how to conceptualize the contents necessary to understanding most of this text. So, we can begin by demystifying the opening sentence: “rotational transitions are the lowest energy of quantized ways that a molecule can absorb and emit energy”. What does that mean?

Rotational transitions are more or less what they sound like. A molecule is rotating at one speed, and then it starts rotating at another. Unlike a bike wheel, however, the speeds that a molecule can rotate at are not continuous. That is, a molecule can only be rotating at very specific energies (quantized).

It is the lowest energy of these quantized transitions, which implies the existence of other transitions. There are, indeed, other molecular transitions: vibrational and electronic. Electronic transitions will not be covered at all in this work, and vibrational transitions will only be covered as necessary to explain breakdowns in the standard rotational model. However, claiming that rotational transitions are the lowest energy of quantized ways, that implies that there is at least one way for a molecule to absorb and emit energy that is not quantized. And, indeed, we find that molecules³ can move at any arbitrary speed, using translational motion.

What do we mean by a molecule? Now, there are any number of ways to define a molecule. There is the classic reductionist view popular among physicists and physical chemists: a molecule is a collection of atoms bound together by different forces.⁴ There is the opposite view, from an observational perspective: a molecule is the smallest unit that a thing can have. That is, although molecules are made of atoms, breaking molecules fundamentally means changing the material you are working with. The specific placement, numbering, and kind of atoms in a molecule is essential to understanding the molecule itself. Both of these definitions will be necessary to understand rotational spectroscopy.

What does it mean to absorb and emit energy? Energy, as far as this text is concerned, takes two forms: potential and photon. That is, molecules can absorb energy, taking in photons and moving to less stable states. Or, molecules can relax, letting go of small packets of light.⁵ How? Without getting too deep into the weeds, light and matter interact only weakly.

Light, as is often said, functions as both a wave and a particle. What does that mean? Wait no I don’t want to get into that duality here. I’ll assume that I’ll cover light somewhere else in the thesis.

Why does rotating take specific amounts of energy? Only some molecules have rotational transitions. Those molecules have what is known as a dipole, or an uneven distribution of its electrons’ expected positions.⁶ Most works on rotational spectroscopy begin with a simple linear molecule, showing that the energy is both quantized and algebraic. That is, from just a few known pieces of information about the atoms in a linear molecule, you can predict⁷ exactly how much energy it will take to make the molecule rotate, or how much energy it will release when it stops rotating.

N.B. Coming back a few hours later, I think that I lost the thread a little bit. I’m going to restart and see if I cannot do better.

¹ Bernath, Gordy and Cook, etc. N.B. When actually including this in your thesis, make sure to actually, you know, follow proper citationing

⁴ I should find places that claim this, if only because it’s fun to cite many random books who say things the same ways

⁷ ignoring distortion effects and everything else, which I am going to do right now. Do I think that I get to use footnotes in my thesis? hard to say for certain. I certainly like them, but I understand that they are somewhat inherently informal. I’ll see. Probably more in the appendices and background information sections, since those are more likely to be skimmed over and what not

Beetlejuice Review

First Published: 2024 January 14 (because I forgot to post, not bc forgot to write.)

Draft 1

You may have noticed that I’ve been gone for the past few days. Sorry about that, the beginning of a new year always comes with a lot of upheaval, and a new invigoration for the research I do does mean that my energies are focused there rather than on this blog. As a result, I not only have not been writing this blog, but I also have not been working on the Saturday musings that I wanted to do. So, today we’ll be going back to old school blog: reviewing a show I just saw.

I just got back from a matinee performance of the musical Beetlejuice. Unlike most musicals that I’ve been to , I went into the show today with absolutely no idea what to expect. What do I mean by that?

Most of the time, I have listened to the entire soundtrack of a musical almost ad nauseum before seeing it performed. It is always fascinating to listen to the difference between a cast recording and a different cast performing the same songs. More than that, though, most of the time I try to be familiar with the show that I am about to see. I read up on the show, and I try to get a sense of what is going to happen within it.

I think that I can name on one hand the things that I knew about this show going into it. It was based on a 20th century Tim Burton film. There’s a guy named Beetlejuice, and he wants a girl to say his name three times. Oh gosh that’s far less than one hand. Those two facts were both true, and they both remain true. The show, however, is so much more than that.

It opens at a funeral, where we meet our main protagonist: Lydia Deetz. She sings a ballad about how invisible it feels to be sad. As the song ends, the show begins in earnest, as Beetlejuice comes out to break the fourth wall and explain the premise of the musical. It is clear that the entire show is meant to be a parody of many things, the classic musical form amongst them.

And yet, the show treats everything it does with a shocking amount of love and care. The sets and scenery were absolutely stunning. Sorry, I’m going to take a step back from the plot to just gush about the technical aspects of the show.

As the show opens, an animation begins to play on the backdrop. I had never really thought about the options that using projected back sets could have, but it was mesmerizing watching the way that a clouded moon and trees could be drawn in, starting with what seemed like a single shaky hand. The technical mastery remained in full force throughout the rest of the show. Each room of the house is built with multiple forced perspectives, making the entire home feel disorienting. The lights were completely invisible, drawing no attention to themselves, only to suddenly spring out at the audience when the parody sections of the show came back. The blend between set and backdrop was also amazing. Anyways, that’s lighting and set, the two parts of technical theater that I care about.

The show is so obviously a parody, but one made in good faith. The classic Broadway musical solo where the lead woman gets to play the role of a classic prima donna is played up, and the actress playing Lydia shone in all of those moments. The show, for all that some of its jokes fell a little flat, never ceased acting earnest.

I’m sure there’s more I could say about the show, but anything else would really start falling into the realm of spoilers, which I don’t always love in my reviews. Anyways, I am so glad that my new research group mate told me about the show and that I ended up going today.

Oh! I was just about to say pulling back from the review, but that is one thing that I want to discuss. The fourth wall is a tenuous concept in art, and one of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in my life is the general dissolution of it in most media. One way that’s often manifested in musicals is through this idea that I can’t remember the name of that I encountered back when I studied music. The general idea, though, is that music in a show is either part of the world of the show, where the characters are aware that they’re singing and dancing, or something strictly for the audience.

In the early parts of the show, it is clear that the music coming from everyone exists in the real world, not in the world of the show. Beetlejuice is the only one to directly address the audience, or whose music even seems directed outward. As he is complaining about the people next to him, however, they mention that they can hear him. At that moment, the fourth wall, which I thought had been shattered, reasserts itself. We are once more separated from the antagonist, who is once again brought into the show.

As the show continues, the wall starts falling down more and more, and the classic scenes where groups come out and pose for the audience are numerous. When the curtain call comes, it is hard to know whether the event is taking place within the universe of the show or outside of it.

I also really liked that the show had likeable characters. I find that one issue I have with a lot of musicals lately is that we aren’t really supposed to root for anyone, and nobody really grows. Everyone in this cast, however, has a plausible and sympathetic goal, and everyone changes throughout the show to become someone more likeable. It was nice to be able to root for the main character, and even for the antagonist, to some extent.

Now pulling back from the telos for this specific post, and moving to the telos of posting generally, I have been more lax about writing my daily reflections on days that I do not blog. I wish that wasn’t true, but alas, it has been. With that in mind, though, I do think that my daily reflections are best saved for my private notes, which I have been keeping more regularly. If anyone is particularly interested in reading them, I could be easily convinced to bring them back.

Thesis Appendix: Latin Hypercube

Draft 2: 8 January 2024

Ok so I missed a few days of posting there. However, I do want to make some progress on my thesis work tonight, even if it is only an appendix. So, let’s revise RebelFit Latin Hypercube.¹

One of the fundamental algorithms in Rebelfit is Latin Hypercube Sampling/ It was initially described by () at () as a method for effectively sparsely sampling a space.

It is sometimes difficult to conceptualize sampling high dimensional spaces. For instance, if one wanted to take five samples in each dimension and do it as a grid, the number of samples grows exponentially as the number of dimensions increases. By the time that one reaches 8 dimensions (the number of variables in a Reduced Rotational Hamiltonian with Quartic Centrifugal Distortion), a grid five samples wide would require nearly four hundred thousand samples.

Another instinctual method for sampling a high dimensional space is to use a random sample. Or, at least, a pseudo-random sample (see appendix: randomness for more details). Latin Hypercube is demonstrably better at mapping a space than random sampling, though that improvement is reduced as dimensions and numbers of samples increase.²

The name Latin Hypercube comes from the concept of a Latin Square, which is inspired by the work of Leonhard Euler.³ It does include some aspects of randomness. In each of M dimensions, the sample space is cut into N slices, where N is the number of total samples desired. The slices can be defined in any arbitrary way, but the most common are even spacings and a Baysian distribution based on prior knowledge. Once each dimension is sliced, a point is randomly picked in each of the N wells in each dimension, and they are randomly correlated together. Unlike random sampling, this ensures that values are measured over the entire range of each variable. Without randomly correlating the dimensions, the trivial Latin Hypercube is constructed, where you sample along the hyperhypotenuse.

Draft 1: 31 December 2023

One of the fundamental algorithms in Rebelfit is the Latin Hypercube. It was initially described by () at () as a method of more effectively sparsely sampling a space.

Its name comes from the concept of a Latin Square, which is an arrangement of rooks on a grid such that none can take each other. As with all sampling methods that are better than random sampling, Latin Hypercube sampling becomes less better⁴ than random sampling as the number of samples or the number of dimensions increases.

In order to construct a Latin Hypercube, you need to define the number of dimensions (M) and the number of samples (N) that you will use. In the general form of the algorithm, each of the dimensions is then cut into N different wells, and a point within each well is randomly selected.⁵ Each dimension’s wells are then randomly assigned to each other, so that you don’t just sample around the n dimensional hyperhypotenuse.⁶

Latin Hypercube’s benefits are best demonstrated by comparison to other common sampling methods. If we compare to a Grid Search, where we want to sample 10 different points in each dimension, that requires a million data points by the time that we reach the 7th dimension. The N for samples is constant over any number of dimensions you ad,.

n.b. the previous draft is probably not needed to be read because I’ve actually revised, rather than wholesale rewritten↩︎
I forget where I read that, but it does seem to be common knowledge at this point↩︎
cite wikipedia unless I can find a better source/read the original source↩︎
oof that’s rough↩︎
see the appendix on randomness↩︎
I know that’s not the real word, but it feels appropriate↩︎

A Conclusion to Science as Mysticism

Draft 7: 6 January 2024

The line between passion and obsession is the point where pleasure turns to pain. Amateur means unpracticed and unskilled, not because love means that you cannot improve, but because love is fundamentally healthy. To become virtuosic requires moving well beyond the point of love, growing obsessed with the very smallest minutiae in a subject. A mystic is more like a great musician or a groundbreaking scientist than any of their followers are like them.

Obsession and passion are also the difference between knowledge and truth.¹ Knowledge is simple. Knowledge is facts and figures. When we read and respond to the writings of the great thinkers, or when we play the notation that some great musician laid down, we are confronted with knowledge. When we grasp in the darkness, gathering and creating, we work with knowledge.

Knowledge is comfortable. It is practicing scales for hours on end, until the instrument feels like an extension of your own hands. It is cutting pounds upon pounds of carrots identically, until it is easier to julienne one than do anything else. Why do we spend our lives working with on these small minutiae? We work with them because we must.

The Prophet Jeremiah puts it in a striking way. “I say I will not mention him, I will no longer speak in his name. But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding back, I cannot!”² That is to say, truth is not something you get to choose. Truth grasps you and forces you to share what you have learned. It is the difference between shining a light in a dark room and a bolt of lightning illuminating the entire space. One is active, and the other is passive.

It is here that the real difference between knowledge and truth comes. Knowledge is something we seek, something we can create or discover.³ Calculus today is knowledge. Nearly every college student for generations has been expected to understand it. Literacy today is knowledge.

Calculus in the time of Zeno, however, would have been truth. Without calculus, Zeno was able to formulate any number of real and unsolvable paradoxes. When Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus, they did something that no one before had been able to do.⁵

When a mystic sees a vision of the world, they feel compelled to share it. The reasons for their compulsions are as varied as the mysteries they reveal. However, if they do not share it, the truth dies with them. A scientific invention, unless shared, does no good to the world.

Truth becomes knowledge when it moves from the individual reception to the broader person. The mystic, the poet, the scientist, and the musician all are given a revelation. That revelation spreads, and the magic is gone.

³ depending on your belief structure and what specific piece of knowledge we’re constructing. I think that as I’ve grown older I more and more believe that there are very few absolutes. Someone can create the most optimal implementation of an algorithm in a language on a machine, but there is an optimal way to sort in general that we have to find⁴

⁴ Or maybe we’ve already found it, I guess. I’m not particularly up to date on anything computer related. I doubt that we’ve found a proof for something generally optimized, but I refuse to look it up because I want to stay on track

⁵ I think that I remember reading that some non European also discovered calculus at some point, but that does kind of add to the point that I’m trying to build to, which is that truth only becomes knowledge once spread. I only realize now that my goal was to do that

Draft 6: 6 January 2024

The difference between science and Science is the difference between music and Music or religion and Religion. At its core, it is the difference between truth and Truth. It is the difference between passion and obsession. It is, in short, the difference between knowledge and revelation.

Knowledge is simple. It is facts and figures. We can express it in theorems and proofs. Calculus today is knowledge. Almost anyone can learn calculus today. Calculus was once revelation.

On the other side of experiential knowledge, the realm of virtuosity is constantly pushing forward. In one generation, we have Jimmy Hendrix, who is frequently called the best rock musician ever. Now that the music has been transcribed, however, anyone can learn and play it.

Draft 5: 6 January 2024

One of the hardest questions you can ask a musician is what makes something music. Like basically any definition, you cannot draw a boundary without cutting out something that is music or including something that is not. Everyone has their own definitions of music as well, and one person’s music is another’s noise.

Draft 4: 6 January 2024

In the modern world, knowledge can be broken into any number of binaries. Most commonly, though, I see truths¹ as broken into subjective and the objective. We have the objective truths we find in science, where the speed of light or the boiling point of water is constant. On the other side of this coin, we have knowledge which is only true for the individual. Think of the way that a song may remind one person of heartbreak and another of their first love. The objective and subjective may be a helpful distinction in many regards, but there are so many places that it is lacking.

Draft 3: 6 January 2024

The core question behind any inquiry is what it means to gather new knowledge. Are we shining lights into a dark room, illuminating what is already there? Or, are we forcing a wave function to collapse, creating truth from the realm of possibilities? Whether knowledge is created or discovered, however, both of these approaches presume that new knowledge comes from an active source.

To be sure, there are any number of places where we do, in fact, gather knowledge in an active form. As a scientist, much of the work that I and every other scientist do is bean counting. As a musician, almost all of what I do is practicing scales and other rote learning. Artists need to practice drawing lines over and over in order to be able to transfer their thoughts onto the page.

However, when we speak of art or music or science, we are not speaking of these repetitive practices. While we need these small details in order to fully illuminate our space, but that is not what we care about. What we care about it the new rooms, rather than the note taking.

Conclusion needs to be “knowledge is passively received”. How do I get there, though?

Ok I can talk about the fact that we think of the two sides of learning as like science and art. The two sides are instead knowledge received and knowledge taken. Knowledge received is fundamentally deeper. Knowledge received can be shared and given away. That’s great. Maybe see something there? Like ideas once learned are able to be shared and seem almost obvious.

Draft 2: 4 January 2024

b] Mysticism and science are interrelated through a weird network. Wait wait, I have an idea.

When mystics share their findings, we get religions and new philosophies. As the information spreads, it becomes less explosive and therefore more up to questioning. You cannot question a mystic about what they saw. What you can do, however, is ask someone three hundred years later about the consequences of what the interpretations of their experience has caused. That can be formalized into philosophy.

On the other end, a scientist has a sudden inspiration for an experiment. Because science requires rigor, that idea is then formalized out into a proof or an experiment that’s actually run. When we continue to try to understand what’s happening, we get to mathematics?¹

I already have the framing, which is important. What I’ve struggled with, however, is the who cares, the takeaway. What does it mean or matter if there is an overlap between the two?

Looking at yesterday’s drafting, I think that I was going to try the framing of knowledge being discovered rather than created. Then there’s the question I have to ask myself, which is how to connect the two. Even though I do think that the Catholic Church is True, I don’t know if I want to explicitly make the musing Catholic. I don’t know why, but I have this gut instinct that it’s something like how I feel like it’s intellectually lazy to just go “ipso facto, Catholics are right”.

As I was writing there at the end yesterday I had the connection to eldritch knowledge. Knowledge spreads like a fire. Lies spread like a fire.

Flames illuminate, sending light further into the darkness, heating and illuminating more space for fire to spread.²

A common thread in science fiction is the idea of forbidden knowledge. More than that, though, nearly every society has had some variation on restriction of knowledge. No, I don’t think that leaning into the forbidden aspect is where I want to go.

No, I continue to circle this damned³ conclusion, unable to reach it. I feel as though the conclusion is staring at me from behind a stained glass window, just distorted enough that I cannot see more than its vaguest outlines. There’s a fun joke there here where I can do the whole “I would have a conclusion to share, but I haven’t gotten the revelation yet.”

There’s the comment that the friend made to me, which went something like “we’re always told there’s only one right answer in math and science, but that’s not true.” It is true, though, but there are a lot of questions that are subtly different with vastly different answers. I tried to get to that for why and how.

In rubber ducking a friend,⁴ they had the idea of being able to refuse knowledge, but not revelation.⁵ We also came to the idea that the coins are not science and humanities, but revelation and busywork. I think that something about refusing knowledge is an idea for a takeaway. Another idea of a takeaway is that, if knowledge is something we experience, then great⁶ poets are not separated from great scientists by anything except for what revelation they were given.

Ok so if knowledge is something that we discover, rather than create, then how do we discover? Discover is the wrong word, I think. There we go. We don’t discover truth, truth is revealed to us.⁷ This feels really good, but I suppose we’ll see what rubber duck⁸ says. Update: approved! Great, so now we just have to write the musing.

¹ Ugh that’s so dumb I don’t quite know what I’m trying to get at, but this certainly isn’t it

² hmm, the metaphor is starting to lose its coherence, and I am getting far too into the poetic, rather than illuminating my goal.

³ interesting how I only feel as though I could put profanity in this blog when I fall into a poetic form

⁴ where you basically just talk to something inanimate to find an answer. In this case, I do it to a person, who often has great insights of their own

⁶ or really any, but I feel like starting with great is a safer line of inquiry

⁷ Passive voice intentional here, because the point is that this type of knowledge is not obtained but received

⁸ there is an idea that we could have recurring people in my life show up as the same nickname over and over, but idk if we’ll do that

Draft 1: 3 January 2024

a] I recently mused about the fact that there is a shocking overlap between mysticism and science. Or, at least, I mused about the way that I consider the two fundamentally related. In a beautiful example of metacommentary¹ , the next day’s posting was about the fact that I cannot find a way to write conclusions. I haven’t been satisfied with the way that the science and mysticism post turned out, and it’s been playing in the back of my mind on some level since.

Today, I met a friend for coffee, and we ended up talking a little bit about the theory of mathematics. One of the big questions in my view of theory of mathematics is whether mathematics is discovered or created. I then connected it quickly to an alleged early Irish musical claim, which is that all the Irish airs were given to humans by the Tuatha.

I don’t know if I can quite put the dots together right now, but there’s no place to try like here. So, I’ve always been one of the sort who believes that mathematics are discovered, rather than created. There’s the idea of shining a light into a dark room. We steadily see more of reality, even if mathematics is an orthogonal reality to the real real world.²

Ok so let’s see if we can’t do something with that. Mathematics is³ , in many regards, the intersection of science and religion, being as it is one of the purest forms of philosophy. No, that isn’t quite what I wanted to say.

The friend mentioned something about how artists are famous for working under altered states, often with drugs. Mathematicians, similarly, often describe their great discoveries as though they have been themselves under a trance like state. However, just as musicians can share their songs with us even after they’ve come down from a high, the truths revealed to us by science are equally shareable. There’s something about the whole “forbidden eldritch knowledge” that I’ve always thought about, especially ¹ I really do need to reduce my usage of meta, for all that it remains an accurate representation of what I mean. It’s commentary without being explicit? Ok so there’s probably a better way of phrasing, but I don’t want to put the work in on it right now

² I’m sure that there’s another way to describe this, and should revise it in a future revision, but for now I’m just trying to get ideas down onto the page

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

Another Friday, which means that it’s time for another musing on Flash Fiction Friday. This week’s prompt is a little late, in my opinion, but is “how it ends”. There is a lot that I can do with that prompt.

Given the album work I’m doing, something on the topic of star death or heat death of the universe is tempting. Of course, the idea of writing a villanelle inspired by do not go gentle into that good night remains something that I want to do. Villanelle remains a poetic form that I am in love with, if only because there’s something really inherently intense in the form. Something from the hollow men also seems tempting, though that is just because the text is so, so very into the public consciousness.

That being said¹ , I do think that there’s something good about looking far smaller. Rather than taking the death of everything and animating it, it could be fun to turn the end of something small into a larger picture. Things that end include relationships, classes, friendships, lives.

I guess one immediate question is whether I want this to be poetry or prose. I haven’t been writing a lot of poetry lately,² and I do want to get into song writing. Maybe trying to do something that’s more elevated prose?³

I could try doing a villanelle inspired piece of prose? No, I don’t think that would work. What makes a villanelle so compelling is the fact that it is only nineteen lines and full of repetition.

Having now come back about an hour later, I find that I’m inspired also by a song that my band⁴ played “Til Forever Falls Apart”⁵ That’s a song about some nebulous end, but I think that it’s about death? Or maybe the potential of death. The group also did “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” at the same time, and I get those two songs stuck in my head together.⁶ That song is more explicitly about a murder suicide pact, which is its own form of romance.

So, based on my musing so far, it does really seem as though my muse wants me to be writing poetry, probably about death and related to romance. Since I don’t think that the album will be about romance,⁷ I don’t have to worry about putting out this set of lyric. Since it’s going to be anything I want, I want a villanelle.

That is, even though the entire poem is nineteen lines long, I only have to generate 13 lines of rhyming meter, five in the b rhyme and seven in the a. I will have to break myself of the habit of wanting perfectly strict meter here, because villanelles sound way too sing songy when written in meter.⁸ Nothing left to do but try to write it, I suppose. Given that the flash fiction minimum is 100 words, I do need to have lines that average out to at least 5 words a piece, which is hardly a struggle usually.

Having now written a draft and sent it to a fantastic and eloquent friend, the friend mentioned no small number of issues with the poem. Chief among them, I chose an incredibly trite refrain, and I did not think of any meter at all. Now almost two hours later, however, I have a completely different poem that is miles away better than where I started. All of the improvement is due to the fact that my friend patiently led me to water, then, when I was about to collapse from thirst, reminded me it was there.⁸

There’s really not much more for me to talk about, so that’s nice. Goodnight all!

What I Read and Wrote

First Published: 2024 January 5 (because I forgot to post, not bc forgot to write.

Draft 1

It’s been another week, which means that I get this week’s version of what I’ve been reading and writing. I’ve read basically nothing over the past week, which is a little sad. It is also Christmastide still, so I guess that it doesn’t surprise me that much, and it isn’t really that bad of a thing.

However, I did just start reading the extended Percy Jackson Universe book about Nico and Will, so we’ll see how fun that ends up being. Once I’ve finished that, it will probably be more or less time for me to go back to the actual reading goals that I have.

In terms of writing, I mused about the album that I’d like to write, and I’ve started thinking about the album’s content. I’ve also managed to continue with daily musings, filled a few pages in my lab notebook with notes, and I’ve written two chapters of my web novel.¹ I think that’s everything!

Oh wait! I’ve also been working on some of my Saturday musings. That really is everything, which is a little bit disheartening, but I suppose doing this every week should hopefully keep me at least somewhat accountable for how much I’m reading and writing. Time to do another draft of one of the musings, I suppose.

that is, I was well ahead by writing a chapter two days in a row, and then I haven’t really written since. I was worried about boom and bust, and it seems like that was a reasonable concern.↩︎

Musings

I'm just copying my father

Home

On Music Memories

Draft Three

Draft Two

Draft One

On Writer’s Slumps

Draft 1

Semi-Yearly Reflection

Draft 1

Restarting (Again (again again again))

Draft 1

Thesis Appendix: Rotational Spectroscopy Primer

Draft 2

Draft 1

Beetlejuice Review

Draft 1

Thesis Appendix: Latin Hypercube

Draft 2: 8 January 2024

Draft 1: 31 December 2023

A Conclusion to Science as Mysticism

Draft 7: 6 January 2024

Draft 6: 6 January 2024

Draft 5: 6 January 2024

Draft 4: 6 January 2024

Draft 3: 6 January 2024

Draft 2: 4 January 2024

Draft 1: 3 January 2024

Flash Fiction Friday

Draft 1

What I Read and Wrote

Draft 1