In Case You Need It

Today I got my Thesis preface back from Katherine and Juan, written over with notes for at least one more revision. To combat my bummed-ness, I hopped over to youtube for a GBS fix, starting with "Ordinary Day." I thought I'd pass on the resulting good vibes:

New Music Thing-y

Today I found a new way of getting music, Spiral Frog. I've been scarfing down lots of music, and tonight has had a disctinctive Elton John and Reckless Kelly theme. It doesn't immediately seem like the two should go together, does it? But, I promise you, they do.

So, I'd like to offer you some lyrics ('cause they're sad and lovely), since there's been much talk of cowboys (or, at least cowboying-up) and of striving on the blogs:

"My first love was a wicked twisted road
I hit the million mark at seventeen years old
I never saw the rainbow much less a pot of gold
yeah my first love was a wicked twisted road

My first love was a castle in the sky
never thought I'd make it 'till I had the guts to try
and I sat up in my tower while the whole world passed me by
yeah my first love was a castle in the sky..."

-Reckless Kelly, "Wicked Twisted Road"

The Last Push

I sent Jenny an e-mail yesterday that I might not make it to dinner with the gang tonight since I've fallen behind on my page count and the CWC meeting is tomorrow already. She said she'd give me a pass this once, but only if I was disciplined and busily typing away during my absence. Otherwise, it'd count against my attendance grade.

Still, I don't want to miss dinner. I'm in need of some good conversation and, especially, fries. So, I've made myself a deal. If I can do at least five more pages before the time I would leave for dinner, I can go. Fries make a good incentive for typing.

To get myself going, I've got Big Kenny's Live a Little looping on my computer (lots of energy in the music to keep my momentum up), and I've dived into the tricky bit of the novel - the scenes where Jess isn't at the bar. Thanks to the combination of imminent deadline and especially the songs "Rumba" and "Under the Sun," I'm making headway.

Just how much headway, though, I can't exactly say at the moment. I've also resorted to a mind trick I sometimes use for class papers. If I know I have to have X double spaced pages, I change the spacing to single or 1.5 spacing. Then, I can type, type away without getting obsessed with page count, knowing that once I change it to double it'll be an immediate ego boost. Wow! Look at how I just got two full more pages!

"Somewhere under the sun
There is happiness and fun
There is love for everyone
Somewhere under the sun
Somewhere under the sun"
-Big Kenny

Elvis Has Left the Building

This month has seemed remarkably long. There's just something about June that seems to last forever. So, I had plenty of time to tackle my musically themed challenge.

I found a good amount of new music, made a number of CD purchases, and spent a lot of time on Pandora. I even made a station for my thesis. Cool, huh?

Though, I have to admit that on a writing front, this month wasn't especially productive. I ended up running into more problems than solving them, and I've reached a point of frustration with myself. Neat, huh?

I'm feeling the need to mix things up a bit, so maybe the new music has affected me, just not in the way I imagined it would. I'm thinking less about how music influences my writing while I do both at the same time, and more about styles. You have so many different genres of music to choose from, and all of them are approaching a finite pool of subject matter, but doing so with different rhythms, instruments, melodies, and singing styles.

It's impressive, really, when you consider how many songs there are about broken heartedness, for instance, and how we manage to keep from being completely overwhelmed by the number because all of those songs have a different style. It's pretty fascinating, really.

To sum up: lots of music, less writing, and an idea of how to pull myself out of a writing funk. Not much page count-wise, but still useful.

I Think I'm Over a Threshold

I've been on a music kick of late, this much is pretty apparent. However, my recent preoccupation has expressed itself in a new and unexpected way. Unless you were already expecting me to go there.

Yesterday, I spent some time on Pandora refining my stations and doing some exploring. This turned into creating a couple new stations. This, in turn, led to finding The Rogue's Gallery on Pandora, which, in turn led me to the following thought:

You know, if my whole thing this month is about putting music and writing together, and if I could make a soundtrack for my Scottish Lit. paper... why not do it for my thesis too?

Thus, I made a station for my thesis. Which works in a fun way, because by refining what does and does not belong on that station, I practice refining what my thesis is and is not.

Now, the real question is whether or not I've just crossed the line into a whole new territory of nerd-dom.

June Challenge: Step One

I've been more interested in acquiring CDs lately, so my challenge this month was the perfect excuse for hitting the music shop yesterday morning. While some of the albums I picked up are pretty usual for what I listen to (Billy Joel & Dropkick Murphys), I also decided to be brave and go for a couple which are not only a different genre than I usually listen to, but also are female singers - dunno why exactly, but there are exceedingly few female singers I like (though, I'm somehow more inclined to like them if they're part of a ska band, for some reason).

Thus, I now have KT Tunstall and Duffy. Perfect for my music experiment.

In other news, for those of you who haven't been brave yet:
I just updated my Pandora stations - cleaning out some that aren't interesting and adding some bands to others. Check 'em out.

If you never listen to the following, check out the corresponding station:
Ska: Mad Caddies
Punk: Dropkick Murphys
Country: Reckless Kelly
The others, well, I'll just let you figure those out.

Now, in keeping with broadening my musical experience, I'm offering fair exchange here. Since I've recommended new music for you, it's only fair that you recommend some new music for me. So, what are some of your favorite and lesser-well-known groups and what musical genre are they? Got Pandora stations of your own? Inquiring minds want to know.

Speaking of Soundtracks

I made a soundtrack to my Scottish Lit. paper. A rather different approach from any other papers I've written before, but certainly fun. Also, too, a keen illustration of the ways different types of media can play off each other.

I wrote a paper about songs, where I wrote about themes I saw in those songs. Then I made a CD to go along with the paper, which had songs I talked about in the paper as well as other songs that went with the themes I found in the paper when I wrote about other songs. So, the music created the paper, which then created the music. Cool, huh? It was all very meta.

This month I challenge you to use music in your writing. Specifically, a new type of music. Now is the time to expand your musical experience.

Here's how it'll work:
Let's say you always listen to classical music when you write, try listening to rock instead.
Let's say you never listen to music when you write - give it a shot.
Let's say you can't listen to music when you write (too distracting) then sit down for a bit before you write and listen to a couple of songs. Try closing your eyes, even and trying to visualize a scene along with the music.

The basic idea is that you're trying to draw some kind of inspiration from the music you listen to, and that you're listening to a different type of music in order to break out of your usual influence.

Now, there are a variety of free online radio websites which will let you experience whatever you're brave enough to explore without the commitment of buying a CD. Personally, I'm in love with Pandora, but use whichever one works for you - if nothing else a quick online search for "free online radio" will pull up plenty of options for you. Alternately, now's the time to ask friends for mixed CDs and/or to borrow something.

To Sum Up Briefly: The Big Scottish Lit. Paper

"Sooo, what'd ya come up with?"
-Jenny

Dang it, you mean that after writing it, you actually want me to write some more about it? So cruel. Ok, so I'll give you an idea through quoting myself and naming songs. Here goes.

"The Water's Wide": The Fight For Self Preservation

Some of the themes which are found both in the oldest songs and the newest revolve around issues of loss and identity. (and if you put them together, you get loss of identity)

Sailors Who Never Returned
Pretty literal here, this section covers songs about people who drowned.
"Sir Patrick Spens"
"Coast of High Barbary"
"Turkish Revelry"

This section also covers songs about men who are, as the song says, "far away from home."
"Widow in the Window" (I question whether or not "widow" is used literally, so it's here instead of with those listed above)
"Wave Over Wave"
"The River Driver"

Sailors Who Lost Themselves
This next bit is fun 'cause I quote myself in my paper - it made me feel like a true academic:
Sea shanties, due to their communal nature, begin in a place of flexible identity. Pronouns such as “I” become ambiguous and the names of people lose their significance: “Through shanties, the very definition of ‘I’ is changed. No longer is it a pronoun relating to an individual speaking about themselves, it is a now a pronoun about the collective speaking about a community. “I” becomes nearly synonymous with ‘tribe’” (Ali 8)

This is far from the complete explanation that I've developed. The fill-in part goes kinda like this - since shanties were created in true oral tradition, they're basically a type of tribal tradition where you switch out "bard" for one of the hands and "tribe" for crew. Since it's a communal and tribal type of poetry it means that everyone's helping to create, remember, and recite it, which makes even the songs sung in first person a collective expression, which means that the fundamental understanding of "I" becomes more like "We," thus the pronoun flexibility, which also creates basic identity flexibility.
"Billy Taylor"
"Canadee-i-o"

Here I pull in some of the supernatural. Celtic folklore: the sea = the land of the faerie. Magic is transformative, thus it makes sense that those who go out to see are changed by it. In the last two songs they have the same basic plot - girl goes to sea disguised as a man, is discovered, then accepted, and becomes something different than what she started as.

Lost Names and the Ever-Shifting "I"
Goes with the bits before. Sailors go to sea and their identities are changed, they go from being named to unnamed.
"Barque in the Harbor" (while it's not the sailor who loses his name, a name is lost)
"Sail Those Same Oceans" (talked a lot about this once 'cause it's such a good example)
"Captain Kidd"

Then, I wrap up thusly:
The strangest part of this dynamic comes from the nature of communal poetry. In the oral tradition, songs were a way of preserving identity. By singing these songs about loss of identity, the singer is effectively calling upon the audience/tribe to help him hold onto what he still has left: the song itself. While the singer cannot get back that which the song describes him losing, the community can preserve the memory of the loss. Thus, song becomes memorial.

In short, all this playing around with identity was a self preservation tactic because the guy in the song was really you, and by singing and passing that song on, you were really passing yourself on and ensuring your immortality, even though your name was long-since forgotten.

Whew. That's the super-abridged version, but it gets the main points. I'll even throw in a list of CDs I pulled from.
Great Big Sea: The Hard and the Easy, Sea of No Cares, and Turn
Various Artists: Rogue's Gallery
Russell Crowe & TOFOG: Bastard Life or Clarity
Seven Nations: Old Ground
Then, there were some that I don't have on CD at all, and you can find them in a book/online easily.

And that, my friends, is what I wrote 20 pages about.

Yeah, but What Do I Say for Twenty Pages?

I've been putting off my Scottish Lit. paper and trying to figure out just what I'm going to talk about in it. I made some noties, got some ideas, and wrote four pages. Now I find myself in the land of frustration. I need sixteen more pages of insightful analysis.

I know exactly what songs I want to talk about, but I'm struggling with the talking about them part. One song is "Sail Those Same Oceans" by TOFOG. Right now I've got:

Another song which not only echoes, but exemplifies this identity loss is “Sail Those Same Oceans,” an original song by Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts:
Sailor's coming home again
From over the ocean
He's been away so long
He's forgotten his name.
Here the lyrics explicitly focus on the connection between life at sea and the loss of name.

That's just about all I can think of right now to say about the song. My point is made, isn't it? It's pretty explicit, right? So, now what?

Ugh. The down side, which is simultaneously the up side, is that it's due tomorrow. I'd better figure it out real quick, oughtn't I?

Anthology CDs

Sometime this coming week, I'm expecting new music in the mail. New music compiled not by a company, but by a person. In the spirit of reciprocity, I decided I would make a CD or two of my own to send.

It took no time at all to decide which bands I'd be featuring (GBS and TOFOG, of course) but then I had to pause. In theory, a mixed CD is not just throwing stuff on at random, but actually organized with some thought as to how one song from one album fits in with another song on another album, which should come first, and so forth. Like I said, I had to pause. It's been a while since I've made any kind of mixed CD, thanks to my burner being on the fritz.

Then I remembered that organizing a mixed CD was the same thing as organizing the Hungry Eye. Duh. Identical process, just a different media. You've got the same considerations for both, the only difference is that font is less important with a CD.

Now I've got a couple made and am working on another for my Scottish Lit. professor. I've been writing about songs the whole semester, it seems fitting to offer a soundtrack to my papers. Then, of course, I ought to make a couple new mixes for listening to in my car, and I should make a big compiled CD of The Church for my car, and...

Not Just For Bards

At the beginning of the semester I wasn't quite sure what to expect from my Scottish Lit. class. I'm not usually all that fond of survey classes, and especially not of "classical" survey types which are entirely devoted to, or at least emphasize, books whose ages are counted in centuries rather than years.

However, this class is turning out to be oodles of fun. For starters, the professor is incredibly flexible about which topics we explore in our essays. So, I've been reading and writing all about ballads and sea shanties, with a plan to work up, chronologically, to talking about Great Big Sea and others who are in my CD collection. I've been finding a lot of interesting stuff about oral traditions and folklore in the process.

For seconders (or however that goes to transition from "starters"), the past two classes we've had guest speakers - though "speakers" isn't exactly accurate. Last week we had Jack and Barbara Yule (Jack's a native Scot and Barbara has spent a couple decades doing scholarly work about Scottish storytelling tradition). Buckets of fun, especially when Barbara told us about the Traveling People and performed a couple of stories for us.

Then, last night we had Kim McKee and Ken Willson a.k.a The Jigheads. They played music, talked about storytelling/folk music tradition, and Ken told us a story. Also excellent.

Now, from here we get back to one of the questions of writing which is infinitely fascinating - the purpose of doing it. When you look at oral traditions, storytelling was very fundamental. The stories were who the people were, they told their histories, their morality, their religious beliefs, and they were one of the ways the group identified themselves as being X rather than Y.

These days, we don't have the same oral tradition. Other media has replaced the spoken word, and ethnic tales have become internationally known. Still, I would suggest that much of the storytelling imperative has remained. I can think of a number of different ways to go with this, and I probably will go in those directions in subsequent posts, but I'm going to narrow it all down today.

Oral tradition. Communal stories. We don't have the bards these days, but we can't entirely get away from our roots. Back in the day you had a tribe and in that tribe there were the songs and the stories that everybody knew and that knitted the group together into a community. These days we tend to have the exact same thing, just expressed a bit differently.

Instead of the tribal stories, we have family stories. You know, the one about when you were little and you did that incredibly funny thing that everybody still talks about. Maybe it started out being your story, it's about you, after all, but now you know it by the telling just as well (or even better) than you know it because it happened to you. Maybe it started out your story, but now your parents, siblings, etc. are the ones who tell it. Everybody knows how it goes, everybody knows how it ends, but it keeps getting told. It's part of your family's mythology now, it's what knits you together as a family and it's what identifies you as X rather than Y.

Ditto that for any group of friends you've known for a while. After a while, you learn the stories of the others. After a while, when someone starts talking about a specific thing, you can anticipate the story that's coming next. Of course, we have our communal "music," too. Most of us in the writers group have watched Joss Whedon's shows and read something by Neil Gaiman. Great Big Sea is a literal example of our common music, and Deb's got a nifty clip up on her blog, the posting of which is perfectly timed to this posting. (Gotta love synchronicity.)

So, to get to the main point here: though the particulars of our storytelling traditions have changed from the times of bards and sagas, the jist remains the same. If there was nothing to this idea of communal music, you'd never swap CDs with your friends, would you?