Tuesday, October 30
I woke up easily at 8:30, time to do some French and get frustrated with travelocity trying to purchase plane tickets for Thanksgiving. I wonder about people changing clothes every day - what would it be like if those changes occured more gradually? I've been wearing my fuzzy red scarf and Ben's gray hoodie with the college seal, necessary in this cold. Today with muted college colors; pine cords, chestnut turtleneck, Barb's black cap, Brennan's red-brown Rockports. I talked a lot in syntax - that stuff is so friendlily systematic in conversation, even if its sometimes frighteningly exacting in writing. Kari has this uncanny, almost sexy way of letting her face widen out into a infectious, knowing grin as she finishes a sentence and turns to the class. The class was more sedate than usual, although there was a truck standoff out the picture window. The world out there doesn't exist.
I went to a percussion workshop with Kakraba Lobi, a Ghanian xylophone master who has achieved legendary status with Matt and myself, if nobody else. Kakraba was as badass as you would want, speaking only little in his fractured English, just casually demonstrating a pattern with a somewhat disdainful look on his face. The workshop was made less enjoyable by a handful of onlookers, the sort who are there "to lend a hand" but end up lending an air of condescension; a benevolent-faced girl in a gray sweater, various dance faculty by virtue of, and mostly an awful woman in a print tank who essentially wrested control of the workshop from Kakrabi for substantial portions of the time to painfully and unneccessarily break down a pattern into its components, isolating it from any musical or rhythmic continuity. Ben pointed out that I don't really know how the workshop was intended to proceed, but as I saw it she was somewhat rudely rejecting the approach of learning by observation, and cheapened the experience by infusing it with an incongruous western educational specificity. Not a huge deal, but I found it rather offensive.
Then to Sharples, the first time in weeks, for some Asian chicken salad LOs on the lawn with Ben and Ester as she complained about not having a major and not liking the school - this crisis spurred on by her new conviction that Bruce Dorsey hates her. It's hard to reason her out of being upset, because then she'll just accuse me of being argumentative. ("is it passive-aggressive to tell people things via the blog?" she asked this morning. i dunno, what's wrong with that?) Ester, you'll be okay. Let's see how much Pynchman I can get done in the next 16 hours. 150pp? Ready, set, go!
tout est bleu