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July 18, 2007
of music and computer labs
I'm listening to R.E.M. - Out of Time - and it is taking me to a place long ago. Nights I used to sit in the computer lab at the University of Washington, before I knew how to operate a Mac (though I did first experiment with them there, and found them surprisingly intuitive once I figured out the function of the apple icon in the corner), before there was ITunes, before I knew how to stream music - nights when I brought my own CD's and headphones to play while I worked, nights I often found myself crying to songs I didn't even know because my life was in such turmoil and for all the Victorians brought me identity, their conflict was so much my own it wasn't an escape.
No, it was the music that gave me a way to bridge the life I was losing and the life I was gaining. The bridge between the two worlds, the one dead and the one not yet born. Somedays that bridge was strong and safe, nicely solid under my feet and wide enough I couldn't see the cavern below. Somedays that bridge was as thin as a gondola cable suspended 10,000 feet in the air between two Alpine peaks. It was a helluva ride, those nights were.
I didn't have this particular music then. I only recently acquired it. But I loved in from the first quarter of my first ever college composition course. Prufrock + R.E.M. + + Crash Test Dummies + a gifted teacher = I became an English major with a composition teaching focus.
I reflect on this now only because lately I am feeling the same turmoil. Drafting a dissertation prospectus, and job-seeking materials, has brought the last 9 years of effort home in a way that is at once exhilirating for its promise and terrifying in its significance. What if, after all this, I can't do it? What if I can't find the job, the career as an academic I have so single-mindedly pursued these years? What if it doesn't give me the benefits I thought it would? What if I screw this up, as seems so very easy to do, given who I am and the things I believe. It makes my stomach hurt, much as it used to in those nights all those years ago.
Those nights it was Shawn Mullins who brought me to tears, and had me leaning my head against the computer tower to soak up the pain and promise together. For the last several years, I haven't listened to music much, preferring silence in which to mull over all that I've taken on, to try to think through, to try to find me in. Once again, confronted with putting me in writing, with putting into practice the lesson I try so hard to drill into my students (your writing represents you when you are not there to explain, defend, or support it), I'm anxious - so anxious. I haven't looked for a job in over 14 years. And that was only the second time in my life I'd ever had to. It's scary and strange to realize that this job search will be the most difficult I have ever faced, despite it being for the job I am certain I was born to have.
of music and computer labs... of then and now... of the pursuit and the reality. til human voices wake us and we drown.
Posted by cageyer at July 18, 2007 06:32 PM
Comments
I'm tensed up over similar matters, Chris, but I can't say I'm be-bopping along to Out of Time. I like the album well enough, but it's not the hip sort of uplifting stuff one oughta be listening to in mid-July.
Some of this anxiety is inevitable, I think (and I tell myself). How many can we name who were cool as ice throughout the entire final phase of the PhD (i.e., dissertating and heading off to market)? It's a tumultuous stretch, but one that can be managed as long as we keep to doing the best we know how to do, keep on pressing ahead with whatever small tasks are in front of us, and so on.
Posted by: Derek at July 18, 2007 08:46 PM
Thanks, Derek. I can't imagine you being tense about the whole job gig - you always seem so solid and so certain. You have been an important part of my keeping on.
My musical taste is, according to most who know me, hopelessly stuck in the past. I probably need to update that someday. I do have some higher energy stuff, it just wasn't in tonight's rotation.
Posted by: Chris Geyer at July 18, 2007 09:26 PM