"PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!"
-Buford's Mini-Hedge, The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

How to Cope With Rejection (When Everyone Else Isn’t)

So there’s this thing that tends to happen to me. I audition for something, and all my friends end up getting it and I don’t. I wish I could say that this hasn’t happened multiple times throughout the years. As a result, I think I may have some insights as to how to deal with this.

So here are my tips:

1.       Try not to care about this thing. I know it’s hard, and maybe you really wanted to, but in ten years, who is going to care? Pretty much no one. Try to see it from that perspective.

2.       Be realistic about your efforts. Maybe you didn’t do as well as you thought.

3.       This’ll all be over soon and no one will care.

4.       Maybe don’t hang out with your friends that got in for a bit. Don’t shun them, but if given the choice between sitting with them and sitting with someone uninvolved, go for the latter.

5.       It’ll be fine. What you didn’t get into doesn’t matter.

6.       Have some me time. Sit down and give yourself a few minutes to cope (or longer if you need it) and then busy yourself with something else so you don’t dwell on it.

7.       Really what does this all matter? We’re all just going to die of heat death anyway.

8.       Be happy for your friends who made it. They worked hard for this as well. Even though it’s hard, be nice to them.

9.       This isn’t an actual measure of your worth, it’s a measure against some rando’s standards, which literally is entirely subjective and has zero bearing on anything else you ever do.

10.   Find someone else that didn’t get in and start a club.

11.   Look at pictures of cute puppies online.

12.   HUGS

13.   You will be ok!

Early Music History: Progression of Polyphony and the Motet

Test is coming up and this is my way of reviewing.

So all of the early music was monophonic, or only had one line of melody without any harmony. Polyphony (multiple lines of music) most likely developed as a way for soloists to show off. It was discussed in Musica enchiriadis, a musical handbook aimed at students, and was called organum. There were several different kinds of organum, the main ones being note-against-note organum, which is when the voices move at the same time, and free organum which consisted of oblique, parallel, contrary, and similar motion.

Aquitarian polyphony developed a specific style of writing music in the twelfth century. They often had florid polyphony, which is when the upper voice has a long melody while the lower note holds one out. One issue with their notation though was that the timing between the voices was never clear, so a lot of this is up for interpretation. The opposite of this was discant clasula, which was the term for a section of the piece that only consisted of note-against-note organum. (Discant was another term for note-against-note, while clasula just referred to a part of the piece, or clause.)

From there, Notre Dame polyphony was developed in the thirteenth century. They developed a system of notation that was a lot clearer than the Aquitarian system. This included using ligatures to connect notes and a system of notes called longs and breves to indicate durations. They also developed six rhythmic modes, all of which were in threes. Two main composers of this time were Leonin and Perotin. The treatise Anonymous IV credits Leonin with putting together a “Magnus Liber Organi” or “Great Book of Organum.” Of course, it wasn’t just him, but the extent that he worked on it is uncertain. The composers of Notre Dame polyphony also liked to write substitute clasula, or clauses that could substitute others in a piece.

The writing of substitute clasula led directly to the development of the thirteenth century motet. Eventually, composers started putting words to the substitute clasula that they were writing, and this developed into its own genre. Duple or triple motets started to be written, which is when more than one voice is texted, or polytextuality. Since this made the words difficult to understand, motets were written for a more elite audience. The third voice added (usually in the middle, above the tenor) was even called the motetus, which is where the term motet comes from. Many motets were preserved in the Codexes Montpellier and Bamburg, which were collections of hundreds of pieces and motets. Often motets were a type of cantus firmus, which is when the tenor has a part of a chant that the rest of the piece is based off of. The tenor got the short end of the stick here, they’re just chanting while the other two voices (triplum and duplum/motetus) get these pretty melodies.

Then Franconian notation was developed, which included double longs and the semibreve. This led to much more rhythmic variety. This was taken advantage of by composers like Adam de la Halle and Petrus de la Cruce in their pieces.

Then the Ars Nova, or New Art, developed in France. The Ars Nova featured both triplets and duplets, which was pretty controversial at the time since people considered the triplet to represent the Holy Trinity. As a result, triplets were called perfect time and duplets imperfect time. They also had isorhythm, which is when a part has a rhythm and then repeats it, not necessarily with the same notes. There was also hoquet, which is when voices alternate very quickly. And the tenor had a rhythmic part called the talea, which would match up with the color, or melody, in the upper voices. The talea was usually shorter than the color and it would take a few repetitions until they matched up. All this can be seen in pieces by Phillippe de Vitry who wrote several fourteenth century motets.

So that’s the motet. It’s not that interesting, but there are some interesting connections between early and modern music, and hopefully I’ll get around to writing about that soon.

The Switch from Reading for Plot to Reading for Thought

So I noticed recently that the reason I read books has changed slightly. I used to read books that I thought looked exciting and interesting, in other words, the plot looked decent. Now though, if I’m going to commit myself to a book, it’s either because it was recommended to me by someone or it is a classic.

I used to pick up any series about fantasy when I was little (it was quite the phase, I still have most of the books). But I can still remember not exactly being satisfied by the plot when it was too thin or had contradictions or the author remembered past events incorrectly (ok how does the AUTHOR mess up facts like that?). Over time, it just developed into me refusing to read stuff like that.

Now though, I really only read books that I have researched and read reviews on. If it’s a classic, I do less work, but I still check to make sure that it’s something that I’d like. And I hardly ever read modern books anymore, I just never know whether I’m going to like it or not. I’m not a big risk-taker. I was confused when my friend picked a book up off the shelf in a bookstore and went to buy it. I just don’t work like that anymore.

I mostly blame honors English for this change, honestly. I’ve started being unsatisfied with books where they don’t have a higher meaning and are just about people doing people things or whatever. I need something that speaks to humanity and says something essential. It can’t be a book for the sake of a book anymore, it has to be communicating something to the reader.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just means that I’ve gotten choosier about what it is that I’m putting into my head. And I think that’s fine, it’s the only brain I’ve got and there are books out there that are more beneficial for it than others. If you disagree, that’s fine, but this is my view and it’s interesting how things like this change over time and as we learn more.

Why Writing is Weird

Writing is a really strange academic. You really just need to convince someone that your writing is good, the way it’s evaluated is completely subjective. Thousands of years ago, you could spell however you wanted, and anyone who has read Shakespeare can tell you that the sentence structure has gone through some changes since then.

Which is why I think it’s a little strange to say that someone is “good at writing”. Because good writing is something different for everyone. What they’re actually good at is writing that suits the reader. Your teacher may not like it when you hand in fanfiction for an assignment, but people online might think that it’s amazing. How you are received depends on your audience.

This all gets multiplied 50x when you’re in college and are doing legit papers for multiple classes. Philosophy writing is totally separate from English writing, which is in a different sphere from Biology writing. So everything is very confusing.

But if all you have to do is convince someone that your writing is what they want, then supposedly you should be able to write a trashy paper and then hypnotize your teacher into thinking that writing “so” repeatedly is genius. Because there literally is no right answer at all!

This is what makes writing completely different from anything else, the closest thing to it is history and even that has some wrong answers in it. Writing is totally subjective, everything is in the eye of the beholder.

And that’s what sets it apart from the rest of the subjects, for once you can completely express yourself academically.

Importance of Freshmen Orientation at College

Orientation just ended a week ago at school, and being a sophomore I noticed some things that the freshmen were missing or that I was missing.

It’s getting you used to a whole new environment for starters. That means different things for different schools, if the administration has no idea what the student body is like, the orientation is going to stink. Look for student run events, those will usually be a better depiction than anything else.

You’re going to be dealing with different issues. I’m guessing this is the justification for the hours and hours of sex/alcohol that freshmen always get shoved down their throats at the beginning of the year. Everyone’s so overloaded with it that a good school will try to make it fun for the students, even if they have to sit through hours of it. But there also has to be a balance with the severity of the conversation, because these are serious subjects, we are kidding around here. Finding that line is super important, because this is their first exposure to the college and how it deals with these issues.

Demonstrating the diversity of the campus is always something that I notice. Sure, you can show off the great LGBTQ community there is, but the straight kids might feel a little left out. I know that it’s usually the opposite, but remember that there are people of all types and there needs to be something welcoming for everyone. The A does stand for ally, among other things.

Putting them into groups that might get along. My group didn’t, I spent all of freshman orientation alone. It’s partially my fault and partially the college’s, they should have realized that groups composed entirely of females aren’t going to hang out together if all the other groups are co-ed. I’m not sure what the solution there would be, but I do know that all of my current friends had an entirely different experience than mine. And they continue to do so since they are still close to their group and I’m not.

Freshmen orientation is one of those things that’s easy to dismiss, but it’s very important for anyone entering a new college. This is your new home, and the administration should make you feel welcome and introduce you to life here.

Why Modern Music Doesn’t Appeal to Me

So I’ve always been a pop music disliker, I can’t stand the stuff on the radio. Part of it is that it gets so overplayed, but that’s a different problem. (That’s more a problem with the radio than anything else, and suggests that I might like it if I wasn’t listening to it all the time. Which I wouldn’t.) The main issue is that most of it just doesn’t appeal to me.

So I decided to think about why that would be. Obviously this music developed out of the stuff that I like, so there has to be some similarities there. And many people do like music that’s popular now, so there has to be something good about it.

And the music I am talking to here is the generic stuff that you hear on the radio or at random events. I’m not talking about everyone who is popular now, but I think that at least one of the reasons why I don’t like this stuff applies to musicians popular now.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a few factors put together. First of all, like I mentioned earlier, we are forced to listen to this music all the time. Without any variety. In the supermarket, at a restaurant, with friends, anywhere. It’s different than it being overplayed because it isn’t so much that you get sick of hearing it, it’s that it follows you everywhere! And if you don’t like it, tough for you. I think just the pervasiveness of it causes a sort of knee jerk reaction away from it, and a refusal to accept it.

Similarly, there are so many songs marketed for my demographic, as in young people. There’s all of these songs about the same thing and you know it was created by a bunch of old white men trying to identify with the youth (sounds like the government…). Once again, that jerk away from it just on principle. Not everyone likes the same things, and there’s more to life than partying. Maybe reflect that in songs.

Then the most significant one, I think, is the fact that performers don’t have the same kind of passion anymore. You used to have people who loved it so much that they would struggle through it and turn down other careers for it. Now people are brought up in it, and don’t have to put that much effort into becoming a hit. And people used to get involved in every aspect of music making, now it’s just the voice that you hear that’s known. You can tell the difference between someone who takes pride and care in their work and someone who doesn’t. That has to be the biggest factor to me.

 

So that’s my view, once again, it’s not about everyone. But it’s me, and that has to count for something.