The day the music died.

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This is a post about a poll. Yeh - that poll. That polarizing music poll.

But really, it’s a story about my life.

You see, music means the world to me. I got in to music relatively young – I was in year five (10 years old, 1994) when I remember really hearing Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins for the first time, and I was hooked. I never really got pop music or the Top 40 (even though many of the bands I loved as a kid were surely in the Top 40 at the time). As other kids my age were listening to the Backstreet Boys, the Spice Girls, and Hanson, I was in to bands like Live and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

I stayed up late watching and taping Rage every weekend throughout high school, and listened to Triple J every night. I’ve been listening to the station off and on since 1994. The first time I ever turned on Triple J it was a Sunday night, and Fenella Kernebone‘s Creatures of the Spotlight was on – an arts program that played lots of noise and ambient sounds – and I remember thinking, ‘what the hell is this weird shit?’. It took me a while to get in to Triple J, even though it played the music I loved, but once I did I was hooked for almost 20 years.

The playlist on the station has declined over the years, or maybe I’ve just gotten older, or maybe music just isn’t as good as it used to be. Probably a combination of the three. But I’ve stuck with it, partially due to the lack of alternative and partially due to the fact that they do still play plenty of stuff that I like, with the occasional old time (1990s) gem thrown in.

However, we broke up on Sunday.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve threatened a break up. In 2003 I declared that I would never listen to Triple J again if Jet won the Hottest 100 (they did; so did I). That lasted a few hours, as I drank too much beer and had too much of a good time, and in the taxi that I caught home from the pub that night Triple J was on the radio. I decided that it was unreasonable to stop listening to my favourite station just because a stupid song by a rubbish band had won.

A decade (woah, what?) later though, I’ve decided it’s time. We’ve had a good time together, but I think I’ve finally outgrown Triple J. I barely listen to the radio as it is now – only in my car, and I don’t even drive most days – and it’s been a very, very, very long time since I’ve heard anything on the radio that’s caught my attention. (Until I listened to RTRfm today, that is. I don’t listen to RTR full time as I find there are far too many awkward pauses from the presenters and it makes me uncomfortable. Also sometimes it just gets weird. But I do listen to certain shows.)

I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps it’s the fact that the Hottest 100 of the past 20 years left me… angry. Disappointed in Australian music fans. That’s probably it. It’s not Triple J’s fault, but it’s still signalling time to move on.

I mean, come on. Really? Wonderwall?

Perhaps it’s the time that I’ve spent either in a backpackers or living near a backpackers, but every time I hear Wonderwall I want to stab my ears out. It’s not to say that it’s not a technically good song – it is, I guess, and it means a lot to many people, etc etc, but it’s just not the best song of the past 20 years. Nor is 7 Nation Army the second best song.

But it’s not all about what I like. I didn’t actually vote. Most of the songs that I like best from the past 20 years aren’t songs that would’ve even cracked the top 1000, let alone the top 100. I probably don’t even have a right to whinge about the deplorable outcome, and I doubt that my votes would’ve made much of a difference (isn’t that what we always say when we choose not to get involved in something and then whinge about the outcome?).

However, I read a great post the other day on a blog that I rather like, and thought I’d do the same, compiling a list of my favourite 20 songs from the past 20 years, but only including one from each year. To save myself the trouble of thinking too hard, my top 20 has to be songs that were actually in the Hottest 100 in their respective year.

Of course, this ended up being a much more complicated list to whittle down that I expected, as my longlist still had over 200 songs. It’s a difficult process, because I feel like I have a story to tell about every song on the list (not to mention the many, many songs that never charted on JJJ and don’t count for the purposes of this exercise). Perhaps that’s a post (or series of) for another time.

1993: Cherub Rock – The Smashing Pumpkins (honourable mentions: Creep – Radiohead; Sober – Tool; The Ship Song – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds)

1994: Berlin Chair – You Am I (hons: Tomorrow – Silverchair; Seether – Veruca Salt; Today – The Smashing Pumpkins; Cornflake Girl – Tori Amos)

1995: Grace – Jeff Buckley (hons: Last Goodbye – Jeff Buckley; Drugs – Ammonia; Glory Box – Portishead)

1996: Tonight, Tonight – The Smashing Pumpkins (hons: Stinkfist – Tool; Pick You Up – Powderfinger; Breathe – The Prodigy; Born Slippy – Underworld; 1979 – The Smashing Pumpkins; D.A.F. – Powderfinger; Hyperballad – Bjork)

1997: Paranoid Android – Radiohead (honns: No Aphrodisiac – The Whitlams; Karma Police – Radiohead; Crazy - Cordrazine; A.D.I.D.A.S. – Korn (yes, really); Forty-Six & 2 - Tool; Captain (Million Miles) – Something for Kate; You’re Not the Only One – Ammonia; 6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps)

1998: Buy Now, Pay Later – The Whitlams (hons: Cigarettes Will Kill You - Ben Lee; Heavy Heart – You Am I; Teardrop – Massive Attack; Everybody Here Wants You – Jeff Buckley; Sweater – Eskimo Joe; Pure Morning – Placebo; Ava Adore – The Smashing Pumpkins; Untouchable Face – Ani diFranco)

1999: Waltz #2 – Elliott Smith (hons: Electricity – Something for Kate; Army – Ben Folds Five; Passenger – Powderfinger)

2000: Judith – A Perfect Circle (hons: Yellow - Coldplay; Frontier Psychiatrist – The Avalanches; Californication – Red Hot Chili Peppers; Every Fucking City – Paul Kelly; We Haven’t Turned Around - Gomez; Everything in Its Right Place – Radiohead)

2001: This Mess We’re In – PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke (hons: Last Nite – The Strokes; Schism – Tool; Pyramid Song - Radiohead; Parabola – Tool; Pattern Against User – At the Drive-In; Plug in Baby – Muse)

2002: No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age (hons: London Still - The Waifs; Has it Come to This – The Streets; Something to Talk About – Badly Drawn Boy)

2003: Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes (hons: The Nosebleed Section – Hilltop Hoods; Everyone Deserves Music – Michael Franti & Spearhead; Stockholm Syndrome – Muse; Good Luck – Bassment Jaxx)

2004: Somersault – Decoder Ring (hons: Don’t U Eva – Sarah Blasko; Girl Anachronism – The Dresden Dolls; The Bucket – Kings of Leon; Slow Hands - Interpol; Breathe Me – Sia)

2005: Flame Trees – Sarah Blasko (hons: I Was Only 19 – The Herd; Middle of the Hill - Josh Pyke; Two More Years – Bloc Party; Helicopter – Bloc Party; This Year – The Mountain Goats; Ashes – The Beautiful Girls; First Day of My Life – Bright Eyes; Heartstopper – Emiliana Torrini)

2006: Heart’s a Mess – Gotye (hons: Kick, Push – Lupe Fiasco; Fidelity – Regina Spektor; Vicarious – Tool; Memories and Dust - Josh Pyke; Roquefort – Karnivool; Phenomena – Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Standing in the Way of Control - Gossip; 19-20-20 – The Grates)

2007: Hang Me Up To Dry – Cold War Kids (hons: Knights of Cydonia – Muse; This Heart Attack – Faker; Paper Planes – MIA; Reach – The Butterfly Effect; No Cars Go - Arcade Fire)

2008: Skinny Love – Bon Iver (hons: The King Is Dead - The Herd; The Lighthouse Song – Josh Pyke; Oxford Comma – Vampire Weekend; Burn Bridges – The Grates; I Will Possess Your Heart  - Death Cab For Cutie; Something Is Not Right With Me – Cold War Kids; L.E.S. Artistes - Santogold)

2009: Islands – The XX (hons: Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons; Lisztomania – Phoenix; Heads Will Rolls – Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Heavy Cross – Gossip; Dog Days Are Over – Florence and the Machine)

2010: Bloodbuzz Ohio – The National AND There’s Nothing in the Water We Can’t Fight – Cloud Control (hons: Dance the Way I Feel - Ou Est Le Swimming Pool; Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves) - The Wombats; Baptism – Crystal Castles; The Suburbs – Arcade Fire; Dog – Andy Bull; Ready To Start – Arcade Fire; Spanish Sahara – Foals)

2011: The Wilhelm Scream – James Blake (hons: Midnight City - M83; Endless Summer – The Jezabels; Shake it Out – Florence and the Machine; Jump in to the Fog – The Wombats; Lay it Down – The Rubens; Perth - Bon Iver; Wildfire – SBTRKT; The Suburbs – Mr Little Jeans)

2012: Tesselate – alt-J (hons: Little Talks – Of Monsters and Men; My Gun - The Rubens; Angels  - The XX; Laura – Bat for Lashes; Take a Walk – Passion Pit; Mountain Sound – Of Monsters and Men)

Pants on fire.

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As far as occupations go, teaching at university is pretty grand.

At the sessional (casual) stage, it pays fairly well (not enough, taking in to account marking, but that’s another grumbly story for another grumbly day… and besides, it used to be much worse, as we didn’t even get paid for marking until a few years ago!) considering the amount of hands-on teaching that we actually have to do each week. It’s rewarding, especially when you see students struggle for the whole semester to balance work, life, and study, only to come through with the goods in the end — whether “the goods” refers to being able to submit all the assignments, or getting a Distinction, or just pushing through to the end when they were worried they’d have to drop out.

However. Any teacher in the history of the world that says they don’t express the most immense sigh of relief when the last assignment for the semester is marked is a big. fat. liar.

Marking is the necessary evil of teaching. No matter how much time I give to each assignment, or how many comments I leave, I never feel like I’ve done enough and there are invariably unhappy students (although, I must admit, the vast majority of my students are generally happy with my feedback — even when it’s not entirely positive, because I take the time to offer constructive criticism).

Plus… it takes forever and it’s easy to grow impatient.

I’ve got about ten to go before I’m finished for the next three months, and honestly, I can’t wait. Does this make me a bad teacher, or completely normal?

Freddie and the Machine

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I can’t get Florence and the Machine out of my head this week.

She’s just so dramatic, but I’d probably be dramatic too if I had that voice and that hair. (I’m already pretty dramatic, sans her voice, and with a different kind of crazy hair.)

This wasn’t a very dramatic week for me, so I have no idea why she keeps creeping into my mind.

I definitely wanted to lie on the floor of my apartment earlier this week with a bottle of red wine and sing along to all of her songs. Whilst crying. Alone.

The strange thing is that I wasn’t feeling at all bad; maybe it was just the drama trying to break free.

Oh okay. Have some Queen, too. Queen > Florence, in case you were wondering. Freddie was literally the best.

It’s almost 8am and I drank too much coffee last night whilst editing and I can’t sleep. Sadly I also can’t organise my thoughts whatsoever, so now I’m just waiting for sleep to happen. Or I might just drink more coffee. And eat a muffin. #yolo #studentlyfe #hashtagsonwordpresslulz

Help.

A new approach.

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I used to run quite a bit in around 2007/2008. I am not – how do I put it – aerodynamic. I am big and tall and although I can swim to the end of the earth (for realsies), running was just never my thing.

Until, that is, I actually seriously tried it, and realised that I really loved it.

My lack of aerodynamism means that I am horrendously slow, but I’m kind of okay with that, you know? It’d be great to be able to run like the wind, but I’m just really kind of stoked that I can run at all, seeing as I spent the first 24 years of my life avoiding it at all costs.

I should mention here that I’ve only just got back in to running after a hiatus of about four years, but my love has been rekindled. I’m totally chuffed by the progress I’ve made in only three weeks – already running for 18 minutes non stop! It took me months to get that far when I first started in 2007! (But a week after that I ran for 20 minutes non stop – about 3km at my pace back then – I managed to run 10km without stopping. Weird.)

Last week I ran so hard that I had to run right off the treadmill (yah, yah, not the same on the treadmill as on the road, I know) and into the bathroom for a spew. Hard-to-tha-core, innit? And then I got back on the tready and kept going with my gosh darn hill sprints. I’ve had a cold recently and, in the name of not making myself so sick that I can’t work, I’ve been taking it easy and I miss it, really.

Back to my point. Because I move at snail’s pace – I was once overtaken by walkers, and another time an old man slowed down to run next to me to encourage me to keep going – I can’t listen to anything fast while I run. This works out pretty well given the complete lack of fast music in my collection.

My favourite soundtrack for running is hip hop. I need something with a story, and I like being able to rap along in my head (and sometimes out loud) as I go. My absolute favourite running album back in 1998 was Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool. Long enough to get me the whole way around the 10km bridges loop – no mean feat for an album seeing as it took me more than an hour – it’s the perfect soundtrack for a plodder like myself.

Tonight I thought I’d put The Cool on while I write, hoping that hearing the tunes can tap into something deep in my psyche and push me to keep going. I’ve been in a massive musical rut this week, unable to find anything that sounds right while I work. So far Lupe is hitting the spot, which is quite unusual as I don’t listen to hip hop when I work ever, really, as I don’t like too many words in my music while I write.

It’s a shame that Lupe got kind of… shit, after this album. He was never in danger of having a regular-sized ego, but it’s gotten a bit out of control, without continuing to make good songs to go along with it.

This isn’t my favourite Lupe song, but it always came at a great point on my run — just after the hardest part (the first 10ish minutes; after that, it’s easy to just keep going). Enjoy.

(ahhh at the time of uploading YouTube was being a jerk, so hopefully this works)

chauffeur, chauffeur come and take me away // cause i been standing in this line for like five whole days // me and security ain’t getting along // and when i got to the front they told me all the tickets are gone // so take me home where the mood is mellow // and the lights are dim, the m&ms are yellow // and the light bulbs around your mirror don’t flicker // everybody gets a nice autographed picture // one for you and one for your sister // who had to work tonight but is an avid listener…

Thumb injuries and red wine blues: Thesiswriting, T-45 days.

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Prepare to be amazed, dear readers.

I’m going to write about my thesisfinishing progress, and the things that I achieved, and I don’t even care if you think it’s boring. Which, let’s face it, you will.

Here is a photo that I just took on my iPad of myself yawning, mostly because I feel that this post needs a photo and I couldn’t think of anything else to photograph.

t-45

line up, boys.

For some reason that is yet to become apparent to me, earlier this year I decided that my nice, simple Internet-research-based thesis needed to start with a great big meaty chapter on philosophy.

The reason, I am assuming, has to do with the fact that I am a fucking nutcase who is never happy unless she is extremely challenged and embroiled in self-doubt and second guessing.

However, I had been writing about two sociological approaches throughout the other chapters – symbolic interaction and phenomenology – when it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea whether or not these topics could a) be applied to the themes that I was discussing in my thesis, and b) if so, whether they could work together.

So I took it upon myself to jump head-first into researching a word that I couldn’t even say (and certainly hadn’t heard of) prior to 2008. For the bulk of the past few years, I’d kind of just been ignoring the fact that I wasn’t really 100% sure what phenomenology was, and I’d kind of been assuming that symbolic interaction was the right framework for my research & writing.

Tut, tut. Silly girl.

Phenomenology, as it turns out, is really fucking cool. It bums me out to no end that it’s an almost-dead philosophy created by long-dead European men, but it’s actually proving to be incredibly useful and relevant for framing the notion that lived experience — the experience of phenomena that allows us to make meaningful the process of everyday life — has changed dramatically in the past 20 or so years.

Most importantly, sociologists like Maurice Merleau-Ponty did a lot of work about the role of the body in lived experience, which is super handy for my own research.

You see, this project — arising out of my Honours thesis, which was about online body modification culture — was initially about the body. I am endlessly fascinated by bodies and the various meanings and roles they uphold (and disrupt), in the context of everything from race to fat studies to posthumanism, and particularly questions of the online body. So, I planned to continue researching the body and set off on my way, but ended up taking a four-and-a-half year detour away from the body, along a dark and terrifying path towards nothingness.

What I did discover along the way is geography, though. It’s quite funny that I discovered geography when I was in such a directionless place, but, that’s how my life works.

I am obsessed with the world and everything in it. I love ideas of travel, migration, mobility, architecture, urbanity. I love the notion of place and belonging, and being out of place and not belonging.

What I didn’t realise until quite far in to this Epic Thesis Journey is just how closely linked the body and geography are.

Duh, you say.

Shut up. (But more on that later.)

Suddenly I found myself with a bunch of loosely-linked-but-not-really chapters in which I could see the bigger picture, slowly emerging from the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve collected and written, and I realised that I needed something to tie it all together, and that the questions I’d been asking myself and subsequently ignoring (about phenomenology and symbolic interaction) were going to provide the means by which I could contextualise my disparate ideas, allowing me to establish from the very beginning of my thesis a framework within which to approach the rest of my writing.

Huzzah!

Of course, pulling apart sociological perspectives that you’ve only really vaguely looked in to over the course of the preceding five years takes some time and effort, but I’m almost there. I’m at the proof reading stage, both for typos (too many) and to make sure that I haven’t left questions unanswered or concepts unapproached in this opening chapter.

So that’s where I was last night, until 2am this morning: face deep in theory and notes, to the extent that I have woken up with a sore thumb on my right hand (because I still do all of my notes and editing by hand, on paper, like a chump) and a bit of a headache from what I thought was oh-so-much Pinot Noir last night, but which was actually probably only about 200mL.

I have become a lightweight and a cheap date. Marry me?

I filled in the gaps by finally answering some questions that my work seemed to be asking:

  • Why the move from symbolic interaction, which was initially the driving perspective of my research, to phenomenology? 
  • Are SI & phenomenology compatible? How about postmodernism & phenomenology? (Admittedly, this second question only gets a few paragraphs; one must draw the line somewhere.)
  • How has modern phenomenology approached technology?
  • Why resurrect a dying (or dead, depending on who you read) philosophy from a century ago and attempt to apply it to Internet research?

Today’s mission is to write up these notes and answer a couple more questions:

  • What is the relevance of phenomenology in this age of pervasive social media use, given that it is, essentially, a philosophy of the social world?
  • How can ideas about the enmeshing of technology and materiality help to reimagine the way that interaction and phenomena are experienced?

And I have to do that until it’s finished, so I can send off my chapter and then move out of my apartment by, like, tomorrow. Totally doable.

[tl;dr - philosophy is confusing and makes your hand sore -- partly from writing too much, and partly from all the wank. however you feel like a freaking genius when you make important connections and solve problems which, in reality, are obvious and relevant to you and only you in this entire universe. well done, phd student!]

Here is a photo of a cute puppy (my cute puppy when he was more ‘puppy’ and less ‘giant slobbering oaf’) as a reward for making it to the end:

4164974100_48d196170a

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

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You might not be surprised to learn that I like sad songs.

This is not a sad song.

This is a song about remembering good times and knowing good times will come again.

Times aren’t bad here, but they are hard. Not hard like some people have hard times, but hard in the sense that I don’t sleep enough and I think too much and I don’t know what happens next.

But: I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

(It won’t.)

This is a song that I have returned to again and again over the past few years, usually in moments of ‘things are hard but they’re getting better’. Life is good. It really is.

I think this song captures that sense of defiance that one adopts when the only other option is to give up. Instead of giving up, you can just know things will work out, and be worth it.

(I’ll post about something cheerful soon, maybe? Don’t hold your breath. Surly and contemplative is my MO.)

[probably post one of many tonight. music and writing go hand-in-hand.]

A long post about how I’m a bit anally retentive and maybe an alpha female (and also a thesis finishing timeline)

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Considering the fact that my life could, really, be described as one hectic mess, I sure do get off on being organised and having a plan.

I’m actually completely obsessed with planning, to the extent that having vague plans to see friends on a Saturday but not knowing by Friday night exactly what we’re doing, kind of sends me into a bit of a frantic tailspin in which I, perhaps, have been known to chuck the occasional mini hissy fit and decide I’m not doing anything at all, if they’re going to be like that. Because other people’s lack of anal-retentive, compulsive planning is clearly a reflection of how worthy I am of their time. This was in the past, though, of course. Ahem.

I used to think that I was Little Miss Go-With-The-Flow, unphased by anything and open to spontaneity — the complete antithesis of your typical Type A nutcase.

No, friends. I was lying to myself. I am a psycho.

I am the first to admit now days that I am a bit of a control freak. If you read my post from last week about being worried, you would probably have already got that sense. I hate not knowing what is going on, whether it’s tomorrow or six months in the future. I have definitely been accused of being an alpha female, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. This site provided a list of characteristics that I, the alpha, am supposed to exhibit, but there are too many to share, so here are the first few:

  • Task focused. Single minded. Well, perhaps. Task focused? Yes. Single minded? Lol. My mind is in a thousand different places all the time. I’m pretty sure I have adult onset ADD, apparently something not entirely uncommon for female PhD students (but of course I can’t remember where I read that, now).
  • Athletic, more physical than other women. I do like to get sweaty – even if my periods of athletic enthusiasm are interspersed with months of dormancy.
  • She is determined, bold, and a competitive high achiever. I also never thought I was competitive, until once, over a game of Scrabble, a frustrated friend said to me “it’s not a competition, Erin”, and I snapped back without thinking, “EVERYTHING’S A COMPETITION”. Scrabble is a competition, for what it’s worth. As is everything else in my life.
  • Career is part of their identity. Currently my lack of career is a part of my identity, but I suppose the PhD is technically part of my career, and I’ve spent long enough doing it that it is actually about 97% of my identity, to the extent that I’m actually quite convinced that I am now just a part of my thesis.
  • Does not want to be tied down to family. She is not primarily interested in children and may not want children. Tick. Snot-nosed little booger faces.
  • Higher sexual libido. Can enjoy one-night-stands with no regrets. This would require me having spoken to a man in the past two years that wasn’t a friend or a friend’s partner, which I haven’t done. 
  • Emotionally self sufficient. Loooolllllllll. I am to emotional self sufficiency as the rising tide is to sandcastles.
  • More aggressive. Actively pursues power and status. A risk taker. I don’t always think things through, if that’s what you mean.
  • Enjoys recognition but doesn’t need approval from peers. I don’t know if I really have any peers, and all my friends are more successful than me, so I’ll mark this one N/A.
  • Gets straight to the point without social chat (a trait expected in Alpha Males, but makes the Alpha female seem rude, abrupt, aggressive, arrogant, a bitch). No. I am lovely, and if I hadn’t scared away all the women in my life, they’d back that up.
  • Closer relationship to father than mother. Both of my parents read this blog and answering this question would be foolish.
  • Tend to be left handed. I spent my childhood wishing to be left handed, and instead developed an awkward right-handed pen hold that makes me look left handed slightly retarded.
  • Fiercely independent – not looking for a man to take care of her, she takes care of herself. If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it (okay, not the best lyric, he did put a ring on it). Seriously though, I don’t need no man. (I am going to die alone, but I’ve accepted and embraced it.)
  • She may outright reject social conventions like marriage, religion, and government. Well – yes and no. We need government. I don’t particularly like religion, but so long as everyone keeps it to themselves and doesn’t hurt or impinge upon the rights of others, I’ll let you do your own thing. See aforementioned point re: the ring that was formerly on it for my views on marriage.

Where the hell was I going with this? It just turned into an excuse for me to think about myself in great detail for 10 minutes. Priorities, Erin!

I think my point was that I am a complete nutcase who gets off on planning her life down to the most minute detail, and if you want or need proof, here is my plan for the next 46 days of my life:

Timeline to finish thesis blog edn

And you know what? More specific details are probably to follow. Let’s finish my thesis together, Internet.