L-M-A-O!

Hello world!

It's been a while!  I'm starting to get that feeling of impending doom with my independent work.  It's due May 1, and the more I work on it, the more I realize I have to re-do what I've already done.  Such a bummer!  My adviser suggested a harsh timeline of work for this week, which makes working on the project all that more terrifying.  

So what's my knee-jerk reaction?  Not work on it, of course.  I need to constantly address my tendency to avoid the uncomfortable and get moving.  Fear tends to manifest itself as procrastination in my life.  Fear is bad.  Ergo procrastination is bad?  I gotta work on my "if p then q"s, but you get the point.

I've been working on another music composition assignment this last week, too.  The composition was supposed to involve, er, anything.  (I've gotten pretty used to open-ended prompts like that in the last year.)  I decided to work with the Deutsch speech-to-song illusion that I mentioned in a previous post; a huge inspiration for the project has been Reich's "It's Gonna Rain".  (Side note--I picked readings for my computer music reading group this week on this and other auditory illusions!)  I've brought ten or so people in my recording studio so far to read their text messages to each other.  

My goal is to extract little snippets of conversations that are so quintessentially Generation Y texts (lol  OMG!!!!  hahahahaha bro) as opposed to long conversations.  I intend to start the piece with layers of coherent chatter (ie. full sentences that could have been recorded from real conversations) then having the words slowly make way for less intelligible text-speak--sort of a statement of how socializing has evolved (devolved?) over time.  I instructed my voice artists to not laugh at their texts if possible, but it's inevitable to bust a belly over guys sending each other :-* and stuff like that.  So I think I'll use those clips to break the fourth wall, so to speak, at the end--showing that we don't actually take ourselves seriously!

I've had friends suggest I post some music I've recorded here, on YouTube, or on Facebook.  I'm still debating, partially because I don't understand copyright laws (help!) and partially because I just don't understand how anyone could possible be interested in anything I've done.  Self-deprecation much?

Lately I've assigned myself other (social) tasks, like answering the phone when I don't want to, checking voicemails when I don't want to, calling people back when I don't want to…pattern?  It's simple tasks like these that keep me connected with reality and get me out of my head.  

More importantly, I've been making a concerted effort to spend time with other sober women, especially young women.  I think one of my major barriers against reaching out to women is being judgmental.  As in, I've always been quick to judge chicks, so I assume they're judging me back.  So what's been the result of my latest efforts?  Finding out that other girls are not, in fact, rude/conceited/mean/whatever, but instead fun people.  WHAT?!

I should stop typing and start working.  Until next time!!