Song: Some Hypotheses

1. The first model is that the song is a single entity, with words and music essentially inseparable. 

2. Second idea: a single song (words and music together, as in the first model) can be adapted, harmonized, performed, in multiple styles. A folksong becomes a Lied, or is sung in the flamenco style. Every iteration is different, occurs in a new context. A new context of performance/recording and a new context of reception.   

3. A third conception. There is a poetic text, that may or may not have characteristics of the popular song tradition (however that is defined). Someone sets that text to music, in a style that may or may not refer to any particular style associated with that kind of text.  Song is an artistic hybrid, the combination of two artistic media. The music overrides the original text, supplants it. 

4. Should we then view the transformations of (2) as instances of (3)? Changes in the performance / reception of the song introduce a kind of analytic separation into the union of music and words. The song is no longer organically vernacular once it enters into all these other channels of reception.  

I wonder

I wonder what came first, the words or the music? Did someone

"set" the words to music, or was the tune always there? It seems

dumb to ask, but I'd really like to know.

                                            I wonder

why bacon sizzles in the pan. I understand how the drumstick

hits the drum head, causing the air inside the drum

to move, the other dream head vibrating sympathetically 

and the air around the drum carrying the sounds waves, but

I don't know what vibrates in the pan. Is it the grease? 

(I decide not to worry about the "flat' language

of my poems, not to worry about my poor

powers of observation. I hate epiphanies

anyway and "fine writing.") 

                        Why do we need a theory only

of difficult things? Zen cured my ear worm, I might say. 

Tunes still rattle in the rafters, but I don't care about them. 

Other emotions, too, ebb and flow, dread, regret, rancor. 

Joy even. 

        Insomnia is just the fear of insomnia, nobody says they 

have insomnia at 11 in the morning, after all. Earworm is just

the fear of the persistent tune, not the tune itself.    

Revising

Adding: seeing where something is missing, something needs to be expanded.

Subtracting: seeing where you've gone on too long on a topic, or expressed something in too many words.

Reorganizing: seeing where the parts are not in proper order.  

Rewriting: seeing ideas that need to be better expressed. Clearing up confusion. Giving paragraphs a proper shape. Smoothing transitions. 

I get to do another search committee

 I agreed to chair the next search committee, this time for a VAP [visiting asst. prof]. I wanted a small committee, to make it easier to manage, but then we have to have each interest group represented, then they'll probably ask for additional volunteers, so the committee will be half the department once again. 

Why does bacon sizzle

 "We don't have a theory of something being easy to do or of things going according to plan, things working out. Theory means something is difficult."

            "I wonder why bacon sizzles in the pan. What is it that's vibrating? I understand why the drum head vibrates and moves the air inside, but not the bacon." 

                            "There is a theory of poetic language, it might be wrong or right, but there is a theory of it, or several. But we have no theory of language not being poetic, the absence of whatever that is that is 'poetic."

                            "Why do we need that? We only need to know about the difficult cases, like the bacon. I literally do not know why it sizzles, yet it seems dumb to ask. When we understand, we move on, or so I'd thought."

                    "That what I'm saying, we have it wrong. Easiness is difficult to understand. We don't know how those easy things occur."

               

You're boring

 I saw a video where they asked some tennis players what the most interesting thing about them was. These were the top people, like Nadal.  They couldn't come up with anything. It's because they are famous for one thing, being able to to hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket, and I guess running to get to the next ball they have to hit. Without that, you wouldn't know who they are in the first place. They aren't interesting; they didn't go to college, or if they did, they went to play tennis. Their outside interests aren't likely to be very well developed either. 

Maybe being interesting, then, is a bit overrated.  That single-minded passion of hitting a ball with a stick or club might be enough.  The other stuff, even if interesting, seems like a self-indulgence.  

FU

 I'm eager to see if fancy university who recruited me to apply last year hired anyone for the position. So far, their web site doesn't have anyone new. Senior searches often are not successful; people have a hard time deciding on candidates, or the person chosen does not choose to accept.  I guess I'll feel semi-vindicated if they end up with nobody at all.