middlenight

So I'm taking this electronic music class, right?  Right.  It's really awesome.  I have an hour on Thursdays and an hour on Mondays in which I'm supposed to do all my composing for the class.  We have one computer between all ten of us in the class, so we have specific slots for each of us.  Anyway, I usually end up spending a couple of hours there every time I go in.  I spent three hours there tonight and I wrote a piece called "Titanic Sinking" that is pretty wicked.  If I can ever figure out how to get them on here, I will post a few of the things I make.  Mostly the assignments are really meant to just get us to screw around with the software and check out all the things we can do, but with a little more structure than just messing around, but every time we have an assignment, I spend hours working so that at the end, I have a complete piece of music (albeit, a short one).  Last time, we were just supposed to make two rhythm patterns and then play some keyboard over top.  But I was so excited when I made some rad stuff on with the programme, so I stayed there for two hours and wrote a one minute piece with chord progressions, melodic progression and some cool beats.  I am so glad I have something creative to do this semester otherwise, I think I'd go crazy with no outlet for everything in my brain that isn't about International Affairs or Political Science or someone else's philosophy that I had to read and then regurgitate in between some thoughts that are supposed to be original, but not too original or the professor will mark the essay down.  

I left for a minute and, looking back and reading that last bit, I think it's important that I point out that I believe in the academic process, but I'm feeling a bit jaded about it right now because of my Pursuit of Happiness class.  My professor for this class is insane.  This class is a 100 level course that I am required to take as a freshman, and I was really excited before we started, but now I dread going there.  Most of the time, it's more work than my 300-level religious studies course.  I had a ten-page paper due today (it's only the fourth week of school!) that I stayed up almost all night last night for and skipped my morning classes to finish.  I did finish it, and I did think it was quite a solid essay, but I wish that it hadn't eaten my life quite like that.  Also, we have our midterm next Monday, which is the fifth week out of a 14-week term.  Ridiculous.  

In other news, I am working on making more time for myself to make poetry.  I use term "make time" very loosely here; I don't have much time to give to anything but school, and what I have is pretty well doled out where I need it.  Either way, I am going to squeeze it in.  My sense of form has changed a lot lately.  I am working on a poem much longer than anything I have ever written about the Holocaust.  I think that by the end of it, I will have been able to distill everything inside of me about it, turned it into a stationary collection of words that communicates something I've been needing to say and then, maybe, I will be able to let some of it go.  I don't know why I carry it around so much more than other people seem to.