Music

I have been inspired by Haywood and all his music posting. First, I have been slowly listening to his music recommendations. But that is not the important part of this post.

The important part is Pandora.

Pandora is a website that lets you create radio stations. The site creators spent three or four years characterizing music by lots of different attributes or genes, and then formed a 'music genome' that allows comparisons between different musicians. So you go, type in a band you want to listen to, and it creates a station that has other artists that have similar qualities.

I have had huge success with the station. I type in something I feel like listening to, and I get a whole station of new music, mostly artists I have never heard of, and all of it is really good.

You can even give feedback on the other songs they are playing so that you can stream-line the station.

The only drawbacks to the site is that you can't control the music flow. You can advance to the next track, but you can't choose a specific artist or track at a particular time. You also can't go back and replay a song. It will come up again, but it is random.

So the lack of control is kind of lame. Okay, it is really lame. But, as far as giving exposure to new music, the site is awesome. So use the tool for what it is meant for. Go discover some new music. Then download it, buy it, or whatever you do so that you can listen at your convenience.

Pandora Station Recommendation: The Fugees

N. Y. C.

"We're not scaremongering / This is really happening / Happening / We're not scaremongering / This is really happening / Happening / Mobiles skwerking / Mobiles chirping / Take the money and run / Take the money and run / Take the money / Here I'm allowed / Everything all of the time / Here I'm allowed / Everything all of the time"
- Idiotheque from Kid A by Radiohead.

Radiohead plays. Shouts. It is the soundtrack of my exploration and discovery. The subway plunges into and through portals of clinical light back into darkness. This is my soundtrack for the exploration and discovery of New York City.

I flew up to NYC on a Thursday. My sub plans were in order, complete with contact information in case of emergency, referrals for the bad students, and an excess of work for all of my wonderful kiddos. It is harder to get into trouble when you are drowning in worksheets. Of course, sometimes you get into trouble because you are drowning in worksheets. So with sub plans in order, I left school at 3 pm to make it to the airport for my 5:30 flight to Newark International (EWR). I normally get out of school at 4:15, but since I had this flight I skipped my planning period, conveniently located during last period.

I made it to Bush in plenty of time to wait for 2 hours of flight delays. There was freezing rain in New Jersey. Planes couldn't land.

We eventually took off. I arrived at 12. I waited for the train. It came at 1.

The train from EWR is nondescript. There is nothing notable about it. It has seats. It has windows. In fact, the trip into NYC would lead one to believe, if one did not know better, that the train merely passed through some minor industrial and residential areas before continuing into some unknown countryside. This is managed by way of tunnels; it is very hard to tell that you are entering the most populous city in the US if you are underground. Underground there are no signs of millions of inhabitants. There are just walls. And lights. And the rushing wind as the train plows through then artificial (and in my case, actual) night.

No, the first signs of New York come after I disembark at Penn Station. I step out of the train, drag rolling luggage after me, and climb 2 flights of stairs. I see ticket booths. Changing boards of arrival and departure times. Some people. I climb another flight of stairs. To 8th Ave and 31st St. The city punches me in the face.

Buildings tear into the sky, tear at the sky. At 1:15 am Friday morning, the cacophony of taxis, people, assaults me. The city is alive, it is a living, breathing, moving thing, which demands action, and will continue to do so until I depart. But first I must sleep.

See, I am in New York City because Teach For America has its national office there. I need to be at TFA's national office so that I can interview to be a program director in Denver. Or Memphis. Every winter and early spring, for the past I don't know how long, TFA site managers converge on NYC so they can screen candidates for PD and RD jobs, jobs which basically amount to managing corps members (that's a PD) or recruiting college seniors (that's an RD). I am here because I might want to be a Program Director. I think I would be good at it. Turns out, either TFA doesn't think so, or the openings did not line up with my abilities. Cuz I didn't get an offer.

Interviews were Friday. They were fun. I thought I conducted myself well, giving a fair showing of my abilities and my faults. I do not like to mislead.

After the interviews, I called my buddy Ajay who lives in Manhattan. Hey Man, what should I do? Maybe go to the museums. Go here, catch this train, get off, take this shuttle, take this other train, get off, turn around, walk, click your heels.

The instructions continue. I botch em. I ride the subway, listening to Radiohead. Radiohead is my anthem for NYC. Its sounds perfectly fit the forced proximity, the spiritual, emotional, psychological detachment. You have to cope somehow when you ride the subway, packed into a car with no room to move, to sit, to breathe. Radiohead anthems.

I walk through Central Park. Miles to and fro. It's cold. There's snow. I see rock shear out of the ground. I think about climbing it. I walk to the Guggenheim. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the museum. It has a 4 floor spiral staircase. With a 50 foot diameter. Approximately. I didn't measure it or anything. I look at Richard Prince's art work. There are lots of prints of trashy romance novels. With nurses. There are some pictures of cowboys. I'd like to be a cowboy. Someday. There are silk screens of Found Jokes. They are all dirty. I laugh at some.

After leaving, I retrace my steps. I pick up my bag at the hotel. I walk across Manhattan pulling my suitcase. To Ajay's. We go out. We are looking for the Art Bar. Apparently it's close, but we walk for 30 minutes with no luck. We find the Village Vanguard. The greats played here; Coltrane, Dizzy, Davis, Marsalis. I stumble across it while looking for the Art Bar.

We decide we are lost. We get ready to call a cab. We see the Art bar. I'm starving. It's 10. I haven't eaten since noon. I meet his friends. I destroy my hamburger. We leave and go to some other bar. There is a birthday party for some friend of Ajay's. Some other people show up. We walk across the street to some German bar. They sell Liter Beers. Liter Beers are consumed.

We leave. We go back across the street to the birthday party. Dancing is happening. It's crowded. I dance around. No one is paying attention. I can't hear anyone. We pack up and head to the Beauty Bar. In a cab.

At the Beauty Bar, they are playing 50s music. Some early 60s. It's bop. It's On the Road. It's perfect. I dance. We dance. There are little chairs around the room, where ladies used to get their hair done. Those ones with the space helmet looking things on em. That go over your head. Over your curls. I dance some more. Some ladies prowl on me. I laugh. I dance. I ignore them.

We leave at 3:30. Ajay and I cab it to his place. I pass out in minutes.

Saturday comes, and passes at a steady but lethargic pace. We wake after noon, and make plans to eat brunch, even though I thought brunch was between breakfast and lunch, not after lunch, but maybe it is all about your intentions, and we definitely intend to eat brunch. We talk. Ajay and I. Dreams, jobs, traveling. Where could we go? Where couldn't we go? What could we do? Would they pay us to do that?

I pack my stuff, even though it is pretty much packed, and take a cab to Penn Station. I leave the city in the same nondescript way I entered. The city backs out of view through the windows of Penn Station as I descend the steps to the main concourse. A guy gives me his train ticket. He had purchased the wrong one. Thanks man. You don't have to pay me or nothing, I just don't want it to go to waste. Oh, um, okay.

"Everyone / Everyone around here / Everyone is so near / It's holding on / It's holding on / Everyone / Everyone is so near / Everyone has got the fear / It's holding on / It's holding on."
- National Anthem from Kid A by Radiohead.

Ramble On

Good Led Zeppelin song.

I've been...uh...reconciling this week. It's as if I suddenly found the loose ends of a sweater that I thought was completely unraveled, only to find that the ends lead to a large hole in an otherwise complete garment. On the one hand, I am very used to my wardrobe without these holy garments (to continue this awkward analogy), but on the other hand, I remember the glory days of their association. I loved them. I still love them. But I am a completely different person, and I wonder if/how they will fit.

I've also been reading Thomas Merton's "No Man is an Island". It has some interesting thoughts on friendship that have challenged me this past week.

"In order to love others with perfect charity I must be true to them, to myself, and to God. The true interests of a person are at once perfectly his own and common to the whole Kingdom of God. That is because these interests are all centered in God's designs for his soul the destiny of each one of us is intended, by the Lord, to enter into the destiny of His entire Kingdom. And the more perfectly we are ourselves the more we are able to contribute to the good of the whole Church of God. For each person is perfected by the virtues of a child of God, and these virtues show themselves differently in everyone, since they come to light in the lives of each one of the saints under a different set of providential circumstances. If we love one another truly, our love will be graced with a clear-sighted prudences which sees and respects the designs of God upon each separate soul. Our love for one another must be rooted in a deep devotion Divine Providence, a devotion that abandons our own limited plans into the hands of God and seeks only to enter int the invisible work that builds His Kingdom. Only a love that senses the designs of Providence can unite itself perfectly to God's providential action upon souls. Faithful submission to God's secret working in the world will fill our love with piety, that is to say with supernatural awe and respect. This respect, this piety, gives our love the character of worship, without which our charity can never be quite complete. For love must not only seek the truth in the lives of those around us; it must find it there. But when we find the truth that shapes our lives we have found more than an idea. We have found a Person. WE have come upon the actions of One Who is still hidden, but Whose work proclaims Him holy and worthy do be adored. And in Him we also find ourselves."

Crazy or Awesome

I had this awesome conversation with Mr. B today. I was laying out my new-found dissatisfaction with the status quo .

I am going to build the argument backwards, so that it makes more sense, and then loop back to encapsulate it all into a neat little bundle of one-serving bliss that might or might not relate to the title.

I am a first year teacher. As a first year teacher, every day I am at the mercy of numerous devastating youth for multiple hours, while simultaneously at the mercy of far fewer, but equally devastating, adults for multiple minutes. During these periods of entropy (at best, directed craziness), I am certifiably crazy. Insane.

This fact was not known to me until about October. During October I worked 2 weeks of 12 hour days (by choice) and flipped out. I then realized I was crazy, and as a result, physical activity was a *necessity* every day just to protect myself (and all those other people/kids I interact with) from a true crazy episode.

It is important to note that this exercise is not for entertainment purposes; it is for survival.

Now add to this mix the development of relationship. In first semester, I am so busy with survival, and so hopped-up on the adrenaline of running the show and not knowing what's going on at the same time that relationship is an after-thought. When it happens, it happens and is great and I am better for it. When it doesn't, I don't notice because I am surviving and hopped-up on adrenaline.

But this is not entirely true. I know, deep down, that I want, need, relationship. And every time it doesn't happen, I get a little weaker.

By February, this weakness was blooming into fully grown dysfunction. Strange desires and behaviors were cropping up all over the place. I was eating toothpaste and brushing my teeth with pickle juice. I was doing the worm while listening to B.B. King. I was skipping on treadmills, coloring my nails with sharpie markers, and eating tubs of peanut butter.

Okay, none of those were true, but I was acting weird. And now I know: I am in a profession, in an organization, that promotes a selfless masochistic work-ethic, but I am of a religious persuasion that emphasizes community and relationship. Relationship that is sadly lacking.

Mr. B and I decided that there is a Teacher Continuum of Craziness. It hypothesizes that a teacher is always in flux, and you are either becoming more awesome and more balanced and more in-control, or you are becoming more loony, more loner, more unresponsive. You are either developing into Crazy or into Awesome.

TFA subtly emphasizes workoholism as the path to awesome. But I need relationship. It is important. I think it will form an integral part of any path I find that leads to Awesome.

Dance Supervisor

Today Alief Middle School had a dance.

Yes. That said that a "Middle School had a dance".

Close your eyes and think back to the earliest dance you went to. Middle school preferably.

Okay. Done? Good.

I remember the 1 middle school dance I went to. It was a Halloween dance. I don't remember there being any dancing. ANY. In fact, there were booths with games and food that were the center of attention, not the dancing.

Actually, no, that's not true. There was some moshing. A little. But then we got in trouble and went back to standing on the sides of the gym.

Now, forget all of that, and any experience you had at a middle school dance, because there are a couple of facts that you ought to know about Houston schools.

1. My students all know every single dance to every single song that is played on The Box (radio station. Can't stop Won't Stop!)
2. My students watch more MTV and BET than they sleep. I am sure of it.
3. My students cannot do anything with fractions, but they can rap every lyric from Wanna be a Balla by Lil Troy.
4. My students live in Houston, TX.
   

So, given these facts, it is not really *that* surprising that instead of being a dance like anything from the suburbs, it was, well, horrifying and impressive.

Impressive - man, my students can dance. Like really dance. Break dance even. In fact, they break dance in my room. But only when I let them. Ok. Sometimes when I don't let them.

Horrifying - 6th graders are around 11 years old. There was more attempted dry humping by ELEVEN YEAR OLDS this evening then any person should ever see. Then should be legal. THEY ARE ELEVEN!! I can't handle this.

Supposedly, I am a role model or something, so I break up anything that gets to overt, but really, gahhh! I can't even think about it anymore.

There's really only one thing to do.

I think I need to go to a club and freak some hoes.