Some realities are extremely difficult to accept.
I’ve been home for three weeks now, and while I’m happy to be spending time with so many people I care about, I’m also starting to get bombarded by the resurfacing of old anxieties. Although the first couple weeks of being here was warm and exciting, that familiar feeling of combined suffocation and helplessness has somehow creeped its way back into my heart and head. But I’m hoping that I’ll be better prepared to deal with it this time around.
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I’ve been waiting months to go home. And now I am. The cab will be here in 1 hour… and it’s a bit strange to think that I won’t be back here for another 5 weeks.
I’m a little nervous about what it’s going to be like – and I wonder if it will be easy to return to old habits or if it’ll be difficult to adjust again. Because I’ve gotten so used to being alone in a big, loud city. I bet the silence in Simi Valley will be deafening, just like when I came back from spending a month in Asia.
But it’ll definitely be nice seeing family and friends again. And I plan on spending lots of time under the sun.
California here I come, right back where I started from…
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From today’s Guardian (I wonder what Paul and Ringo have to say about this):
The long and winding road to an MA in Beatles songs
Liverpool Hope University launches UK’s first master’s course in fab four studies
Sam Jones
Wednesday March 4 2009
The Guardian
Their thirst for reinvention saw the elegantly quiffed Hamburg rockers become the mop-topped fab four, hippy harbingers of sexual liberation and, eventually, druggy psychedelic visionaries.
Forty years on, the Beatles and their songs are to be hauled into the halls of academia and dissected by postgraduate students at a Merseyside university.
The masters degree in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society is being billed by Liverpool Hope University as the first such course in the UK and “probably the world”.
Among the topics covered on the course, which comprises four 12-week modules and a dissertation, are the postwar music industry, subcultures, and the importance of authenticity and locality.
Mike Brocken, senior lecturer in popular music at the university, said it was time the band were put under an academic microscope.
“There have been over 8,000 books about the Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address,” he said.
“The Beatles influenced so much of society, not just with their music, but also with fashion, from their collar-less jackets to their psychedelic clothes.”
As well as investigating different ways of studying popular music, the MA will look at the studio sound and compositions of the Beatles and examine Liverpudlian life from the 1930s to see how events helped to shape the music emerging in the city.
Brocken said that the size of the MA course, which begins this September, would depend on the number of applicants, but would not exceed a “possible” maximum of 30 places.
He added that he had already received inquiries about the full- or part-time course from people in the UK and the US.
Asked what employment benefits a course scrutinising songs such as Octopus’s Garden, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and I Want to Hold Your Hand might yield in the current economic climate, Brocken said: “I think any MA equips people with extra study and research skills. MAs of any description are vital for the workplace. You will find that once you have done a master’s degree it separates you from the pack.”
Similar arts and humanities MAs at the university cost around £3,445 for full-time students from the UK. Brocken said that although there might be some bursaries, “people will have to self-fund unless they have some backing from an institution”.
Students on the full-time course will attend two evening sessions a week and cover all four modules in one academic year. Part-time students, meanwhile, will attend one evening session a week for two years. In both cases a dissertation will be due towards the end of the following August.
The songs and social significance of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr have been picked over countless times since Philip Larkin observed that “sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(which was rather late for me)/Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP”.
But in recent years, the band and its output have been the subject of academic studies and polemics.
Last year, a Cambridge University historian attacked the view that the Beatles were counter-cultural heroes, claiming they were instead capitalists who milked the booming youth culture for their own financial gain.
“They did about as much to represent the interests of the nation’s young people as the Spice Girls did in the 1990s,” said David Fowler, who argued that the band provided family entertainment rather than an authentic youth perspective. “They were young capitalists who, far from developing a youth culture, were exploiting youth culture by promoting fan worship, mindless screaming and nothing more than a passive teenage consumer,” said the author of Youth Culture in Modern Britain.
Categories: culture
I don’t think further description is necessary…
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Things that drive me crazy:
-spending long hours on the phone due to delays in financial aid processing
-being a victim of credit-card fraud in another country
-losing my umbrella on a super rainy day
-losing my 3-day new cell phone w/unlimited international calling
-losing my camera
I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I will not get angry. I WILL NOT GET ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Easier said than done,
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Don’t you have anything better to do besides let yourself become so consumed with hatred and jealousy, that you’re willing to dig yourself into a deeper hole than you are already in?
Before you make the decision to act like a bitch, do you honestly believe that you will be in a better place than before?
What makes you think you have the right to threaten a good person, just because you simply weren’t worthy to come along for the ride?
Why are you so fucking concerned about where I am, yet so afraid to confront me yourself? Stop using my friends as scapegoats – they’re worth so much more than that.
Get over it. You’re NOT better than me.
I would say “sorry” in hopes of making you feel better, but I didn’t do anything wrong. And I just don’t think you deserve my sympathy.
I know you’re insecure because I am a part of something that you can’t infiltrate. I know you hate it when my name comes up in conversation, because those instances are often accompanied by expressions of fondness. I know you’re jealous of the memories I have… especially the ones you will likely never hear about. I know it kills you to think that I have qualities you will never possess. I know you wish I didn’t exist, because then I wouldn’t be a threat… I wouldn’t have been there, with him, and with everyone else, while you were forced to stay home alone.
It didn’t have to be this way. We could have made amends… I was ready to take that step to put shit behind us and clear the air. I was going to invite you outside for a cigarette, and tell you my intentions were innocent. I wanted to make you feel better, more comfortable, and help you – even if I didn’t want to be your best friend. I was going to tell you that it was just about music and friendship, that you didn’t have to worry because I’m not trying to get in your way. Whether you believed me or not, I was willing to extend you the courtesy of truth – without the fucking mindgames that women are always so willing to play on each other.
But you fucked it up. Without knowing the full story, you jumped to conclusions and laid the blame on an innocent person instead of examining yourself. There’s a reason that I was there and you weren’t. But instead of understanding that reason, you turned to insults and ruined your chances of ever being fully accepted. You made enemies, instead of allies. You didn’t even come after me – you went after my friend. You ruined his weekend, and now it’s personal.
Your threats don’t scare anybody. And if you think they do, you are truly unaware of the type of bond this circle of friends has. You have no fucking idea.
You’ve been trying so hard to convince everyone that I was wrong about you. But this time I didn’t have to do or say anything. You ruined it for yourself. So grow up, and move on. We don’t want you here.
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