Invisible ink (made visible for a few fleeting moments)
There are some things that never change. And others that seem to flex and grow with us despite the paths we take.
Example of a thing that doesn't change - my embarassing fascination with detectives and mysteries, ergo my need to decipher and decode secret messages. Clearly the media have changed but the underlying trait remains unchanged. When I was six my brother and I used to make up coded languages and write eachother messages in invisible ink. I don't think I have gotten past this.
Example of things that flex and morph - meanings of song lyrics. Take for example this one, by Pink Floyd:
When I was 12, I was certain that I fully understood this (but of course I had the lyrics all wrong, and not having internet beyond the monochromatic screens withcomputerized text "bulletin boards" that consumed my brother's afternoon hours and accrued multiple thousands of dollars of phone bills (big oops, boy was I glad it was him and not me) on modems that were slower and more miserable even, than the exit of this current regime, alas I was left to my own faulty devices. Of course, it was all about a boy longing for a girl, or vice versa (I think Jason Marquis, with his non-ass, and pants that fell somewhere below his boxer shorts was the object of fascination at that time, briefly, thank God.) But now it seems to me to be much more about a mid-life crisis and one's inability to act upon the things that one wants because of the constraints of society, because of the social contracts into which we have been inscribed, and the rules of engagement.
"Cold comfort for change." I don't know if I can live that way, I don't know."Did you exchange, a walk-on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage?" Well? My penchant for escapism is one of those other things that acts as a backdrop to my days. Yesterday a professor and I were discussing the fact that I am terrorized by stagnation, absolutely horrified by it, while he prefers routine, knowing that he can do pretty much the same thing for the next twenty years without major upheaval. It occurs to me that academia might be the one profession that can accomodate two such wildly different personalities. I need constant change, the possibility of going to a different country every summer, researching totally disparate areas, and I can still do that, some day... I hope. Why do I need constant tumult? I think that I am like the kid who sees a glass of unidentified liquid and decides to dump it out all over the place to figure out what it is and what it is doing there. Not a terribly efficient way of doing things, I fear. And speaking of inefficiency... now that I have moved offices (everyone was whining that we had to change offices, except, you guessed it, me, who loves moving as often as possible) and reconditioned my space for a creative environment, I am once again reminded that having a computer anywhere near me is a danger, so I must return to the tree of productivity or incur my own inward wrath for not accomplishing (am I really accomplishing anything?) the sufficient quantity of reading for the day. Ugh. You know it is bad when you are quantifying what you read and not qualifying it, but I am almost, almost, almost out of the dark ages, and perhaps if I chain myself to my tree, then I will finish this week!I hope. Or, I could write my examinations in invisible ink and make the advisory committee think that they are the only ones that can't read what I've written. Now there is a novel idea. Only it's not.
Example of a thing that doesn't change - my embarassing fascination with detectives and mysteries, ergo my need to decipher and decode secret messages. Clearly the media have changed but the underlying trait remains unchanged. When I was six my brother and I used to make up coded languages and write eachother messages in invisible ink. I don't think I have gotten past this.
Example of things that flex and morph - meanings of song lyrics. Take for example this one, by Pink Floyd:
When I was 12, I was certain that I fully understood this (but of course I had the lyrics all wrong, and not having internet beyond the monochromatic screens withcomputerized text "bulletin boards" that consumed my brother's afternoon hours and accrued multiple thousands of dollars of phone bills (big oops, boy was I glad it was him and not me) on modems that were slower and more miserable even, than the exit of this current regime, alas I was left to my own faulty devices. Of course, it was all about a boy longing for a girl, or vice versa (I think Jason Marquis, with his non-ass, and pants that fell somewhere below his boxer shorts was the object of fascination at that time, briefly, thank God.) But now it seems to me to be much more about a mid-life crisis and one's inability to act upon the things that one wants because of the constraints of society, because of the social contracts into which we have been inscribed, and the rules of engagement.
"Cold comfort for change." I don't know if I can live that way, I don't know."Did you exchange, a walk-on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage?" Well? My penchant for escapism is one of those other things that acts as a backdrop to my days. Yesterday a professor and I were discussing the fact that I am terrorized by stagnation, absolutely horrified by it, while he prefers routine, knowing that he can do pretty much the same thing for the next twenty years without major upheaval. It occurs to me that academia might be the one profession that can accomodate two such wildly different personalities. I need constant change, the possibility of going to a different country every summer, researching totally disparate areas, and I can still do that, some day... I hope. Why do I need constant tumult? I think that I am like the kid who sees a glass of unidentified liquid and decides to dump it out all over the place to figure out what it is and what it is doing there. Not a terribly efficient way of doing things, I fear. And speaking of inefficiency... now that I have moved offices (everyone was whining that we had to change offices, except, you guessed it, me, who loves moving as often as possible) and reconditioned my space for a creative environment, I am once again reminded that having a computer anywhere near me is a danger, so I must return to the tree of productivity or incur my own inward wrath for not accomplishing (am I really accomplishing anything?) the sufficient quantity of reading for the day. Ugh. You know it is bad when you are quantifying what you read and not qualifying it, but I am almost, almost, almost out of the dark ages, and perhaps if I chain myself to my tree, then I will finish this week!I hope. Or, I could write my examinations in invisible ink and make the advisory committee think that they are the only ones that can't read what I've written. Now there is a novel idea. Only it's not.
posted by ilana at 11:22 a.m.
6 Comments:
El audio link no funciona (aunque por lo escrito creo saber de cual canción se trata). I get you, girl; en mi vida la única constante es el cambio.
Dean, I fixed the problem, though I can't figure out why when I change from edit html to compose mode it totally erases what I just edited. ARgh. I hate computing. Or do I love it?
Not to discredit your interpretation - if it didn't speak to us all, it wouldn't still be on the radio thirty years later - but every rock nerd knows that song is about Syd Barrett, who did too much acid, went mad and had to be kicked out of the band. Wikipedia has a detailed record of the split. They're great with music history in general.
Hope you're feeling better by the time you read this. I narrowly dodged a throat cold myself yesterday. Snot's not fun!
Yeah, just like 8675309 or Unchained Melody... um.
Ha HA ha! You weren't in the class where Carrie's friend (oh god, what a horrible person I am, you know the scrawny guy with a crew cut and colored docs who used to drive her to school and totally hated Robbie, doh, still can't remember his name) practically wept when he did his exhibition of his term paper on Pink Floyd. I will never forget about Syd Barrett (how dare you accuse me of not being nerdy enough!;), but I think that it just proves my point about the abundance of semiotic possibility.
En mi vida, esa canción simboliza todas las minas que he conocido. Cuando notan que te abres completamente interpretan las puertas abiertas (por las que pueden entrar a mi almita en fiesta) como una señal para redecorar la casa. Prometen cambiarlo todo para bien pero nunca hallé una que mejorase nada. (Sueno patético, lo sé. Pero hoy me ha tocado ser un cuello sangrante en medio de una cueva de vampiros. Quejarme en el blog de otros es mi estaca). // Espero que tu salud vaya levantando vuelo.
Yuré, man put that thing away! No andes estacando por ahí y dés con la mina incorrecta;) // En serio, lo siento - para nosotras las mujeres (o tal vez para todos) es difícil amar como uno es y no como uno podría ser (a nuestro antojo) y sin embargo creo que en algún momento se puede lograr ese grado de control sobre una misma para amar con todo y defectos y ser amada con todo y defectos sin que aquél se sienta con el derecho de redocoraciones tampoco.// Hoy me toca mandarte abrazos a vos.
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