Bad lyrics good life
I’ve been listening to a lot of music with very bad lyrics lately. Interpol and The Rentals. I love, love, love this music; you just have to plug your ears and go “la la la” when you start thinking about the words (“Would you like to be my missus and in future with child?”) you’re singing.
Things both are and are not as stressful as I’ve made them out to be here. I have a number of ideas for the thesis, and I’m plugging away on quite a few. It’s just that something someone said yesterday in a class, is true: Researching and writing are polar opposite activities. So while I’m all into the research end of things, I see no daily output in the writing, and that… Well, it’s just a big ol’ bummer when everyone around me is coming to workshops with pages and pages and with gleaming faces, “Oh, the writing was just so great, this weekend.” This weekend, for me? Well, the writing About Things Completely Unrelated to the Thesis was pretty good. But even that didn’t amount to much, quantitatively. And the poets. The poets-! With their, “Oh, I wrote two poems this week.” A poem. I am jealous of that unit of measurement.
I’ve been listening to a lot of music with very bad lyrics lately. Interpol and The Rentals. I love, love, love this music; you just have to plug your ears and go “la la la” when you start thinking about the words (“Would you like to be my missus and in future with child?”) you’re singing.
Things both are and are not as stressful as I’ve made them out to be here. I have a number of ideas for the thesis, and I’m plugging away on quite a few. It’s just that something someone said yesterday in a class, is true: Researching and writing are polar opposite activities. So while I’m all into the research end of things, I see no daily output in the writing, and that… Well, it’s just a big ol’ bummer when everyone around me is coming to workshops with pages and pages and with gleaming faces, “Oh, the writing was just so great, this weekend.” This weekend, for me? Well, the writing About Things Completely Unrelated to the Thesis was pretty good. But even that didn’t amount to much, quantitatively. And the poets. The poets-! With their, “Oh, I wrote two poems this week.” A poem. I am jealous of that unit of measurement.
posted by Alice at 10:13 PM
4 Comments:
My friend Chris is a singer/songwriter in Boston, and also got an MFA with me (so now you know of TWO people who really did finish their theses, against all odds). Anyway, he has this awesome song, "Nothing Too Major" which is so sharp and wonderful and melodic, and then he COMPLETELY SCREWS IT UP in the last stanza with the worst lyrics in the world: "It's nothing to ponder, there she is, she's coming over yonder."
I am still angry with him about this. But anyway, good luck with your thesis!
Thanks, CM.
And actually, outside of this program, I have two other writing MFA grads whom I'd consider good friends. One of 'em, another of those pesky poets...Grrr, Crackergal, where are ya? Oh, that's right. Fellowshipland.
If it makes you feel any better, my darlin' dear, this fucking poet with her beautiful, perfect, gifted fucking writing has spent the first five days of her fellowship doing the following things: going to the hardware store, going to the thrift store, going to the grocery store, going to the liquor store, going to the beach, going to the Army-Navy store, going to the drugstore, eating suppers and being super-social with others, playing scrabble, and . . . working for 8 hours yesterday on a shitty poem that won't seem to go past the third stanza. That's right. 8 hours, 2 good stanzas (which came in the first 2 hours), and 1 variation on a 3rd stanza that is bad in different ways each time.
But no matter! Today I'm going to the Farmers' Market!
I have written two poems in a week on occasion . . . but this sort of behavior is very rare. Maybe your Beachtown poets are all high. Or hey, maybe that's where the Muse has been hanging out this week.
Haha.
Crackergirl is baited out of her hiding place. Crackergirl should check her email.
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