Product v. Process

So sometimes, this blog looks more like a weird hybrid of a knitting blog and a running blog, rather than anything to do with going to graduate school in Canada. There are people who do both better, I know. That said, both are a major part of what I do when I'm not face down in a pile of work with a bottle of vodka glass of wine pot of tea. (Or running was, before an unfortunate incident while trying to catch a bus left me with a sprained ankle.)

But there is something that binds together musicology, running, and knitting, and it is this: the idea that both involve processes that produce products, and one can focus on one or the other and can get more out of either the process of the activity or its product. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot) has written about this a lot in regards to knitting, and has raised the good point that craft cannot be all about process:

"Imagine this: You and I are sitting together on a park bench, and we are having a lovely time, knitting and chatting, maybe we have coffee and some chocolate. It's lovely. I spread my knitting in progress out on my lap to admire it, you know, the way knitters do. . . Then, something catches my eye, and I lean forward to take a better look at the sweater and suddenly you can see what I see. There's a massive mistake. You inhale sharply; this is going to be bad. This is one of those ugly mistakes that can shorten a knitter's lifespan. You slowly look up at me, prepared to help me through this awful moment, and much to your surprise, I break out in an enormous smile of sheer joy and exclaim:

'Wow! Look at that! I made a huge mistake way back at the beginning of this sweater. Oh my gosh, it's enormous. No wonder the rest of the sweater looks so odd. My goodness, that mistake is as obvious as Cher naked at a convent, isn't it? How did I not see that? Well now. What a fabulous turn of events. I'll just have to rip this while thing out. Yup, every single stitch except for the cast-on edge is entirely unacceptable! Oh, but I'm so lucky! I'm glad that I got a chance to knit the whole thing before I noticed this. If I'd seen that mistake right away, then I wouldn't get the pleasure of knitting this practically twice! Oh happy, happy day.'

Having been the knitter who has mad a mistake of that magnitude, I think that if I ever heard a knitter say that, I'd either get up and move, consider talking about her in unflattering terms after she left, or, even though I'm a nonviolent person, I think I'd momentarily consider knocking her off the bench in an attempt to smack the stupid right off the poor unfortunate."

--Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Free-Range Knitter, 107-8

Even the most devoted process person almost has to be, on some level, at least interested in the product, just as the most devoted product person has to be interested in the process, or they would just buy the stuff at the store.

That said, there are knitters who find their joy in having a big heap of finished objects that they use regularly, rather than on the hours of craft that goes into making them; there are runners whose only pleasure in running is in race times, personal records, and statistics; and there are researchers who measure their success in terms of books and articles published and presentations given. I am not one of these people. I might have a better relationship with time if I was one of these people: if I wasn't having so much fun doing the stuff, maybe I'd be more likely to finish it on time.

I enjoy running because I enjoy the journey: I enjoy watching the world around me, seeing places from a particular perspective, the feel of my body moving through space. It is like dancing, but rarely am I judged for my grace. I race, because the particular experience of racing gives is a different experience from that of just going for a run, not because official results impress me. I work as a musicologist because I love the part of it where I sit down with a heap of sources and actually find something interesting. I am less impressed by the actual act of sitting down and writing up my findings. That is, that part is like pulling teeth and must be surrounded by the perfect environment, or I will gladly clean the kitchen before I can even contemplate getting started with the real work in the other room (a room from which I cannot even see my dirty kitchen). I knit, in the full knowledge that socks are available for $5 for twenty pair at Wal-Mart and sweaters can be more efficiently acquired at the mall. I knit because I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of the act of playing with sticks and string. I teach because I like the sound of my own voice sharing what I know and seeing the moment when students "get it."

These processes would be pretty pointless if they didn't have some sort of product. I like my half marathon medal and my collection of racing t-shirts. Upon finishing my master's thesis, I printed it out and stood on it to see how much taller standing on 117 pages would make me. I wear or gift the things I knit, after taking pictures of them, and am proud of what I have made. (A sweater out of sock yarn is nothing to sneeze at.) The thing that keeps me coming back, however, isn't the ultimate product, however, it is the simple, everyday acts of which the accomplishments are built.

An Odd Position: On Being an Ex-Pat Americanist

So, I've been in Canada for most of the past year. I like it here. Culture shock has largely worn off. I still think poutine sounds gross, but I'm okay with the fact that it exists. I appreciate the fact that having an advanced degree is a good thing and not a prohibitive factor for people planning on running for public office.

There are still things I find odd or inexplicable, but much in the same way that I found things in Nashville inexplicable by virtue of being a native of the North. I'm used to the occasional befuddlement, and it just a part of living somewhere other than where I was born.

What still absolutely discombobulates me, however, are certain issues around my professional life. As a musicologist, I generally work on North American music (my pop music interests include the Barenaked Ladies, and not just to sound more Canadian on my OGS and SSHRC applications, so I can claim the continent), and I tend to do it from the perspective of how music is a reflection of the culture that uses it or creates it. Here's where I get at a loss for words: any time I have to have an extended discussion of "Americanness" in one of my classes. After all, the vast majority of my professors, fellow students, and students I teach are not from the United States. So when they are talking about "Americanness" (by which I specifically mean "in regards to the United States of America"), they are doing it from the outsider's perspective.

This isn't a bad brain place to be in from a scholarly perspective: while I am too much of a post-modernist to really believe in absolute objectivity, I do think a certain degree of intellectual detachment leads to better work. At the same time, I always get caught up in the strangeness of my personal position in these discussions: on the one hand, I am more or less obligated to participate at the same level of abstraction as my colleagues. On the other, however, I have a huge string of attachments to the U.S. that they don't have, and I want to defend my home just by virtue of it being, well, home.

In a certain sense, this is like having or being a sibling: they can torment, mock, taunt, and tease, but will defend you against outside attack. I feel like I can criticize my country, its politics, its wars, its culture, but I get a trifle defensive when someone else does. This comes into play in these discussions of "Americanness," and I feel like I have to be almost continually vigilant about it.

In the end, I think this will make me a stronger musicologist, better able to articulate my positions, but at the moment, it stresses me out a bit.

I'm Not Really a Student...

... except to the people who hold my Federal Staford Loans.

What I mean is this: what I am doing now, being a Ph.D. student in the humanities is not being in school in the sense most people think. I mean, I go to classes and get academic credit for them, I write papers (lots of papers, lots of long tricky papers). But I haven't been to a kegger in over a decade and I no longer wear pyjamas or work out clothes to class.

I am in an apprenticeship phase of my career: I am expected to begin participating in my profession, but with guidance from those more experienced at it than I am, to keep me from making any serious mistakes/ faux pas. My coursework, which at the Ph.D. level really is minimal, is to, for the first few years, give my research a direction, but beyond that, my activities are the same as any other musicologist working in an academic setting: I research, I write up my research, I submit my research to conferences and journals, and I teach. I mark papers and have laughs with colleuges.

I am not a student: I am a musicologist. I'm not even a musicology student: I know this culture now, probably about as well as I ever will. The Master's degree is about inculturation. The Ph.D. is about getting down to work and joining the discourse in the field, a discourse I am starting to shape in some small way. In other fields, entry level jobs involve a lot of supervision, limited authority, and (in good jobs) mentoring. In this university professor gig, the difference is that one ends this entry-level stage with an extra set of initials after one's name.

I have had this realization because I am at the end of the semester. Three small tasks stand between me being entirely free of formal responsibilities until September. Itty bitty tasks. I should feel relieved. I should want to throw a kegger. Nope. Not this gal. I mean I'm glad to have my papers done, but there is still a whole lot of stuff to do. I'm going to have a bit of a lie-in tomorrow morning, maybe crack open a bottle of wine tonight, then back to work. After all, the Society for American Music is having its annual conference next March, and they are looking for papers for it. The deadline is 15 June. I have to get on that.

Unless I happen to owe you money from my undergraduate degree. Then I'm totally a student. Completely.

(Next time, the knitting report)

Completely Worn Out

The end of the term draws near and I'm completely worn out.

I have run out of words. This isn't writer's block, its a complete emptiness at the well in my soul from which musicological discourse usually springs. I think I might be able to write a fantastic novel right now, but not the paper that I must needs finish by Friday. I think this may be tied to a virus, as Franklin has been enduring a similar block... maybe I caught it in the airport on my recent trip to Nashville? No one else here seems to have it, and I'm hoping it isn't catching because a few of my friends start their comprehensive exams in a week or two. I look all scholarly-- computer on lap, discarded Starbucks cup nearby, surrounded by books that make me look smart, but the words in them have stopped making sense. Actually, to be fair, they still make sense. They are not what is flawed. The words I type in the open document on the desktop of said computer are what have actually stopped making sense.

I'm going to try again for another hour. Then I'm going to knit. Or drink. Or have a good sleep. Or maybe all three.

Long, slow march into May...

There are only a few weeks left of classes, and I feel insufferably behind. I've been sick, I've travelled, but what it boils down to is that I am wiped out. Mostly mentally. That's what graduate school does.

Lately I'm reminded of a race I ran once in Percy Warner park in Nashville. It was a lovely 10k, and the first half (at least) was entirely up hill. The thing that made it so crushing to the brain was that the trail was winding. So I would get to what I thought was the top, and discover that there was still more up to go. When I bonked, I was fairly certain I was going to hit the sun. (I had some SportBeans and a gulp of water and shortly thereafter the downhill began. My brain started to work again.)

Today I bonked academically. I have any number of reasons, including overwork, pure exhaustion, the afore mentioned illness, student demands, but the point is, I couldn't do it anymore. I was working in my office, and after a brief internet break, I picked my book up to read again. I had to look at it for a full 30 seconds before I realized it was upside down. At which point, I did the academic equivalent of having some SportBeans and some water: I packed up and went to the yarn shop, where I bought a new bag (exactly the sort of messenger bag I've been looking for, and on sale) and a skein of entirely superflous sock yarn. (my only defence is: Noro was on sale. 20% off. As a knitter, I was obligated.)

In other news, I sat in the weirdest in-class discussion of my many years of education. (I am, after all, in about the 23rd grade now.) In the class I TA for, there topic of the lecture was reactions on the part of composers to the Great Depression. In particular, Aaron Copland was the topic at hand. They were talking about his Amercanist period, and the work Appalachian Spring (ignore cheesy powerpoint), and the question came up, "why is this American?" Since the only students who come to class on Fridays are the ones who actually care, and might have even done the homework, a really coherent and interesting discussion ensued. They were talking about the American idea of building things ourselves, and the vast open spaces of the American landscape, and ignoring the plight of native people in order to create a heroic narritive.

Then I remembered where I was, and the whole thing fell apart in my brain. My boss, leading the discussion, is a British woman, leading a bunch of Canadians in their quest to figure out and articulate "Americanness." And I had to sit there and listen. What a weird day. I'm going to spend my evening at home with a bottle of wine, perhaps a pizza, and my dog give my brain a rest, before trying to figure this stuff out tomorrow.