Last night David and Des got married, and it truly was a beautiful ceremony. I think everyone had a great time at the reception afterwards too! Check out a few pictures snapped by my family (I think they look best as a slideshow)!

Last Friday I was officially declared to be a college graduate, which is perhaps the most significant title yet bestowed upon my humble mantle. Over the past few days, I’ve had some time to reflect on this major moment in my life, and as exciting as it all is, it is also hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that I am no longer a student.

Although I’ve spent about 17 years in school to learn about this great world that we live in, I’m finding it harder and harder to make sense of life as time goes by. Just as soon as one event or idea comes into focus, another hundred things happen to muddy the waters of my perception.

I can live with this, indeed, I can enjoy it - but I still have so many questions, so many questions.

John Cage seems to be cropping up everywhere in my literary universe these days, and that has been an unexpected pleasure - his ideas about music, nature, silence, and Buddhism seem to resound deeply with my own experience and thoughts. Just today I opened a book on cultural studies and was greeted by this quote as a lead in to the first chapter,

It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now.

I couldn’t agree more. In just the last year, Cage has rapidly risen in my pantheon of musical philosophers, and I would now place him right next to Derek Bailey in terms of how deeply affected I am by his ideas on music and its relationship to the rest of the world. Indeed, reading Cage and Bailey not only changed the way I thought about music, it changed the way I thought about my life. And yes that may sound overtly dramatic but it is true.

Although both musicians are considered by most people to be quite radical, and although I have my likes and dislikes within their recorded output that I have heard - it has been their ideas as much as their music that has fascinated me for quite a while now. With school out, perhaps I’ll be able to take a stab at a few long entries about these guys and what I find so intriguing about their thoughts. Should be no problem with Cage as there is a vast amount written by and about him. Bailey is a much more elusive figure (only having passed away at Christmas time two years ago). I think it would be worthwhile, but I’m not sure if anyone here would really be interested in reading about what I have to say about two avant musicians…

Speaking of music and musicians, I attended a Leo Kottke concert last night and it was everything I had hoped for and then some. A full review (and maybe some of that other stuff) coming soon.

I haven’t written a ‘life update’ in quite a while, so I thought now is as a good a time as any to give everyone the low down on what’s been going on in my life recently.

1) This semester is my last in college as an undergraduate. I’ll be walking down the aisle to recieve my diploma next Friday, a Bachelor of the Arts in Anthropology. It’s been a long, sometimes difficult road to get to that little sheet of paper, but I’m proud to say that I gave it everything I had, and that I have no regrets about my college experience at LSU. It has truly been wonderful, with all kinds of unexpected suprises along the way. Naturally, I couldn’t have done it without all the support from my family and friends. For the record, I guess I should also mention that I will be graduating as a University Medalist, a distinction of merit awarded to graduates with exceptional grades.

2) After graduation, I (as of now) plan to continue living here in the capital city at my current residence until December of 2007. I am currently looking for jobs here in town, as well as pursuing a few remote possibilities recently brought to my attention out of state and (in one case) out of the country. More than likely though, I’ll be employed near by, hopefully no later than mid-June. Oddly enough, today was my last official day as the lab assistant/tech that I’ve been at now for the last three years or so. I have to admit, I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m looking forward to the change as well.

3) I’ll be in David and Des’ wedding in a few weeks, which is really exciting. For my part, I’m currently (pleasantly) single, and really enjoying all the free time which that affords me.

4) I do have plans to apply and probably attend graduate school in the near future, possibly as soon as next January. Although nothing is certain yet, I’m about 85 percent sure that I’ll be pursuing some post-graduate work, though where that may be is still unclear. I have a great deal of mixed feelings about more university work, but it also looks like my opportunities for pursuing my interests may be extremely limited if I choose to stay here in LA. Consequently, all educational aspects aside, grad school is looking like a win-win scenario in terms of allowing me to gain a foothold in another place where life opportunities may be more accessible.

5) Dreams, Dreams, Dreams. Since this is a major turning point in my life, I think it’s a good time to re-evaluate all those ‘life dreams’ that have been popping up in my mind over the last four years. I’m happy to report that most of them are, I think, still possible. Here’s a short list of what I’d like to do in my post college life:
- I’d like to travel to India or Japan, the sooner the better. My special focus in school has been on South Asian culture and I would really like to experience those places first hand.
- I’d like to live outside of the United States for at least one year. I’m not particular about where.
- I hope to continue playing and practicing music, learning about new musics and playing with as many people as I can. Perhaps even doing some shows in public if I can figure out an angle on what I’d like to play for people.
- I’d like to continue to write, both here on this blog and perhaps also something more substantial - a book maybe? Again, I need some focus and direction here.
- I have passing dreams about doing some serious hiking, like the entire AT or Pacific Coast trail. This would be difficult, but possible.
- I have a remote fantasy of some day owning and running my own small book/music or garden store.

It’ll be interesting to look back on this list in four years and see if I’ve been able to check off any of these things - I’m glad that I think most of them are still in the realm of possibility, although perhaps I’m being overtly optomistic (as usual).

As you might be able to tell, my future is open - and for this I am glad. However, this kind of openess can be overwhelming as well. So, just now, I’m trying to take things one day at a time, and trusting that the distant future will take care of itself. Life is much more manigable now if I don’t get too bogged down in what the near future may or may not hold.

However, speaking of the near future, I need to get to bed now as I’m finally taking my final final tomorrow afternoon. Wish me luck!

nobody’s going to remember this, and very few will actually recall banana design itself, but here’s something that a certain 14 year old boy created for his floundering business:

I’ve been sick with a sinus infection that has layed me pretty low for the last five days or so. I apologize to anyone and everyone who has called or e-mailed me during this time - I haven’t answered or returned a single phone call or message (mostly because I’ve been sleeping about 15 hours a day).

I managed to drive myself to the infirmary on Friday (don’t you just love the university’s slightly archaic nomenclature?). When I got there, the nurse had me fill out a few forms; then she led me to an examination room. In there, she took my temperature with a delightful electronic thermometer that goes “ping!” when it displays your temperature. It sounded vaguley like the tone on my microwave oven. My temperature read: 101 degrees farenheight.

The nurse looked at me and said, “Well, with that temperature you must not be feeling well.”

“Yes, I feel awful actually,” I replied.

“You need to take some Advil. That will bring your fever down, ” she said.

“Okay” I said, feeling that it was obvious that I would very much like to take some Advil if only I could get my hands on some as soon as possible.

Apparently, though, my need for some medicine was not as self-evident as I had imagined - the nurse left me in the examination room to wait for the doctor. And I waited. And waited. And waited some more.

By the time doctor did come in to have a look at me, I felt like my brain was being slow-cooked in my head. Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have got up and found a nurse and asked her for a fever-reducer (it’s not like they are hard to come by in a doctor’s office, after all!).

None the less, I’ve never had a nurse who seemed to be so out of touch with her own advice. Obviously I survived and it wasn’t such a big deal, but I was suprised at the oversight - perhaps she was really busy with other patients that morning.

If I have guests over at the apartment, and someone mentions the words “head” and “ache” in the same sentence, I immediately offer them an asprin - it’s just a nice thing to do.

Anyway, sometimes I wonder about how hard it must be to be in the medical profession - doctors make a lot of money, but it seems nearly impossible to be able to attend to every patient and all of their individual needs all the time.

Tonight I went to the library to read. Ben came with me, as he has an examination tomorrow, and he needed to study. We took Ben’s car there, Ben driving, me in the passenger seat. As he was driving, Ben remarked that it was strange that I was going to the library, today being the last day of my undergraduate career. Of course, I was going there because I like to read and I had a particular book in mind that I was looking forward to reading through.

I’ve noticed that I can read through nearly any non-narrative book in one sitting. Actually, this is a skill I’ve been practicing since I first came to college. What I do isn’t a kind of speed reading though, it’s more like a selective reading. I’ll open the book, start anywhere and read around until I find something interesting. Usually, this happens within a couple of pages. When I get to the interesting part, whatever it may be, I read it a few times over and over again, sometimes writing bits of it down so I can remember it later. Often, I’ll look up from the book and think about what I’ve read for a time, staring out the window until I find my mind drifting on to other thoughts. Then I go back to the book, reading around until I find another interesting passage.

Going along in this way, I can read through most any book in about four hours. Of course, since I’m not reading every single printed word, I miss a few things here and there. But the general concepts - the major points - tend to stand out when I read this way. I’ve noticed that I only actually remember a very small number of ideas or scenes from any given book, so reading in this way helps me to find the memorable stuff while kind of glancing over a lot of the things I’m likely to forget. It’s not a perfect method, but it allows me to go pull ideas from a tremendous number of books that I’d otherwise never get around to reading.

Tonight, I read for only two hours, so I only got through about half of the book I was working on. As I was nearing the end of the second hour, a tremendous thunderclap sounded - it was a fantastic sound, absolutely impossible to reproduce.

The sound was so pleasant, that I simply abandonded reading at that point and decided to go home. While walking down the stairway in the library, still thinking about the wonderful thunderclap, I found myself suddenly re-evaluating my previous statement about Mt. Rushmore which is why I am sitting at home writing this entry now.

On second thought, I think that Mt. Rushmore was not such a bad idea - I’m still unsure about whether I like the idea of it, but since it already exists, I think that I can enjoy it.

As is likely to happen, my opinions about things change frequently, sometimes daily - my life is filled with tremendous uncertainty - a fact that I take great comfort in.

A short piece written by John Cage:

During my last year in high school, I found out
about the Liberal Catholic Church. It was
in a beautiful spot in the Hollywood hills.
The ceremony was an anthology of the most
theatrical bits and pieces found in the principal
rituals, Occidental and Oriental.
There were clouds of incense, candles galore,
processions in and around the church.
I was fascinated, and though I had been
raised in the Methodist Episcopal Church and had
had thoughts of going into the ministry, I
decided to join the Liberal Catholics.
Mother and Dad objected strenuously.
Ultimately, when I told them of my intention
to become an acolyte active in the Mass, they
said, “Well, make up your mind. It’s
us or the church.” Thinking along the lines of
“Leave your father and mother and follow Me,”
I went to the priest, told him what had
happened, and said I’d decided in favor of
the Liberal Catholics. He said,
“Don’t be a fool. Go home.
There are many religions.
You have only one mother and father.”