The Persistence of Memory

It's now the time of year when everything is starting to melt. The landscape is still covered with a snowy white shroud, but rocks, roads and patches of soil are now starting to poke through, much like the way in which the hairs on the legs of an East German women's shot-putter from the 1980s would have poked through her stockings should (s)he have tried to wear any.

Time is also melting away, like the clocks in Dali's famous painting, and it's melting just as slowly, if not slower, than the snow and ice. For both myself and my students we are now at the stage where nobody wants to be here any more and, if truth be told, nobody really needs to be either. For the students, their exams are now long over, and consequently their academic fate is effectively already sealed. Quite why they have to sit their exam a full two months before the end of the course I never managed to fathom out but, just like the Light Brigade, mine is not to reason why.

From my point of view it's just a matter of keeping my class occupied for one more week and trying to maintain the mutual motivation of both students and teacher. To that end I always fill this time of year with projects which at the very least interest me and hopefully manage to pique the interest of my students as well. Last week I taught my class some German - they can now count to ten, ask for directions to the railway station and order two large beers, please - and tomorrow we're going to examine the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. I'll let you know whether my students subscribe to the theory of the lone gunman in the next post.

In the meantime I shall continue to stare out of the window, wishing myself away as I watch the snow melt, and as I do it's rather opportune that the Dave Matthews Band's Dive In should come up on my iPod:

Wake up sleepy head,

I think the sun's a little brighter today.

Smile and watch the icicles melt away and see the water rising.

Summer's here to stay and all those summer games will last forever.

Go down to the shore, kick off your shoes, dive in the empty ocean.

Nine more days...

Against the clock

I've just been through a most harrowing experience.

Earlier this evening I tried to buy some Dave Matthews tickets online, and to begin with everything went smoothly. The band are playing in Saratoga Springs on Melanie's birthday this summer, and happily there were some tickets left so I went ahead with the booking process and eventually reached the 'sign in' page.

At this stage I had to enter my email address and create a new password or, if I had an existing Ticketmaster account, I should enter my previous password. Oh, and I had two minutes to complete this page or else the tickets would be gone! A large red countdown clock appeared in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and suddenly I was Jack Bauer in an episode of 24.

OK. Don't panic.

Enter name....check.
Enter email address....check.
Confirm email address...check.

Thirty seconds gone.

Enter password....quick, think of something....check.
Confirm password...check.
Do I want to receive details of other upcoming events in Saratoga....hell no.

One minute gone.

Click on 'confirm'....an account already exists in this name; please re-enter correct password or create a new account.

Nooooooooooo!

Forty five seconds left.

When did I buy tickets on this site before? What could my password have been? No time to look it up. Sweat starting to drip onto the keyboard. Just keep calm, you can do it.

First attempt...no good. Second attempt...no good. Fifteen seconds to go. Time for one more try...

Five seconds, four seconds, three seconds, two...

SUCCESS!!!!!

Jack Bauer saves the world again! Just let the next page load now and I can complete the deal and get out of here. But what's this? Your session has expired; please click on the 'back' button to restart the booking process. Northern internet delay had cost me the tickets - it's a good job Jack doesn't have to rely on Tamaani.

We now have seats in row 318.

iNeed help

Another weekend has come and gone and, to paraphrase John Lennon, "So this is Sunday, and what have you done?" Well, not a lot, to tell you the truth. I did have a nice breakfast at the new student residence this morning, but I've spent most of my weekend organizing my iTunes folder and have come to the conclusion that I am developing some sort of OCD disorder.

Now, I know that the use of the word 'disorder' just then was redundant as the 'D' in OCD actually stands for 'disorder', but the sentence didn't sound right without it. And did you know that this is an example of RAS syndrome, that is the "redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym in conjunction with the abbreviation itself," like PIN number or ATM machine or HIV virus? RAS stands for 'Redundant Acronym Syndrome', so note the self-referential irony in that the term 'RAS syndrome' is actually itself an example of RAS syndrome.

Oh my, now I've gone cross-eyed.

Where were we before we got lost in that linguistic hall of mirrors? Oh yes - iTunes. I got a new iPod Touch for Christmas, and whilst uploading all my music I made sure that every track had the correct album art, which I think is a reasonable endeavour. I've now gone too far though because I'm now checking the year and genre attached to each song, cross-referencing with Wikipedia as I go, as well as correcting any spelling errors and mis-capitalizations. I have over 7000 songs on my iPod and my plan was to go through one, maybe two letters of the alphabet each day so that I'd have the project finished in a fortnight, but over the last 48 hours I've not been able to stop. I started on Friday evening and I'm now up to the S's already.

Last night in bed I actually got round to listening to the damn thing and noticed that one of my Dave Matthews Band albums was incorrectly listed as a compilation. Did this affect the quality of the music coming through my headphones? No. Could I ignore the error? No again. I had to get up, come downstairs, switch on the laptop and sort it out there and then. At 2 in the morning. I really need help, don't I? There are no psychiatrists this far north though, so in the meantime back to work...The Best Of Sad Cafe - Rock? Don't think so - Soft Rock maybe - and no year; what does Wikipedia say...?

P.S.
Before anyone points it out, I'm fully aware that the fact that I have The Best of Sad Cafe on my iPod is probably more worrying than any form of OCD that I may be developing. I am truly a lost cause.

I don't like Mondays

Not that anyone should ever simply wish their time away, but it's already Thursday tomorrow, which means that we're only a couple of days away from the weekend. I've felt very tired this week so I'm looking forward to Friday evening, and I'm grateful for the fact that the Thanksgiving holiday on Monday made this a shorter work week.

Many of the staff at school have commented on how having the Monday off is psychologically far better than having a Friday off instead - although it must be said that either is better than neither - and my response to such comments has normally involved quoting a line or two from I Don't Like Mondays, such as "yeah, I don't like Mondays; I just want to shoot the whole day down."

Now, maybe it's an age thing again, maybe it's cultural, or maybe it's both, but such asides have universally flown straight over everyone's heads, probably leaving the other person thinking how strange that English guy is. I suppose that song is 30 years old now though, which is scary in itself ,and even scarier is the fact that this makes it almost as old, if not older, than many of the staff with whom I teach. Add into the mix that it was recorded by an Irish band that probably had very little impact on this side of the Atlantic, then I guess I'm probably deluding myself in thinking that anyone here is going to get the reference. Never mind; it keeps me happy.

Oh, and speaking of music, my 'song lyrics as poetry' project has been continuing apace, with outings today for Peter Gabriel and the Dave Matthews Band. Gabriel's Here Comes The Flood, always one of my favourite recordings, went down pretty well - the students were interested in the lyrics but were not 100% sold on the music - whilst DMB received a round of applause for Funny The Way It Is, which seemed to strike a chord both lyrically and musically. However, after two relatively contemporary, conventional tracks, I feel the need for something a little more esoteric next lesson.

I don't think I have the courage to play Ernie, but how about some John Cage...?

Hello again!

I'm still here, but since Melanie arrived a couple of weeks ago I've hardly been at the computer. The days preceding her arrival were spent in a frenzied attempt to make the apartment look presentable, and since then we've had a fine time being busy doing nothing. It's been great spending some time together after three months apart, and I'm trying to put the fact that I have to return North in a little over two weeks firmly to the back of my mind.

Now, I say we've been busy doing nothing but that's not strictly true, because over this last weekend we spent a hectic, yet hugely enjoyable, couple of days in the States. It was my second road trip into America this summer following on from Dave and Gid's Excellent Adventure last month, and we actually travelled many of the same roads as on that journey, although this time there was no giant cutlery to be seen.

When Mel went to the Hard Rock Calling event in London, one of the acts she saw was the Dave Matthews Band, and ever since then she's developed into something of a fan and wanted me to see them live too. The nearest place we could get tickets was for their date in Hershey, Pennsylvania (home of the chocolate bars), and on Friday we drove all the way down - a journey of about 600km - and caught their show in the evening. By all accounts it wasn't one of their best performances but we enjoyed ourselves, and if you have a few minutes spare I suggest you take in this performance of Funny The Way It Is from the show:

I should probably explain the reference to cow shit at the beginning of the clip. Hershey is renowned for two things - its chocolate and its cows - and Dave Matthews' opening line of the evening was "Hershey - tastes like chocolate, smells like cow shit," a state of affairs of which he reminded us at regular intervals from thereon in. We didn't actually take the film ourselves, but it was shot from roughly where we were sitting, and it may also be of interest to the group of girls who were sitting near us as they saw very little of the show. They were in their late teens/early twenties, and they spent virtually the entire time the band the were on stage either on the phone or texting. Perhaps that's what people do nowadays, but I don't see the point in forking out for a ticket and then spending your time completely ignoring what you've paid to see. This might work for Celine Dion or Mariah Carey, but otherwise I just don't get it.

We spent the night in a hotel just outside of Hershey, and the next day we decided to do some sightseeing. Historic Gettysburg was just a short trip from where we were staying, and we were torn between visiting an iconic location in American history or a chocolate factory; I'll let you know what we decided in the next post...

Sunday with The Boss

Melanie comes out to Canada exactly two weeks from today which, whilst an obviously exciting and long-awaited prospect, means that I will have to start thinking about tidying the apartment soon. In all seriousness the apartment is actually quite tidy, but I guess that dusting and vacuuming are both going to have to become more than monthly events.

Speaking of Melanie, I was very jealous of her this weekend because she went to the Hard Rock Calling event in Hyde Park on Sunday, where she got to see, amongst others, the Dave Matthews Band and Bruce Springsteen play. Springsteen is an artist that I've grown more fond of over the years (mainly because Melanie keeps making me listen to him), and if one thing is for sure then that's the fact he always delivers when he's onstage. He played for well over three hours on Sunday (after having done the same at Glastonbury the night before), and both he and his band clearly just love performing.

Here's a clip of Outlaw Pete from Sunday's show (don't worry, the person who was filming eventually realises which way up to hold their camera) and if you watch closely, you will see Melanie's hand at around the 2:53 mark as she gets her camera back from the lady who's sitting on someone's shoulders:



Oh, and I've also been told that you should listen to The Gaslight Anthem; they come from New Jersey, like Bruce, and they also played on Sunday and were very good, so I'm told.

There, now I've told you.