Back to the mundane...

Since returning from Europe, life has been pleasant but unremarkable. The new house is fantastic; it's roomy, comfortable, close proximity to campus, just a few minutes walk from downtown, and even has a pool; and my roommates are all people I like and trust. I've mostly been seeing friends and making new ones, and biding my time before school begins. Incredibly enough, I actually not only managed to register for a full load at Cal Poly for fall quarter, but I even got into classes that I'm eager to take. Registering for classes is always a pain in the neck, but because I missed my rotation the first time around and then had to wait a month after open registration started to get back to the U.S. where I had sufficient internet, I was pretty sure there wasn't going to be anything left. But I got lucky... I'll be in the Arab music ensemble again, and I'll be taking photographic expression, web design (from 9am-4pm on fridays... yay...), modern art history (which I have with 3 good friends from the art department who also apparently live about a 5 minute walk from my house), and human genetics (which counts for a GE that I have unfortunately already completed, but which I have with my best friend Lara, and which should be an interesting class anyway). A reasonable and well spread out quarter with lots of interesting classes.

I saw my most recent ex a few days ago... that was an interesting experience. He'd gotten a new girlfriend while I was away in Europe (only about a month after he'd broken up with me), so I had emailed him about it asking him what the deal was because it looked a little suspicious from my end. He responded by assuring me that nothing had happened while we were still together, but that we would talk about it after I returned. Well, I'd been home for a couple of weeks and I hadn't heard from him so I figured he'd just said that so that I'd stop bothering him about it. That was fine with me because by this point I didn't really care to keep him in my life anyway, but then I got a text from him asking if I wanted to have that overdue conversation. I was seeing friends at the time, but later that night, a little nervous and curious as to what he could possibly have to say to me, I gave him directions to our house, and he came by and picked me up. I expected him to talk about what went wrong with us and the events leading up to him dating the new girl, but he never even mentioned us; instead, he spent the entire 2 hours monologuing about all the troubles in his life, from his job and his parents, to his friends and even the girl (who, I learned, had lasted less than a month, and was not a quality person, to put it nicely). The conversation came as quite a shock to me because one of the things that had drawn me to him in the first place was the fact that I saw him as a very positive yay-sayer type of a person. But he did not have a single positive thing to say this time, only anger and bitterness. The worst part was that everything he complained about was completely within his power to fix. So you hate your job? So you think you're assigned menial, brainless tasks and that your coworkers are uninspired losers who should have progressed in life but didn't (ironic because he could be similarly described)? SO FIND A NEW JOB. I know the job market is tough and competitive, but it's not impossible, and since he lives at home anyway, it's not even like it's crucial to HAVE a job, since he doesn't have to pay rent or anything. So you hate your friends because they're stupid and mean and negative and you don't enjoy being around them? Easy! Dump them and find new ones! Making friends is never a piece of cake, but it happens if you open yourself up, and there's no sense in keeping people around who only make you miserable. So you hate living with your parents? Alright, then find a job that actually pays money, stop blowing all the money you earn on stupid expensive shit you don't need, and move out! His attitude angers me. If you hate your situation that much, either do something to change it, or shut up about it. I will listen with sympathy to a friend's troubles if they are truly unfortunate, but when their problems are largely self inflicted, or when they are simply too lazy to do anything about them when they could easily change things around, I lose my patience. For me, this conversation was both distressing and simultaneously satisfying in a sick kind of way. Not that I enjoyed listening to his tales of suffering, but it did confirm to me that I am better off without him. It also made me proud of myself for being able to keep a level head through hard times and always come out the other end a stronger and better person. He lets his troubles weigh him down; every bad thing going on in his life at any given moment taints every ray of light, every past failed relationship jades him into distrust and detachment.

This brings up another topic that's been on my mind lately: emotional detachment. I've encountered it, my friends have encountered it, I think everyone knows someone who can't allow themselves to let others in. There is so much fear and cynicism these days when it comes to relationships. It sounds hypocritical for me to be anti-cynicism (since I'm probably one of the most generally cynical people I know, and I'm usually proud of it), but when it comes to dealing with other people, you can only lose when you close yourself off. There's even a cliche about it: "It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." There's a reason sayings become cliches, and that's because there's always undeniable truth to it. If you don't allow yourself to let another in, you will only hurt them and yourself. And honestly, what have you got to lose? Well, ok, a lot potentially--but really, I've been hurt before too; I've been cheated on and lied to and neglected and rejected... I've run the same love gauntlet that many other people have, and I haven't let it change me. I still meet every new person with the same gleaming eyes and clean slate. Just because others hurt me doesn't mean this new person will. And that's not to say that I don't learn from my experiences... I still keep an eye out for red flags, but I'm not just going to assume that everyone's out to get me and that the only person I can trust ultimately is myself. True, I'm still young and I have a lot more to suffer through before I can call myself a brave person, but I know people who are already so enslaved by their fear that they simply will not give anyone a chance. Personally, I can't help but give myself entirely to another person. Sometimes I get hurt, but at least I always feel like I tried. Committing to someone without being able to trust them and let them in is cowardly and frustrating to the other person.

Given all that I just said, I'm probably going to sound like a giant hypocrite, but another thing I've been feeling lately is a complete lack of want for a relationship. That's unusual for me; even if I don't have any realistic prospectives, I always have to be interested in SOMEONE. In fact it's something of a defense mechanism for me when I get out of a relationship--I immediately focus my attention on someone else, even if I really have no intention or hopes of getting with them, just because I have to have someone to think about. Lately that hasn't been the case. I had a minor, short-lived crush on someone immediately following my last relationship, but I soon realized that he wasn't even someone who would be good for me, and since then, I've just been floating. Normally that would be uncomfortable, but now I kinda like it. I saw the movie 500 Days of Summer for the second time on the plane ride home, and it really struck a chord with me. In the past, I've always been a Tom Hansen. A hopeless romantic who was just waiting for the day that I'd meet someone who fulfilled my fantasies instilled in me by Disney films and Drew Barrymore flicks, and then got disappointed when reality didn't match my expectations. Lately, I've been more of a Summer Finn. I'm not exactly apathetic, but I've started to realize that people are always disappointing once you've known them long enough, and more importantly, that romance isn't and shouldn't be the center of my life. I'm young, and I should enjoy that. Why spend all that energy on worrying about someone else when I have more important things to think about? I don't care what anyone says, relationships are always complicated. Even if they're good and happy and healthy, they take time and they're emotionally taxing. It's so much more simple to be single. I don't have to worry about setting aside time out of my life to see a boyfriend, I can flirt without feeling bad about it, and honestly, I don't need some guy's affirmation that I'm worth his time--I know I'm a good person, and I have a perfectly healthy self esteem. Right now, I'm taking things as they come. I'm not hoping for anything or anyone, because I know that when the time comes, I'll find someone just like Summer did, and there's really no sense in stressing out about it now. If something comes up in the mean time, I'll try it out if it feels right, but I'm not going to make that my focus.

To change the topic completely, l tried out for a friend's jazz band a few days ago. I saw them perform at the end of the year last year with Lara (who is dating the saxophonist), and I saw a girl I knew from choir singing with them on some of the numbers, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I could do that!" So I learned a few songs ("Misty," "Black Coffee," and "The Girl From Ipanema" to be specific) and sang with the band at their Wednesday night gig at the noodle house downtown. Despite everyone's claims to the contrary, I thought I failed miserably. In fact it was one of the most unpleasant and mortifying experiences of my musical life. Not to sound bigheaded, but I've never had much of a problem with doing anything musical. I'm pretty hopeless at theory, but I have a good ear and good tone, and when it comes to learning a piece of music and performing it, especially when it's singing, I've always excelled. So this was a very new and disorienting experience for me. My mistake was in ignorantly assuming that music is music, and singing is singing. Jazz is a completely different animal from classical, which I was trained in. As Lara later explained, classical musicians are trained to hear melodies and follow strings of notes. Jazz musicians hear music as a series of chord progressions, and learn a piece by memorizing the base chords. This method actually makes a lot more sense because it gets you more intimately acquainted with the music--it makes it so that you know where it's going and you can play around within it because you already know what key you're in and what the next key will be. But to someone who is not trained in this method, jazz, especially modern jazz, sounds like chaos. They start off with the main theme, but after a while, it will hardly have any resemblance to the piece you know. And this was exactly what happened on stage. After having learned "Misty" from a recording of Ella Fitzgerald's sweet voice accompanied by the piano, imagine my surprise when after having sung a verse, the band launched into a series of solos that got progressively farther and farther away from sounding like what I'd learned, and by the time they came back to they key that the theme was in, I didn't know which way was up. The experience was profoundly depressing to me because I'd never felt such failure in something musical before. But in addition to that, I felt foolish for even trying. I know it sounds like sour grapes, but first of all, all four of the guys in that band are much more accomplished musicians than I am; second, even if I was amazing, they're not the kind of band that would even necessarily benefit from having a singer; third, I know nothing about jazz and how it works (as I learned that night); and fourth, I'm pretty sure the only reason this ever even happened is because I'm the saxophonist's girlfriend's best friend. They were all very nice about it, but I felt like I couldn't even face any of them again after that incident. And now, I'm not really sure how I'd progress. If I wanted to pick up jazz singing and try it again, it's clear that I wouldn't be doing it with this band. For one thing, I can't learn in a performance atmosphere, and the only times that they even play together are at gigs. I'd have to get lessons I guess... but from who? Where? When? My packed schedule doesn't leave a lot of time for things like that.

On a somewhat similar note, I've been thinking that I should really get back into writing music. I don't know why I stopped--I've had a dry spell for over a year now, and I miss it. I've come up with a few things on the piano that I'd like to use, but for some reason lyrics just haven't been coming to me. I'm thinking I need to just try to force myself back into it. Writing always flows more easily when you keep at it and do it often; any author will tell you that. I also need to re-record a bunch of songs and really work on getting something marketable. I've been saying for years that I was going to redo some of the songs that I recorded with the crappy microphone, and I haven't done it yet because I'm lazy. But if I want this to have any hope of going anywhere (which I do), well, I'm not getting any younger...

Alright, well I'm burned out. Not a whole lot more to report, so I guess that's it for now.