Halfway

Monday.

As the dark hours of night whittle away to the pale hours of morning, I remain in Mathura's room at McCormick trying to create a working Sudoku solver for 6.005. At times I am so tired I don't know what I'm typing, and am surprised, in momentary bursts of lucidity, by what is on the screen. An hour-and-a-half into an attempt to implement a different approach to converge with Mathura (she claimed to be one elusive print method away), during which I drift from semi-tired to head-bobbing-neck-jerking sleepy, I notice that at some point I'd started revising the wrong file, and realize I don't trust a thing I've done. I go back to check everything. Around eight-thirty, Anjali arrives after hooking up with Keith (he's still in her bed) and tries to help Mathura in a way that I cannot (my mind is soup), and I scrap the work and return to my old code. I think, I should have just spent those hours improving my own code. Beside me Mathura has gone from frustrated to angry to hysterical, has called her mother and cried into the phone about the injustice in the fruitlessness of over forty hours of work, about the injustice that certain others had allegedly finished in two or five hours, about the test she has not studied for, and there is nothing I can do but feel sorry for her, for she has been not sleeping for even longer than me over the past days. I do not panic. I am tired but resigned. I plug away, and watch the clock. Soon it is time for my 9:30 political science class, and I debate going. I go. I arrive late. I cannot keep my eyes open. I cannot focus. I try to take notes, I try very hard, but I cannot remember more than two words at a time. The teacher is talking at his normal speed, he is talking too fast. I sink back in my chair and drop my head and let my heavy lids fall. Occasionally I try to wake up and take notes. I know everyone can see that I'm sleeping, it's a small class, especially when the girl sitting next to me repeatedly responds to questions, and especially the TA can see me, the professor can see me, the cute Kappa Sigma guy across the room (who probably think I'm a stalker after I tried to be too helpful in 7.03 freshman fall) can see me. When the class is over, I have no idea what the lesson was about. I see that my notes are useless illegible chicken scratching.


Tuesday.

I'm in E14-244, a conference room in the New Media Lab, for the monthly MMP program review meeting, the one that all the big names show up to. I feel pretty out of place, among giants; my seat is appropriately off to the side away from the table, which is too full. At the front of the room Gerry Sussman is defending his propagator network adamantly, angrily. His face is red, his words nonstop rapid-fire bullets. He is tearing apart Neil Gershenfeld, who is questioning the usefulness of his work. The more questions Neil asks, the more upset Gerry gets. The more upset Gerry gets, the slower he gets through his slides, the more questions Neil asks. They remind me of an unhappy couple - one is too impatient to hear the other out before opening his mouth, the other's honor cannot sustain a momentary criticism so that he must immediately defend himself and attack the critic. They remind me of my parents - the big difference being that Neil remains calm, displaying only slight perturbation in his voice as Gerry gets more and more excited. He is being attacked, sometimes shown wrong, in front of his illustrious peers. Yet he remains calm in the face of fire and brimstone, and continues to question. In this moment I admire him more for his self-control and self-assurance, even though Sussman is smarter. The rest of the room remains silent for the most part, spectating the fight, half-afraid speaking will lead to being swept into the cyclone.

The meeting, scheduled for two hours, is still not over at 4 'o clock because of Gerry's presentation. No one leaves yet, so I stay and watch the clock anxiously. The meeting ends in another half hour, and I dash out to comment my tortuously slow-running Sudoku solver code before the 5 'o clock deadline, and to write a print method.

Literary

I've picked up two HASS classes: (17.551) The Political Economy of Chinese Reform; and (21L.017) The Art of the Probable. The first is excellent, while the other is about as fun as stabbing myself in the eye. (But it's a HASS-D.)

The professor in 17.551, Ed Steinfeld (who is incidentally one letter away from two former TV shows), is an engaging lecturer who has "lived" the material, having experienced China's political economy through teaching in the country for years, including through the 1989 protest. He pronounces Chinese terms in Chinese, and it is frankly the best Chinese I have heard from, well, a white guy. He sounds like a native. It's such an enjoyable classes that I don't mind reading for it (even though the reading took seven hours the first week, when I added the class), because the professor crafts the information into a comprehensible narrative. History becomes a story, and stories are entertaining, which makes him a success. Of course he tells us he doesn't have all the answers, especially on contemporary issues, and we are often conjecturing on why things happened the way they did. Eventually we will ponder what is to come.

Beethoven the Giant

Last night, I found the piece I want played at my funeral. I also have a new favorite string quartet.

Beethoven mastered string quartet writing. His first set of quartets, Op. 18, are said to just demonstrate that he could do anything that Mozart could do. He gets better and better through his middle quartets, and his late quartets are "widely considered to be among the greatest musical compositions of all time." [1] Steven says he set the bar too high for future generations of composers. But after the performance of the third movement of Op. 132 last night by the Chiara String Quartet, I thought he set the bar a little high for even himself. It was a spiritual experience. I thought, how do you even write another movement to follow that?

I will let the music speak for itself. However, I think the effect is much stronger live, and I encourage you to hear it live.

1. Assai sostenuto — Allegro
2. Allegro ma non tanto
3. Molto Adagio — Andante — Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart
4. Alla Marcia, assai vivace (attacca)
5. Allegro appassionato — Presto

Spring Courses

Non-stop hip hop, courtesy of Greg's Pandora station, envelops me in The Tech office. I'm tired and usually this is not what I listen to, but the constant beat combined with catchy melodic hooks and homogeneous lyrics about love and heartbreak make for mind-numbingly easy listening, effective therapy to relax me. I've been here long enough to hear several songs twice. It's a bit after midnight, but I'm here tonight to work.

It's the first Friday of the spring term. Four days of school have passed. Classes are just revving their engines, throwing their first spats of gravel at me as their wheels slip and spin.

I'm taking three and a half classes this term: Math for Computer Science (6.042), Signals and Systems (6.003), and Software (6.005), and the half - Chamber Music (21M.445) as usual. It's a moderate load, though I expect to spend a lot of time on each class, particularly 6.005 (which reportedly takes 30+ hours per week) and 6.003 (which really smart friends have described as "challenging").

A Year of Music

Songs attach themselves to places, eras, and events. [1] For me, they also attach themselves to people. (The easiest way to be memorable to me is to show me a song that sticks.) Here are some songs - mostly for my memory, and partially for anyone looking for music recommendations - that I've naturally come to associate with people this year, in rough chronological order.

Soul Coughing: "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago" - David S.
Sufjan Stevens (artist) [2]: George H.
Ratatat: "Seventeen Years" - Hayman
Jesse McCartney: "Right Where You Want Me" - Pallavi P.
Vienna Teng: "Recessional" - Ben C.
Leonard Berstein: "Maria" (from West Side Story) - Aaron S.
Billy Joel: "So It Goes" - Aaron S.
Cake: "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" - Kelly R.
Silversun Pickups: "Lazy Eye" - Pallavi P.
Beethoven: String Quartet Op. 131 [2] - Steven J.
Weezer: "My Name is Jonas" - Dennis M.

Sidney Awards

[Update 12/30/09: A second batch of Sidneys has been chosen.]

Every year, David Brooks, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, gives out Sidney Awards to the best magazine essays of the year. I spent at least an hour reading Matt Labash's "A Rake's Progress" yesterday and laughed out loud from the writer's expert analogies. Take, for example, this description of Washington D.C.'s Ward 8, the poorest ward in the district.

For decades, Ward 8 has been the crime and poverty and every-other-dubious-statistic headquarters of D.C. It is the land that the real estate bubble forgot. Amidst the check-cashing places and screw-top liquor stores, it contains such tourist meccas as the reeking Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment plant and St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital, where Ezra Pound sweated out his insanity plea for treason and John Hinckley Jr. can compose rock operas for Jodie Foster in peace. While only minutes from Capitol Hill, and from the more prosperous black suburbs in Maryland's Prince George's County, Ward 8 might as well be in Burkina Faso to the commuting class. The only reason to pull off there is if you needed to buy a quick fifth of Hennessey for the ride home, or possibly something less legal.

I had to look up all the references in that paragraph.

Most of the other articles are not so humorous. Regardless, it's a joy to simply be reading for pleasure again, [1] and especially quality writing. With only music humanities classes this semester, the extent of my literary exposure was xkcd comics and the occasional Tech article. I'm bundled up in pj's and a fleece in my room now with a mug of hot water at my side, the heat on and shades down (to hide the gray sky outside), reading good articles. This could make a great vacation.


[1] Admissions officer Ben Jones warned pleasure reading would die, in #26 on his classic list of advice for college. I re-read the "50 Things" maybe once a year for an injection of perspective.

Improv

"We embark unhesitatingly on the path, in a direction that is absolutely right and urgent, supported by everyone, in the knowledge that this path is but a learning process…[We] have to keep on learning, creating, applying, by-passing, touching upon, refining and clarifying a number of notions and details that need to be improvised and applied and which, thank God, we cannot foresee. The only rigidity lies in our will, our conviction that we are on the right road and that our initiatives are most pressing."
- Yehudi Menuhin

"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." - Miles Davis


I took 21M.355: Musical Improvisation this term. Throughout the class each student kept a journal; here's mine: http://improvinabox.blogspot.com/

I'm posting the final entry, which sums up my experience.
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The class performed last night in Killian Hall, a straight two hours without intermission. Fortunately, our audience endured.

The concert was a surprising success, considering that we started rehearsing the bulk of it two weeks ago. For many pieces it was even less than that.

For me, it was a vastly enjoyable concert. I tapped my feet and bobbed my head while in the audience. I tapped my feet and bobbed my head while on stage. I was truly having fun, whereas normally I'm nervous on stage. Perhaps the greatest personal success for me was that I didn't feel nervous at all. Okay, so a bit of adrenaline - but nothing close to what I've encountered in the past, especially with solos. Maybe it helped that it was a group setting, not a solo recital. But if you had asked me a few months ago, I could not have imagined being on stage, playing without knowing the notes to play, and not being nervous.