What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
When the bells all rings and the horns all blow
And the couples we know are finally kissing
Will I be with you, or will I be among the missing?
Maybe it's much too early in the game
But I thought I'd ask you just the same
What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?
Wonder whose arms will hold you good and tight
When it's exactly 12 o'clock that night
Welcoming in the New Year, New Year's Eve
Maybe I'm crazy to suppose
I'd ever be the one you chose
Out of a thousand invitations you receive
But in case I stand one little chance
Here comes the jackpot question in advance
What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?
Oh, but in case I stand one little chance
Here comes the jackpot question in advance
What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?
This song, originally by Nancy Wilson, is one of my favourite seasonal songs. I particularly love Diana Krall's version, but right now it's super famous because of Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's incredibly delightful cover. If you haven't heard it yet, check it out. So adorable.
Happy New Year! I hope you have a wonderful night.
Well, another Christmas has come and gone. I hope your day was full of sparkle and light.
Maybe we are all moving toward our own personal vanishing points.
This implies a moment of dissolution, of being lost. It implies incompletion, the impossibility of finitude. It implies forward motion. And it's the motion that I'm beginning to think is important rather than the being found or complete.
I look like a hot mess because I've been writing and editing hardcore for days now, but the thesis chapter (such as it is) is now handed in, which means it is officially Christmas break. Time to party (with lobster)!
rangy, adj.
4. Of great scope or compass; expansive, broad, wide-ranging
I've come to a realization as I've been doing ridiculous amounts of reading for papers in the past month or so: the work of the authors I love most is repeatedly described as "rangy." I think this is one of the qualities that draws me to them. It's why I find them so rich and deserving of attention that I eagerly anticipate each new release and contemplate writing PhD dissertations on their work. However, it is also why writing on them feels almost impossible. I never feel like I'm done. I always feel like there is some other idea to explore, some other thread to be picked up and followed on a long, glorious journey of discovery. I'm struggling with this right now as I'm trying to produce a polished, edited, pretty much complete chapter for my thesis. This just isn't how my brain works. There is too much for me to still explore at this stage in the game for me to be able to produce something that is, in any sense of the word, finished. Ah well, tomorrow evening I will have to hand something in, and hopefully it is good enough.
from "Lake of Two Rivers"
Anne Michaels
3
Sensate weather, we are your body,
your memory. Like a template,
branch defines sky, leaves
bleed their gritty boundaries,
corrosive with nostalgia.
Each year we go outside to pin it down,
light limited, light specific,
light like a name.
Like any good academic, I have moments where school just isn't my favourite thing in the world. This blog is certainly a record of that, if of nothing else. Right now I'm working on my thesis. I have to hand in a chapter by Saturday, which is incredibly daunting and stressful if I think about it too long, but is also thrilling and exciting. Right now I'm working on my chapter on Anne Michaels, which means that I've been spending my time immersed in her magnificent poetry. The particular little excerpt from "Lake of Two Rivers" is particularly relevant for my thesis topic. And it captures a little bit of how I feel about light and nature and photography. Plus it is just blindingly gorgeous. On top of this I've been reading essays by Anne Simpson and Jan Zwicky to use as critical material in the chapter. It is moments like this that I feel profoundly blessed to be doing what I am doing. It is moments like this that I seriously contemplate taking a PhD because I don't know what else I could possibly be doing with my life.
At least for me, the writing process is a strange and prickly creature. I require a very specific set of conditions, all of which must be right, in order to be optimally productive while writing. The lighting has to be right (and this requirement changes based on location and time of day), there have to be enough people around (and this number changes based on my mood), there needs to be the right music playing (and what constitutes "right" changes based on season, mood, time of day), and there has to be some je ne sais quoi element that kicks in at exactly the right moment. Writing moods are unpredictable and almost impossible to create artificially. This, of course, is a bit of a problem for a student. Sadly my professors will not accept "There was a really loud, buzzing fluorescent light in the office" or "There was an obnoxious group of people meeting in the coffee shop" or "I couldn't find the right playlist" as reasons why my paper isn't done on time. And if you think those won't fly, just try to slip in a "For some reason I just couldn't get in a productive frame of mind." Seriously, try it. At the very least you will give your professor a very good laugh, and they need that just as much as you do at this point in the term. I seem to have found a relatively fail-safe combination for writing productivity: coffee shop (specifically Just Us, I don't think I could substitute another coffee shop in here) + excellent decaf soy lattes + a playlist heavy on the 100 Mile House. This seems to create a particular chemical reaction that trips the writing centres in my brain and allow me to crank out papers at a relatively rapid pace. The only downside to this is the fact that the coffee shop closes at 8 or 9. Then I'm cast out to try and find a new home. I have yet to discover the perfect kismet of circumstances for my post-coffee-shop writing and therefore am far less productive after I have to leave. Oh well. I'll figure it out eventually.
With the end of the term upon us, I've been seeing a lot of this intermediary time. Those wee little hours that are ostensibly morning but feel more like night. Those hours where everything seems a little surreal. Where everything is both less important and more intense. This feels a little bit like a homecoming for me. These hours are my most natural habitat. They are when I am the most creative, the most verbose, the most gregarious, the most connected with myself and my world. They are also when I am at my most vulnerable, my most melancholy, my most contemplative. It's a strange existence for a strange time.
