rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

I’m completely out of my mind tired. But I have to write something here. I met such bright, incredible students today. I’m very happy with where I find myself.

I’m teaching two classes that I almost wish could come together. One is Introduction to Music Business, and the other is Special Topics in Arts Technology. It’s more than a little daunting to set up a syllabus. How do I know when I’ve taught enough? One of the classes has a book I can follow, but the other I am just taking every wonderful thing I’ve ever learned and teaching it in a class. Today I got to present Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Monument, John Snow’s cholera map, the Clock of the Long Now, and some work of Fernanda Viegas to people who have never seen these things before! Can you imagine how excited I was?!

But it’s still scary to know how much to teach so I have asked one of my old mentors Professor Kevin to meet with me (and thank goodness he agreed) - and I’ll pester him to give me the answer to the question.

Meanwhile,

is Theory like HTML? No, says Kevin,

He’s just so smart, even if he’s getting older now. He’s even older than 30, I think.

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I searched for Posterchildren on Flickr and found a bunch of pictures of us playing at Millenium Park. And I created a Facebook group called “I liked Poster Children before they became famous” which I thought was funny. I’m doing a whole self-promotion thing. Although I could only get up the guts to invite my Mom and Rick to the Poster Children group, and Rick didn’t even join.

Tomorrow - no, today - is the big day, my first day of teaching at ISU!

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A professor. Do you call yourself “Professor?” Should I? The New Media dept at UIUC are all known by their first names, but I think that some of the Music Dept at ISU use “Professor Lastname.” I always found it kind of a buzzkill that we could call the professors at UIUC by their first names. Almost like, “Hey, why the hell am I paying you so much money if you’re just a firstName like me?” Who knows. I don’t think I’ll be able to pull off the Professor thing except perhaps in the Music Business course. It’d be kinda neat though. This all reminds me of the book White Noise by Don Delillo.

I have a great quote from Lipstick Traces that I will fumble on if I start the class with it. I’ll have to save it for day 2.

I must speak to a boy named Elvis Presley,” said the headmistress of a London comprehensive academy in 1956, “because he has carved his name on every desk in the school.” - p 41, Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus

And of course there is the greatest work of art ever, done for Web 2.0, Michael Wesch’s “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g.

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I now have some time to read. I need to get smarter so I can make my students smarter. I’m also trying to work on a sequel to “Tickets To The Sunset.” And here I come up across this: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/07/28.html. The cult of efficiency vs. the principle of sufficiency, eloquently stating what I’ve believed is wrong with what I call “greedy people.” “North American Scum,” to quote LCD Soundsystem. Of course this blog entry was written in 2006. I’m always at least a year late on things.

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I’m calling it the land of the sunsets because it’s west of the fields here. But doesn’t it sound like a paradise?

I’ve had almost a week of meetings and orientations at ISU, watching faculty clap for each others’ achievements, smile at each other. It’s just the culture there, I guess. One speaker noted that “The word is getting out; if you want to go to a college where you’ll be taught by a PhD and not a graduate student (’and not a TV set,’ I would add), you’ll come to ISU.” People nodded. We’re definitely the Second Ship here in Illinois, and UIUC is the First Ship, but I don’t care because this is the Teaching Ship and I want to teach.

I saw a kid with a mohawk today, looking for keys. I wanted to grab him and give him a little squeeze and acknowledge his alternativeness (which probably would have upset him greatly.) The other day, I saw what I think might have been a Music Business student. Next week I get to meet all my new students and start teaching them! I’m SO in the right place. The ISU website is great; has all kinds of information I can use to learn to teach, it actually WORKS and you can find info on it. In fact you can get your class roster and even see the students’ pictures along with their names!! It’s incredible! ISU is just like a lean, mean, fighting machine to my old school’s dreadnaughtness, that’s all.

I have to say I miss all my old colleagues and teachers though. I had a moment where I realized I was in a different place, yesterday, in fact, and I wished I could have run over to A&D and given everyone hugs. But I’ll do that next week sometime when I return some keys and paperwork. And instead, today, I just sent everyone an email from my new ilstu.edu account.

We played a Poster Children show in Millenium Park a couple of days ago, and it had to have been around 95 degrees out there. It was great to play a challenging show again! We had tons of fun but it really was kind of like fighting a war, which is pretty much what we’d do anyway on the stage even if it wasn’t over 90 degrees. So by the end of the show I was exquisitely happy and probably 2 wrong breaths away from fainting.

Millenium Park - especially the water area - is gorgeous. I will post some pictures, but there is a water area where you can walk on 1-3 inch high water on grey slate-like rocks, and there are two giant monolithic towers on each end of the water, filled with LEDs surrounded by glass bricks and water pours over them. Giant ‘video’ faces beam out from the monoliths, and water sprays over them and sometimes out the mouth of the face. Every so often, the amount of water falling over the top intensifies and the people standing underneath (beside) the monolith scream in glee as they are pummeled with water.

The beautiful thing about this water-park is the social aspect of it. I found that the personal space barrier between people was the smallest I’ve ever seen in my life, in this water area. People of all colors sat next to each other, left their shoes yards away from where they were playing, smiled - no, grinned - at each other as they dashed past each other. Little kids ran around half-naked, adults stood with the kids under the waterfalls. Everyone got really close to each other, in a way you’d probably never see anywhere else, not even in a pool situation. I’m not sure if it was the feeling like we were all dwarfed by the incredible Chicago skyline all around us (we’re all in this together sort of thing) or the happy faces beaming down on everyone, but everyone felt like friends.

Now that I think of it, it’s probably the water that brings everyone together; it’s something that’s touching all of us in the park. And it’s hugging us, it feels wonderful in that heat. It’s like we’re all a bunch of babies in a womb or something. I remember someone (either my dad or a famous comic) noting that on the street, if a car passes you by, you want to kill it and the driver, but on the water, on a boat passing by, everyone waves to each other like they’re long-lost relatives.

Time for me to go to bed and worry a bit about how to record oboes. That’s the one thing I might not know how to do so well. But I have a book!

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A New Beginning

I saw what will become my office today for the first time! It is nice; empty and with a navy blue wall, but still very nice. The best part was that my office is in the area with all the other professors! After so many years of … well, it’s all past now.

It’s hard to believe where I have found myself, where I have landed. I’m still kind of in a state of shock and I’m looking around to find out where the camera is, half the time. I’m in a job where pretty much everything I do and think about and care about pertains to my job! I get to teach things I know and love, and when I research, I can teach that stuff too! And best of all, when I perform, which is pretty much the thing I love to do best, that will help me in my career! It is the best thing in the world!!

Still working on syllabi. The Music Business syllabus is proving to be tons of fun to work on; I so obviously do know that material, and it is so easy to find people from my past to help guide these future students! Everyone I have asked so far has said agreed to be interviewed, either live or virtually, on iChat or phone; Bob Weston from Chicago Mastering Service/Shellac, Matt Talbott from Hum/Centaur/Great Western Record Recorders, a former President of Reprise Records, a former Warner Bros. attorney, our drummer who has a degree in Music Business and interned at RCA and BMG, etc…. the list goes on! Next I’ll probably call Mr. Steve Albini and see if we can do a tour of Electrical Audio up in Chicago. Then I’ll have to worry about getting 21 kids up to Chicago and back again….
My only other worry is most of these people are from the Rock and Roll school, not too many are jazz or classical, but I think it’s all applicable, no matter what. Many of the ‘former’ music industry people now have such a great perspective on the industry too, having been through it all. Hopefully The Kidz will appreciate this type of thing.
The other syllabus is for my “Architecture of Participation” class, which is going to be about Web 2.0, but I’m having a hard time narrowing myself down to it because I have so many favorite assignments I’ve given in the past and want to continue giving them. I need to just let go of that. I know that as a new professor I’ll try to fit way too much stuff in my syllabus. I do hope I don’t go wrong in the other direction though, and not teach enough…. nah.. I just have a feeling that it’s going to work out fine! It’s CRAZY!!! I keep having to stop myself from jumping up and down! I’m so excited!!

The Archetypes of Not Understanding Art and Technology

I’m working on a possible theory / writing now, but I’m missing the vocabulary for it. The problem is that there are people who understand technology and code, and there are people who understand art. And there are so few people who understand both. The only people I personally know (so far) are me, Rick Valentin, Richard Powers, and maybe Karrie Karahalios who comprehend all this stuff. There has to be more people though.

Let me enumerate the artist/technologist archetypes.

Type A: This person makes a printout of a mathematical equation, assigns some colors, placements, sounds to its range, (or, maybe they even make it a hologram) and then gets all excited about the pretty picture it makes - or the picture that it makes that looks like a body part - and then decides that this is art. It’s Pretty! Of Course it’s Art! (Yes, I know that there are some math equations that are just so squishy and nice and maybe even jump-of-faithy that they should be considered art, but it’s very hard to explain those ones to an artist, and there’s really no reason to print them out, either. They would work better as conceptual art.

Type O: This person has a rudimentary understanding of the term database, or code, and uses it in very bad metaphors, thinking that they can explain the connection between technology (or at least computer code) and art. The only person I know who did this well was Richard Powers but it took him 696 pages (although he threw in music as well.) and he transcended the little bridge you draw between code and art by creating a whole narrative around it.

Those are complete opposite sides of the spectrum.

Type F: This person understands art very well, and wants to make art that uses technology but doesn’t understand the technology, so they employ others to create it. There are variations on the scale of Fμ as to how they credit (and whether they listen to) their collaborators. Some of these people are terribly mean to technologists, or anyone they think knows more about computer programming than them.

Type H: This person understands technology very well and thinks that since they go to museums and really like the art there, that they should direct art projects.

I’m going to bed. And yes, I do have PMS.

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I’m on my first week of No Work and No Holiday and No Vacation: and it’s great! I’m actually starting to work on syllabi now for teaching my classes this August - Arts Technology 388 and Music Business.

I have day 1 of Arts 388 planned now - the class is going to be about Participatory Networked Whatevers (web2.0 and all the other buzzwords) but I want to make sure they will get to do Fun Stuff Like Creating Things and not just talk about theory all the time. Day 1 is probably really Week 1 & 2; since I’m a new perfessor I will probably try to pack way too many things into the class. But anyway Day 1 is the following presented:

If the class is about communication, we need to talk about Graphics first. How to make things readable, understandable, how to clearly present information and data. So I can give nice examples from, say, Edward Tufte; the graphing of the London cholera epidemic, and the screwed up data presentation of the shuttle disaster - and the performance of Richard Feynman at the subsequent hearings (with the O-ring and the glass of ice water)… I have some artwork that works parallel to the cholera map; Candy Jernigan’s “Found Dope” which is a beautifully laid out presentation of all the dope paraphenalia she found in the city around her apartment building. There’s a great parallel between the London cholera epidemic, where just plotting the names along a temporal path according to death would be completely useless (which is what would have logically followed from a bunch of death notices) but the opposite case of Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial which works wonderfully because it is names plotted along a temporal path…. and I will end up with the Clock of the Long Now.

There is no way that will all fit into the first class. I also want to talk a lot more about graphics and color choices. That can be for the second day I guess. Then an assignment, but it has to be one that will be awesome and fun and impossible to mess up, just like the best teacher in the world (Doyle Moore)’s assignments used to be.

Yes, I’m totally excited and also scared. But I’m going to plunge ahead and “Go In Like Gangbusters” which is what the Dean of Fine and Applied Arts at UIUC told me to do.

I have scheduled The Music Business Class for Wednesday and Thursday days… this is SO fun, to just sit and work on what to teach people ALL DAY!!! I cannot believe how lucky I am!! (I know I’ll be jaded later, but for right now, WOW! actually I don’t think I’ll be jaded ever, because this is EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO! So there!)

So the freaky thing about the Music Bus class so far is that I’m second-guessing myself. So many people have recommended Donald Passman’s All You Need To Know About The Music Business - I finally picked it up - and… it starts out by saying ‘If you want to get anywhere / signed to a major, you need a good lawyer and a manager.’ Which is absolutely the opposite of what I would have told everyone. I just blew $30 on a book! But the thing is, that’s the other way of doing this I guess. It’s lucky that I know both ways! I can just tell everyone about all that. So maybe this book is the one to get. I have taken out about 15 other music business books from the music library here at UIUC and others from Champaign library… I don’t think I’ve ever done this much research about anything in my life. or cared as much.

Rick’s dad has had his operation and they have taken his tumor out. This stuff is probably really private and I shouldn’t be writing about it. He looked pretty good the last time I saw him, sitting up in the hospital. He is recovering now but now is the time to think about what to do in the future. And that’s for a different blog.

We had a long, long, long vacation with my family; all the sisters (my 2 youngers) were together and we had a wonderful and intense time together. It is so amazing that we are so different, but we all love each other so much and have a closeness and bond that we’ll never allow to break. It’s very interesting to figure out how to deal with our kids; we all have such different ways of raising our children! I will go into that in the future.

Why exactly am I still awake? I get so greedy. At night, greed takes over, whether I’m moronically staring at shopping webpages, or trying to squeeze another day’s worth of research out of a night. I’m so greedy.

I wonder what it is like to know what is going to kill you. I’ve been reading about pancreatic cancer. You’re not supposed to eat animal fat. It’s bad for you. I wonder if I should give up eating ice-cream.

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You’re going through life, enjoying retirement (by going back to the office periodically) and then boom, you feel a bit ill, go to the doctor, and find out there’s a tumor on your pancreas.

Boom. Rick’s dad is sick and is going into the hospital. Life is all waiting. Summer is blooming all around us, my sister from London is in town for a month, my family is together for the first time in years, Rick’s first Chicago art opening is this weekend, and the band is starting to practice again. Lots of excitement and joy.
But life is all waiting. We’ll know something in a couple of days. But what will we know? What do we know?

I try to live life like every day is my last (I think). It’s hard when you get these “life lesson” emails and you already do what you’re supposed to be doing. What happens when you’ve got the correct mindset and then the bad thing happens? I guess there is still pain, but maybe it’s in a better context?

I wish there was something I could do to help. I don’t even know what subjects to talk about. Rick’s family is so much different than my family. When my dad was sick, I didn’t have that removedness. I feel completely unable to help now. Plus, I think I kinda know I’m not good at sick people and hospital situations.
I guess no matter what happens there is always pain. I guess at these times it’s important to focus on the joy too.

These are very intense times.

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Yesterday was my last day at UIUC. It was very, very strange. Most of the people whom I probably would have cried hugging goodbye left before I had to hug them goodbye and cry. Anyway I left my Chris Schneberger Viewmaster Series Art there so I need to pick that up at some point.

It feels very, very weird to not have any responsibilities right now, so I decided to find a couple of other ones. I rode my bike to get The Toddler to daycare this morning. I thought a bit about what a slacker mom I am to put him in daycare instead of having him here in the house with me.. for a couple of minutes, and then I smiled. I don’t have that guilt. Gram’s with a bunch of his friends with teachers who are teaching him 3-year old things, and he’s got his music class at school today, which he loves. There was always a twinge of guilt for me, dropping him off there instead of doing what my mom did and raising me at home. But I know life is better for all of us this way. I’m not geared for daycare of a 3-year old. At his school he’ll smear shaving cream all over himself, play with sand made with coffee-grounds and corn starch in a giant blue tub, play at the Water Table… I don’t have those things here. I also don’t have 10 other 3 year olds for him to be with.

I will soon buy a membership to our local food co-op, even if it’s scary and hard to get there. You worry you’ll do something wrong, like wear a leather belt or park in the wrong spot or wear too many diamonds or something like that. Then you look at the produce and wonder, does it look like crap because it’s healthier for me and isn’t painted store-chemical red, or does it look like crap because it’s actually rotten?

But I’m shopping there for eggs because they are from Arthur, IL, and mostly, because I don’t have to keep buying more egg cartons and throwing them away. If I have to throw away another egg carton, I’m going to buy a chicken. The egg cartons and the frigging peanut butter jars are making me crazy. The co-op has a giant tub of peanut butter that you can bring your own jar for, and use. At least there are two packagings that I don’t have to have anymore.

I think this is enough. Time to go drive my car to the workout place and run on a machine.

Then we’ll get in line for the Iphone. Fashionably late, but not too fashionably late of course.

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2 days of work left. I have only quit one other job in my whole life, the job at Frasca, programming flight simulators. The day Rick and I left there, we stayed extra late, burning EPROMs to make sure everything would work perfectly when we were gone. The boss stayed to watch us to make sure we didn’t steal anything, but we were completely driven to make sure we left everything working perfectly. I remember that felt so good. Then afterwards we left and went on tour. For 10 years.

So now I’m quitting another good-paying job for MUSIC! I hope my parents know how proud I am of myself! (although let’s face it, this is a much better job that I’m going to. It’s not like I’m runnin oft on tour again.)

I had lunch with The Famous Author, and he helped me with my syllabus - you kids are so lucky next semester - and I got to find out what the next book is about! But I’m not going to blog about it. I’m just so excited - I can’t wait to read it! I wish I was on the Shorter List, there are some people on that list who actually get the books BEFORE they come out. Could you believe how amazing THAT would be?

My friend Frances Kuo researches the effects of environment on people. She has sent me a paper about what happens to kids who don’t get to exist in nature. It is wonderful. I know so many beautiful, wise, intelligent, generous, caring people. It is hard to go to bed sometimes, just wondering what everyone is up to.

I am reading the cult of the amateur, how today’s internet is killing our culture, by andrew keen. Even the typesetting on the front of the book makes me angry; it’s all lowercase. Is he trying to show that he’s an amateur too?

The book is about how us amateurs, us Time’s Persons Of The Year, yes, us monkeys not typing out Shakespeare, are going to destroy America (I suppose like the Gays are going to destroy the Institution of Marriage) - American culture (??) - by self-publishing using Web 2.0 technologies. Yes, it’s a perfect textbook for my class.

He makes a lot of good points (over and over) but it seems very reactionary, and almost kinda..uh… amateurish? I’m waiting for the punchline at the end where he says, “Aha! Gotcha! I’m an amateur, too!” But it hasn’t happened yet.

He is saying that wikipedia is not written by the Learned. and he’s right, but I think that there is a wonderful use for wikipedia and another use for The Books Of The Learned. Obviously people need to be taught what they can believe, but that’s no different than non-Web2.0 technologies now, is it? Watch television and tell me what you should believe? The commercials? The news?

Anyway in my research I signed onto Facebook and started filling out my profile. I was taught how to “hang out” on mySpace by a friend Erin, at the museum. I definitely need to know these things if I’m going to teach this class.

Rick has cut out a template for the iPhone and has been carrying it around with him, holding it in his hand. We’re looking for reasons to buy this thing. When I got back from teaching Tae Kwon Do tonight, he had discovered that the iPhone that is coming out in a couple of days is smaller than previously specified; we’d thought they’d gotten someone with bigger hands to do the newer commercials, but no, it IS smaller. It looks like they’re going to make it affordable to people like me and Rick. So now all I have to do is deal with the fact that I might end up with a 1.0 first generation something. I still have my Newton. Gag.

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