rose marshack : whyamistillawake.com

One of my favorite teachers from my entire academic career, Bruce Reznick, (Combinatorics, math 313) sent me this absolutely wonderful guide for new TAs. I loved reading it because it is obviously his guidelines for teaching; I remember the days in his class and how well he ran it and how great learning in the class made me feel, and now reading his instructions is like getting to see what’s behind the curtain.
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~reznick/ciu.html

I’m busy at work researching what I will teach next semester for my New Media class. I’ve never done this much research into New Media in my entire life! I’m beyond excited about the class. Right now I think it will be about Web 2.0 concepts, and I will call it something like Web 2.0: Question Authority.

I even have the first quote (I always have some sort of quote on opening day) - Here it is from Lipstick Traces:

“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

This is a prime example of the audience (literally, in this case!) becoming a tool for propogating information.

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I’ll just get on with it, without the “oh, gosh, it’s been so long, etc.”

Sometime last semester, some kind folks at ISU (Illinois State University) began to email me and alert me to the fact that there was a faculty position open there, in the Music School; Music Business Teacher / New Media Instructor. I said, gosh, no thanks, I’m very entrenched in the workings of Krannert Art Museum (KAM). I was still waiting for the search for my position at KAM to come through. It took SO long.

Then someone else emailed me about the ISU position. Then another person. Then I finally thought to myself, well, I probably could use some practice interviewing, so I don’t blow the one prospect (my current position) that I have. So I applied. And did a terrible phone interview.

Then I had my interview at UIUC, which I was supposed to ace. I left it feeling not too great, either. The position is re-titled, “Art, Design, and Technology Curator.” Which I am not.

Then ISU asked me back, for the in-person interview, and asked me to prepare a presentation about my own art, and also, a second semester Music Business syllabus. I was about to thank them for their consideration but there’s no way I was going to let this get any further, when I found my feet moving underneath me and my body propelled to the Music Library here at UIUC. I couldn’t stop myself. OK: check this: on my way out of the museum, I ran into Richard Powers, who was sitting, waiting for some sort of special poetry reading by some guy that only fancy-dancy people like he were invited to, and he motioned me to come sit down next to him, and I said, “No Thanks, I am going to find a music book at the library.”

That should have told me everything, and it did. I gave up getting to sit next to Rick Powers, my all-time hero, just to run to the library to find music books.

So I began creating my presentation about my art, and about the music business, and it was a presentation about everything that I am, everything I believe in, my musical background: my 20 years of playing music and being a part of the music business - my having read music before text - it was all being wasted. All that knowledge and all the passion that I have ever had on the stage, I have had sitting in a drawer somewhere where I had to hide it because who the hell cares about my music at the museum? It’s not part of my art.

And now it is. I presented in front of a class. I showed them the Chopin Etude that stumps me. I told them about payola. I told them about my Tickets To The Sunset art piece, my thesis project about selling tickets to the sunset on Ticketmaster. (If that is not Art and The Music Business, I do not know what is.) I told them about my dad selling fakebooks in the 1940s with his dad. I told them how I’m the first generation of Marshacks who made a living playing music. I told them everything I believed and everything I loved.

And they offered me a position, in the Music School. Can you believe it? It is probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life. And the faculty there are so nice, so sweet, so supportive of each other. I’ve never been at a place like that! My friend who is experienced in these matters said to me, “Rose, I have heard of places like that, where people are nice to each other and support each other. I think that might be one of those places.”

I was sitting in my favorite place in Sarasota, Florida, actually, when all this happened; I had interviewed for both jobs and then went away to a family vacation in Florida, sitting amidst beautiful palm trees in the sun and beach, waiting for my answers.

My current / former job at UIUC also offered me a position, first, actually, but they had also found a wonderful replacement for me. So they created two positions, one for this other guy, and one for me, which was flattering in a way, but the ISU position is a faculty position. I get to TEACH. I GET TO TEACH.

So I’m unbelievably excited about all this, and I will begin to write more now. I just didn’t know how to even start this, and it’s been weird anticipating meeting my new replacement, but he’s totally cool and we have very similar thoughts about computing and art, which is really awesome. I actually love hanging out with him; he seemed nervous the first day but I tried to make sure he was happy and not scared. I hope he loves UIUC as much as I did. It’s going to be a fun place for him, I think. He’s really a great guy. I still get sad a bit hanging out with him sometimes, but now more because I won’t get to hang out more with what I’ve been trying to build for the past year or two.

So, quickly, new developments for the band? We have a show in Millenium Park in August (12th) and a possible other show in Chicago at a really exciting location, if it happens. I’ll confirm when it is confirmed.

I have been running on a treadmill and doing other such things at a gym and they are killing my body. It’s a bit thinner, but it hurts and I cannot kick as high as I would like now. I finally went back to Tae Kwon Do and didn’t get too much yelled at, so that’s good. Working out at the gym was amazing because there was no one standing over me yelling at me that my arm was in the wrong place. That was kind of cool.

And I’m knitting with Hemp-6 now, which was slightly forced upon me, but I actually really like it now. It’s a bit rough to knit with, and I’m making a tank-top with it which is going to be a very rough tank-top, but whatever, it’s a really nice green color. We’ll see.

Wow, is that everything? And I’m getting to have a teaching from HH Dalai Lama in Bloomington IN in October. And that should be pretty fun.

That’s all for now.

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I have interviewed and interviewed and am in the waiting stage now. Over the past two days I have been in Bloomington, IL, at ISU where I met some incredibly wonderful people and their incredibly wonderful students. It is very neat to go give a talk at another school to people who don’t know you, and doubly neat to be able to give one about music.

I realize that music has been missing in my life for the past 3 years. In fact not missing, but popping up all over the place because I’ve been supressing it.

In fact someone sent me something rather beautiful: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~tas3/wtc/i04.html. I’ve made a little bit of musical algorithm / translation art in my day, and actually I remember a couple of people in school enjoying it. I could go off, crazy, in a direction of music and algorithm, I could dive into that pond and swim away and never come back.

But for now I’m in single-digits (tourspeak) before leaving for Florida! Yay!

I got a little miffed at the woman who needlepointed the soundwaves of war speeches (http://www.louisabufardeci.net/) just for a short time, because I didn’t understand what needlepoint had to do with war and soundwaves (and also because I was jealous) but now I understand that needlepoint is a very quiet and contemplative and repetitive thing whereas war isn’t. Well, it’s a bit repetitive.

I wonder how to put Make blog into an art exhibition. And I wonder if I’ll get to.

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This is my response to someone who has emailed me asking me for suggestions about creating a mobile recording studio housed in an airstream, like the StoryCorps project. I almost ought to write a paper on this…. (http://www.roadsideconversations.org)

Dear Juliette,

How exciting for you - it sounds like a most wonderful project. The biggest thing I can remember (and is still a problem) is that we spent a lot of money on a carpenter who made the most beautiful wordworking for inside the airstream - and built cabinets to hold computers - and the computers either almost didn’t fit, or fit “perfectly” which meant that if you wanted to pull something out or re-plug something back in, it was almost impossible. We would have to tear the cabinets out or saw holes in them. So make sure you have your carpenters talk to your computer engineers and work directly with them, because you can have the most beautiful cabinetry and then it’s all done, and then your computer engineers need to get in and fit stuff in and take stuff out constantly. Things constantly break and need to be replaced.

Also, in the summer, with lots of computers going, the airstream would get intensely hot, and the air conditioner didn’t quite cool it down enough.

Additionally, it was very important to remember to take down all the monitors and secure them before travelling with the airstream (one member of the team forgot this during a travel session.)

We had a wooden panel with foam on it to partition off the recording studio, but it was still open on the sides for traffic to flow through - but as a result, if anyone was in the other part of the airstream talking, it would affect the recording.

And lastly, it was actually quite hard to compel people to tell their stories, and also hard to get people to come into the airstream, if they just ‘happened’ across it at an outdoor event. I thought that was very interesting. Most people would sort of peek in and run away quickly; they thought it was maybe for workers or something… so make sure you have enough signage around the outside of the trailer, and I would recommend free-standing signs near the entrances.

I think that’s it - feel free to ask any questions!

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I think I might be working on a proof that all art can fit into the category of Data Visualization. So from now on, after I complete the proof, I can start calling Art “Data Visualization” instead of Art. Or art. Yay!

I had an interview for a job. You can tell I’m a pretty good fit, except it was pretty obvious to me what parts of the job I would have to do some learning in. It’s wonderful, though, to have a job where you have to learn, where you don’t know everything. Of course, if you’re smart enough, all the jobs are like that; you learn from everything.

I think the museum is going to have a Howard Finster retrospective, which is cool, because I really like Howard Finster’s stuff. It made me drag out my little Finsters and the book I had and google myself up to find that tour report where I’m sitting and arguing with Finster. The Paradise Garden book - and looking at the shots I took with that old Apple Quicktake camera - reminded me that there is a LOT we could do with our backyard… hee hee hee…

And. It’s time to get to work.

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Here’s a great quote on Second Life by Howard Rheingold:

“In this regard, we’re still in the early days of the medium, similar to cinema in the days when filmmakers nailed a camera tripod to a stage and filmed a play; SL needs D.W. Griffiths to come along and invent the equivalent of close-ups, montage, etc.” (http://tinyurl.com/2vyavt)

This is very useful for my project, “A History of New” - as we all know, Second Life is a 3D environment and I like to hear others say that we are still in the beginning phases of it; and especially when people liken the work that is being done in 3D environs now to past explorations of new inventions. That’s what A History of New (http://www.kam.uiuc.edu/projects/historyOfNew/) is all about.

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I found this great site called http://www.swivel.com. Here’s what I found on it:

I need to start blogging more. Right now it’s hard because if you can believe it, I’m still waiting for some job searches to come through. I have interviews scheduled. I have a couple of dream jobs (pending) and am hoping that something becomes a reality. So it’s hard to empty my heart out when my heart is pending.

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This has been a difficult couple of weeks! I’m just starting to get over this now, but someone whom I thought was a friend, and mentor, and a boss, I just found out, has been very angry with me for at least a year! And, instead of telling me about these things I was supposedly doing, didn’t say a word to me, but instead wrote an email to my current boss enumerating this list he’d kept since Dec 2005. And was still smiling at me all year.

I’m trying to figure out where my work goes from here. The position that I currently occupy at the museum is now open and a permanent position has been created - the Search for that position currently ended and I submitted a resume for it. I hope I get that position. It is a very narrow skillset - someone with a Master’s in Arts and Computer programming skills - and demonstrated interdisciplinary coordination, of which I’ve got about 7 years under my belt… and I have stellar references. But I’ve been told repeatedly that the best person will get that job - and if it’s not me, that’s tough! I’m in total agreement with this, but it’s really scary, taking a leap into a giant crevice like this. I might end up with no job pretty soon! But even if this is the case, I think I can probably find another job.

I just must say that I am currently in a position that is heavenly.
Currently studying: Tonglen Practice, Big Games, and Left-handed European-style knitting (not together).

Thank yous to: John Neill at http://www.oldmanneill.com for writing about me and inspiring me to start this up again.

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Ok, this is quite literally the best link I’ve ever come across in my entire life.

http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=367

Thanks, Rick!

Remind me to write a post about what it’s like to be part of Generation X.

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New: My theory of temporal dieting.

For example: The Ice-Cream Sundae is not measured in material quantity; i.e., English liquid or dry measurements. It is measured in units of time. For example, a mini-ice-cream sundae at Cozy’s Custard Cup (US$3.85) is 5 minutes long. A large 3-scoop sundae at My House (US$.25) is about 12 minutes long. I put forth, however, that during the 12 minutes, there is a 7-8 minute Chocolate Coma, where you don’t remember eating during that time anyway. With the Mini Sunday (5 minutes) you are pretty much mindful the entire time you’re eating it.

Now, of course, herein lies “the Rub.” During the Chocolate Coma (7-8 minutes) you gain an extra 8000 calories, which you can only take off by doing 2 months of Yoga Pilates or 45 minutes of running for 3 weeks. Who wants to do that? So stick with the 5 minutes of Mindful Cozy’s Mini-Ice-Cream-Sundae.

Why AM I Still Awake?

This is an exciting topic to me tonight, because I’m almost beginning to practice Not Being Awake at this time. I have lately really gotten off the Simplicity track; I’ve bought lots of new clothes (ostensibly for the New Season) and I’ve been staying up late doing stupid things like shopping online For No Other Reason Than To Acquire Things.

In order to give these things up (things like Staying Up Too Late and Shopping Without A Good Reason) you have to be ready to Let Go. That’s something I used to practice on the stage all the time, except now I’m not on a stage, I’m in a Very Comfortable Office. I’m not sleeping on people’s floors, I’m sleeping on Slightly Expensive Sheets. When things start getting too good, you start wanting Even More.

I’ve also been reading an Inordinate Amount of Winnie-The-Pooh to Gram, hence the Strange Capitalizations.

So tonight for meditation practice, I just practiced doing absolutely nothing and Resting. That worked for a good 2 seconds, actually. I was very impressed. And then I got very impressed, and it all went downhill - or uphill, I guess - from there.

A lady at work had chest pains today and was dragged against her will to the hospital. The hospital gave her stress tests and other things and then told her she was ok, she just had probably a muscle spasm. This is a beautiful older (than me) woman at work - always looks very well put-together and laughs a lot. I worried about her. She came right back to work after she spent her day at the hospital. I might have actually gone home after spending a day wondering if I’ve had a heart-attack. I thought that if work stress was causing her pain, she might want to rest from it. That’s when I started thinking about the giving stuff up.

The stuff you need to give up is the extra stuff that you don’t really have to worry too much about. Like tomorrow, I worry that I should not go to a new Yoga-Pilates class at 9am instead of going to work. But I’m not even supposed to go to work on Fridays; that’s my day off. I just have so much stuff I need to do. But the thing is, an hour of Yoga-Pilates is probably much better for me than an hour of sitting at my desk drumming up even more trouble for myself and others.

The Martial Arts Festival

The Martial Arts Festival that will happen at the Krannert Art Museum on October 14th is going to probably be the funnest day of my life. Unless someone accidentally sticks a spear through a Lichtenstein or something. The Festival will start with Tea Ceremony - then lots of other martial arts - then a very short seminar on Kung-fu cinema - then more martial arts! Here’s our workspace for it:http://cu-martial-arts-festival.pbwiki.com/ — doesn’t it look amazing?

I hope I’m not the only person in the world who thinks - no, KNOWS - that martial arts belongs in the Art Museum. We’ll see.

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