academia blues

i've finally, finally, finally put together a number of songs i'll start recording soon, if that bitch self-love gives me some of that good ol' you-can-do-it. i might even make a self-released first record that will one day become a sought-after fan item - kitchenware instrumentation, hand painted cardboard sleeves, you know the drill. and for the heck of it, i've made a small folkish intro song to the bunch, called folktales.

which playfully disclaims the truth value of my songs in relation to my experience. whence i developed a theory. god, i miss school so much. i miss forcing myself to read a required minimum of literature and then teeming with ideas for essays i'll never write. i miss my theories. my kooky, rewarding, way-too-beautiful-to-be-disproved theories. my literary, linguistic, cultural revelations. i miss being radiant from the light of them. asking questions and giving answers in class. i kick and curse at the thought of you, but academia - we're not done, so sweetly not done. ok, that's not the theory.

theory: songwriting as the eventual printing of folktales - stories of past experience, orally transmitted from one former self to the next and thus altered inestimably before they're recorded. [woot, schizophrenia!]

no problem, you can write a song right in the middle of the life-changing hangover, fight, sex, epiphany, whatnot. but where i come from, that'll be a bad song.

i must show gratitude beyond my beloved words to mr. [not that] james brown the teacher, coolest foreign man ever to call romania home, for the course on english and scottish ballads that has:

• opened my eyes to folklore [of other countries and my own];
• narrowed down the meaning of folk;
  
• bettered my understanding of song;
• acquainted me with inspiring stories only rivalled by the bible and shakespeare;
• thus strengthened my belief in metaphor [and showed me the metaphoric potential of a narrative];
  
• expanded the horizons of my songwriting, creativity and intellect altogether;
• made sense [a rare commodity in undergrad education];
  
• been lots of fun.
  

hey, where was i when they were filling in those evaluation sheets?!

oh, academia...