Thesis Diary #4: Verisimilitude and Perfection

About three months ago I resolved to go on a dating and sexual moratorium. I felt my heart and mind weren't in the right place to even consider dating again after a recent breakup; it hit me harder than I'd care to admit at the time and only now I feel that I'm in a position to even consider going "back on the market" again. However, during my dating moratorium, I ended up breaking it. I never went out of my way to seek a date or put myself out there for any type of meaningful, character-building rejection, but I did sleep with someone.

So I mulled over it a while. Was it so bad that I allowed this to happen? I enjoy having sex and sex is an enjoyable part of my masculinity - my very humanity. I enjoyed the act itself. So why feel guilt or shame over it? It didn't make me a "shit" or a "louse" (as Dr. Ellis would eloquently say.) After a time I remembered the words of friends and brothers: "You don't have to do it right, you just have to do it." This permeated the rest of my feelings and my thoughts - much like my thesis; I don't have to do it perfectly, I just have to do it. So I took an index card out of my deck and wrote that phrase down. I placed it on my wall next to my other collected affirmations. Funnily enough, an identical card was already to be found. It had completely slipped my mind.

So now, at the time of writing, I'm about a half way done - 9,117w down and almost as many to go. In the mean time, I've booked myself into the Walkley Foundation Freelance Conference. I attained my yellow belt in Sin Moo Hapkido. My article for ETC, was published (although I'm yet to receive a copy.) I'm writing reviews for the Pun for this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I've gone from under-employed to almost taking on too many projects to humanly handle while writing a thesis essentially full time.

Despite the nagging voice in the back of my head urging me to make everything perfect lest the world cave in around me, I have to remind myself that perfection is a state of mind and relatively relative. It's not worth attaching my sense of worth to attaining the almost impossible; I am a man and I have limitations - none more so limiting than the maladaptive beliefs that I can easily change. I can "lean" into challenge and try my best. If I that's what I can do, that's what I'll be content with.

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The Winding Road to Shangri-La

In the first time in over a year since the beginning of my recovery, I've finally slammed into a wall. Dusting myself off and nursing my bruises I've only just managed to start the arduous and tedious walk around the wall. Why not just climb over? And what would that even entail?

During my twenty-four years on this earth, I've learned a lot of so-called facts that have turned out to be bullshit. Partially or totally so. My brain has been told time and again that the outside world is thus and immutable. Life is not what our thoughts make it? Now such a notion strikes me as ridiculous.

If the bright spark of settling into the exciting idea that things can be better for myself shone brightly and abundantly for the first year, I would consider this a dark and barren transition phase. Step after begrudging step I walk as ashes fall from the sky. Though not a complete halt, it feels like I'm in retreat from my feelings and desires as the world around me speeds toward changes I'm unable to control. My loved ones' times are fading and far from thrashing against it, I must accept, mourn and move on. I want to see abundance but all I am left with is the sting of scarcity. I want to reach out and cherish all the people in my life, but I still feel they are on the other side of the wall, waiting for me to catch up. They will not wait forever and will eventually move forward on their own path. Without any judgment or reservation, I will too.

Despite it all, the small victory becomes apparent: in knowing one step can follow another, the future is there for our taking. Companions will leave; new lovers and friends will emerge. Then we all depart, towards our final, unavoidable destination. If I can tolerate and learn from the grey and sorrowful, this time of desolation and emptiness, it will lead me to somewhere greater. Every man must carry his scars, his ashes. It is what gives him strength in these times of need.

So now I walk with ashes in hand, toward the other side.

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Thesis Diary #3: Is that a lot?

Okay, I must be borderline insane for thinking I could complete my thesis in a semester - I just figured 18,000w is a normal workload - how could I possibly fuck it up?

But this (long) weekend, I added about 3,000w to my total bringing it up to a sizable 6,142w as of writing. I proved to myself that it can be done. My first chapter is quickly becoming one long ass definition about rock music, rock subcultures and what constitutes rock journalism and criticism. I am no sociology student, and it shows. (NO, political science is not applied sociology!) I remember I did cultural studies once in my undergrad years and failed the unit because I stopped showing up. I failed that entire semester, if I recall... (Please don't tell Tony I failed that entire semester.)

Luckily for me, there's one really cool dude that is the leading authority on this sort of stuff. I'm an even luckier son of a bitch because he's written about a billion articles and books on the subject. I have about 70 footnoted references and his name appears in about half of them. Enter, Simon Frith.

My research has yielded some surprises insofar that I just never though rock and roll music was taken this seriously by academia - little did I know that there exists entire journals on the subject such as The Journal of Popular Culture and Popular Music and Society. At this stage, I'm just scratching the surface in terms of covering the transition of rock music from just teenage unserious "pop" into scholarly and meritorious "art" (like a book by my boy Frith over there!) that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Interestingly enough, if there's entire schools dedicated to popular culture and cinema studies (did you know that Cahiers du Cinema and Rolling Stone started publication in the same year? Of course, only complete wankers like me would give a shit about that.) but almost none dedicated to pop and rock music. I mean, it could be set up! Just think of the tenure! THE TENURE!

But my thesis isn't a huge nostalgia trip back in time to a place where I think Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire is better than anything my modern day wannabes can come up with (but can it?) - it's to demonstrate that rock journalism in Australia as independent, "rock authentic" journalism is "dead, buried and cremated" (to borrow a trite phrase) and it's mostly the journalists that are carrying the shovels.

I can't say that I have a subscription to NME, Kerrang! or jMag, but I insist that my writing is good enough to be inserted into those publications with a cheque headed my way as compensation. But then again, how would I know?

Of all the working music journalists I personally know (which is including but not limited to those I've only acquainted myself on social networking sites) I've not met one that gets paid enough to live comfortably and I've only met one or two who get paid at all. If your mantra is "I'll never sell out" then you'll never "buy in" either; as my research continues its becoming bleakly apparent this game is owned and won by those who are willing shill for swill.

My plan is to get into uni as much as I can over the next couple of weeks. I plan to hit the half way mark during that time. Wish me luck!

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http://twitter.com/crushtor