there was paperwork filed, there is no escape now

Thesis Title: The Mythistory of the Machine: Constructing the narrative of the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century writing

Expected Date of Submission: 24 March 2014

my schedule is now filled

Sorry about the long absence, and happy new year! Stuff has happened. Things. Stuff AND things. The rundown:

Break was lovely! Great to see everyone. Inevitable travel mishaps were had. But they were outweighed by many good things, so on the whole, win!

I basically have been in a state of jetlag/stress-induced sleep madness since returning. Sleeping between 5am and noon is no longer an anomaly. As long as I get to all of my scheduled things on time, I've decided not to care.

The editing is happening. Slowly, but it is happening. I feel okay about the things I'm talking about, and deleting the things that I don't feel okay about. I might even understand the second part of Faust now. Amazing.

I got into a massive conference in Ontario. It's going to be an excursion! We will go to Niagara Falls and wine country and see some theatre and then I will present a good paper so that people in America might actually know who I am when I apply for jobs. All good things. Now I need to find funding for the plane ticket. Yikes.

I have a vague schedule for completing everything, and it involves submitting in a month, doing the viva in April-ish, writing the conference paper in May, and then hurtling back and forth between time zones to go to said conference, then home, then Prague, then commencement, then Seattle, then home again. The logistics escape me at the moment, but I'm not thinking about it until the thesis is done. So there.

Oh also, I've started learning German again as a procrastination tool. Don't ask. It's a cool system though: Duolingo basically makes learning into an online game of quizzes, and you can alternate between practicing what you already know and learning new things at your own pace. So far it actually seems to be sticking this time around, which would be a first. We'll see if I can keep it up.

I am now not allowed to say yes to any more things.

I have discovered pdfs of two volumes of collected contralto pieces published in 1900, copyright free, ranging from arias to Scottish airs. Overall, it's about 400 pages of music that's in my vocal range.

Guess what I'll being doing when not editing??

Lumiere, aka adventures in night photography

I have been felled by a head cold, which has made Marx nigh incomprehensible to me. This is very inconvenient, as I am supposed to be editing my Marx chapter at the moment. I am five pages in, and it is terrible. Both the chapter, and my efforts towards fixing it.

This is all very problematic. So I decided to ignore all that this evening, and go to Lumiere instead.

Lumiere is a big light show that has now come to Durham twice, and is pretty much a series of public art installations which play off of their architectural surrounds to look cool and maybe say something interesting. It's a big tourist attraction, and is lovely and fun. When it was here last, I was on my way back from a conference and had a very enjoyable wander about in it while discombobulated by travel and sleep-deprivation. This time, I planned ahead, put on my awesome Russian hat, and brought my camera!

Let the adventure in night photography begin:

A scale model of the sun, installed on the university's science site. It shifted and changed presumably in an accurate depiction of the sun's currents and spots. Also, there was creepy music, and a projection of an eye on the side of the library.

On the way up to the cathedral. Don't ask, I have no idea.

The cathedral was subject to a massive light show that ran through, from what I could tell, the history of the north east's religious life, from the invasions of the vikings, to the writing of the Lindisfarne Gospels, to the construction of the cathedral itself. It was backed in surround sound by appropriate monastic chanting through to 18th century orchestral music. Very, very cool.

Some of the manuscript illuminations projected onto the cathedral.

Depiction of the cathedral's construction.

Inside was a more abstract installation--wires randomly gnarled and suspended between the columns, plus light projectors, made for a strange, ever-shifting lightning bug-type effect. I had a major struggle getting shots of it in the darkness.

The actual projections, versus how they presented on the wires.

In the cathedral's courtyard. Ghostly dresses!

They were fibre-optic, so they shifted colour every few seconds.

I definitely only scratched the surface of the exhibit, and there were some parts which I did see but the crowds were too annoying or the installation was too movement-oriented to be worth photographing. Still, it was great to have a look around despite it being cold and rather wet. Having been mostly inside moping, sleeping, and blowing my nose for the past three days, this was a welcome respite.

Short update!

Things that have happened:

• I had a birthday, marking my steady progress towards uncoolness and calling undergraduates 'you damn kids'. I celebrated with fireworks and sword-dancing and friends and mulled wine. It was good. If I move outside of Britain, I'm going to miss having fire and explosions on my birthday.
• I had a meeting with my supervisor. It was scary but productive. I'm working through the holidays, with an aim to submit my thesis by 1st Feb. I am feeling slightly oppressed, but maybe this will be motivating.
• My students are great this year, and have unprompted and stimulating conversations with each other so that I don't have to do all of the work. We yammered about Robinson Crusoe today, and it was super enjoyable. I hope their essays are good. 
• I had an extended solo/chamber part in choir for Batten's Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis the other day. It went okay! Hooray for composers who wrote good alto parts. 
• Nicole gave me a lovely iris plant for my birthday, which is now sitting and percolating on my bookshelf, waiting to flower in a few months. And my friend Vicky gave me this:

Greatest hat, or GREATEST HAT?

Soon, I will learn Russian and begin to recite morose poetry about the motherland in vodka bars. Brace yourselves. На здоровье!

Productivity was achieved.

I have handed in both my Carlyle chapter and my teaching portfolio in the last three days, my relief is infinite! Then I went to dinner with some choir people at Durham Castle, had lasagna and wine and felt weird about being basically the oldest person within a ten-person radius at the table (seriously, so many freshers, I AM AN OLD), and then went home and slept for a long, long time.

Next up: Marx. And then conclusion. BAM.

Also, I was super handy in the past week, as I patched up a massive hole in the wall of my room up against the window frame, which I'm pretty sure has been responsible for a draft for the past few years. I hadn't known it was there before because some old fastenings from a window blind that no longer exists was covering it up, but I was feeling procrastiductive and decided to get rid of them and voila, huge hole in the wall. So I troweled some polyfill into where all of mortar had disintegrated. Now my room will hopefully be warmer, hooray!

I am taking the weekend off, and then there will once again be many things to do. But I am not thinking about them today.

Progress is being made.

I am nearly done with my Carlyle chapter, only one more section to re-write, and it's one of the easier ones, so I'm hoping it gets done today or tomorrow. SO. I am tentatively on schedule still. Tentatively.

In the meantime, teaching has started! It makes such a difference to have both of my classes in the afternoon--everyone (including me) is so much more awake and ready to talk. I have slightly bigger groups this year, but they seem chatty and clever, so hopefully they will do most of the work for me. We've been placed, however, in one of the classrooms that got flooded last winter, so if that happens again, we may be relocated to somewhere far-flung and inconvenient, which would be very annoying. Fingers crossed for a less rainy winter.

Choir is also up and running, and my friend Jessica and I are pushing for tour this spring to go to Prague. Less expensive than many other places, some great venues, and one of my favourite cities! I hope it happens. But then again, Brussels and Bruges would also not be a hardship. In terms of music, we've got some good repertoire going, and at long last I have encountered a choir director who doesn't mind letting the altos sing the other voice parts in the Faure Requiem when we have nothing to do. I've had a serious resentment of that piece for years now because it's so good and yet the altos get TOTALLY SHAFTED. Two full movements with about three bars of participation, it's infuriating. So I'm glad I can hang out on the tenor and bass (or soprano, depending on how my voice is doing) parts this time around. Singing in bass clef! Good times.

It is getting cooler and more damp now, and the days are noticeably shorter once more. I have unpacked my sweaters and second duvet. My tea consumption is about to double. Maybe the extra caffeine will make me more efficient...