Update

What have I been doing in the five months (!) since my last post?

First, I’ve taken a reluctant hiatus from doing interviews for BOMB until rooted more firmly in a metropolitan area where I can conduct interviews face-to-face. Second, I’ve done much–some of my friends might say too much–reading, especially after encountering this life-changing article on Carl Jung’s Red Book, whose release is imminent. I finally received my undergraduate diploma in the mail in September, have been taking pictures of senior citizens, making websites, and going for intermittent interviews at the mercy of a still-dismal job market, and applying to graduate schools. This means, among other things, re-learning how to multiply fractions for the pending GRE Exam.

I’m applying to study Brasilian popular music at Tulane’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies, pick up artists, the seduction community, and self-help through either sociology or a broad humanities & sciences department at Fordham, photography at the University of Oregon and Ohio State, and looking for that holy grail of a program in which I could investigate the intersections of anthropology, shamanism, religious studies, and analytical psychology. When the inevitable burnout from all of this occurs, I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ hypnotic new documentary series on the National Parks. There are few issues dearer to me than the preservation of the natural environment, so this is like a case of Yukon Jack for the alcoholic. When the frenzy of completing so many applications is through, I hope to flee the dark clouds–literal and metaphorical–hanging over South Bend and migrate towards the junk food delicacies that await in the Windy City by the new year.

Real Talk

Unbelievable.

Gustav Mahler

I have downloaded Mahler’s ten symphonies as a torrent on thepiratebay.org. Until today, I was only familiar with his death-defying second symphony and his ninth, whose first movement is beautiful beyond my immediate capacity for description. This man is like God! When I listen to his symphonies, I confuse the composer’s personage with that of the crazed conductor, commanding the world around him into being, arranging it in perfect harmony by the sheer will of his stern gaze, flailing arms raised like a bear in attack, as the moon, and planets, surrounded by meteor shower of floating instruments, revolving not around the sun but the bald head of Mahler himself. How can one not, listening to the first movement of his Fifth Symphony? Who, since Picasso, has stalked the Earth with such sheer creative force?