(no subject)

Update: "Home" in Bryn Mawr, where by home I mean with family. I think I've only spent about 7 nights here, give or take, and I'm not quite sure I've adjusted yet. I was in Haddonfield yesterday, picking up my grandmother, and mom called on the cell phone while I was there. She asked where I was, and, without thinking, I said I was at home. I suppose winter break will really help me adjust, but since this 'home' is somewhat temporary (the long term plan is to buy a house in this neck of the woods sometime this summer), maybe I shouldn't get too adjusted.

I spent a long time last night talking with my cousin about how our family used to be. My father's side, as best we can recall, used to be very close, having large gatherings of people in Woodbridge at my grandmother's house every thanksgiving, and at other points in the year. Without a doubt, these have become fewer and further between, as his family moved to Denver almost 10 years ago and my aunt moved to Denver and then Burlington, VT. With my cousin back on the east coast (frosh @ Columbia), he's been around more, and we've been reminiscing over how things used to be. We looked fondly back on long hours of playing in the basement, and of the house and the gatherings in general. There was some debate over whether the memories and other effects of youth have warped our perspective on things, but I don't think so. Having the whole family around last spring for Bella's 90th really felt like a return to that, but that's the first time the whole family has been together in a long, long time. We definitely want to raid the basement for the memories of our childhood (I go way back with some of those obscure board games - Land Grab and Which Witch come to mind). We also talked about the decay of the house (I don't think either of this have been there in a good 5 years, but we've heard stories) and how we should have seen it coming with the study. We remembered playing in the study when we were very young, then it became grandma's "crap room" and we didn't go in, and now the whole house is like that. My cousin said my great aunt's (my grandma's sister) apartment had paths leading through the piles of things on the floor, things like 4 years of junk mail and parts of the book she wrote in the 70s (complete with individual chapters held together by rubber bands with my great uncle's comments). I think I've inherited that gene, as hard as it may be to believe. My desk has always been a holy mess, the presence of roommates has motivated me to keep the floor clean for the past two years, but I'm clearly slipping. The policy of "if it's not hazardous to your health to walk across the room, it's not time to clean it yet" really isn't a good one, but that's how it seems to work.

I'd like to start composing some. I've had several slow, brooding melodies in E minor floating around for a few days, and I think they really need to manifest themselves, probably for cello. If my potential independent study with Kochavi? in mathematical music doesn’t' happen (and since it only exists in my head...), maybe I should take composition. I'm not sure I necessarily want to deal with Gerry, though. Music 13 and 14 with him last year were just too much, by the end I just wanted it to be over. My problem is that the music department takes itself very seriously, whereas I just see music as a hobby. I'm not sure I'm 'hard-core' enough to do what Gerry would want - I just want to do this in my free time, but I'd like a little push every now and then. I'd imagine Gerry would be more like a bulldozer, constantly pushing. I think I'd picked up and left on the side of the road, and it just wouldn't be worth the effort from either of us. Maybe I'll just write a bunch of things on my own over the next semester+, and then have some things to work with if I ever do take composition.

Happy Thanksgiving folks. See you around, either in Bryn Mawr or Swat or Haddonfield.