Angry Font | 04/19/04

It's my angry font!

Such a fine day ruined by such bad news! Atonal was fine, highlighted by a great demonstration of square dancing as a means of explaining atonal transformations. I met with Dr. Rogers about my term paper and she and I spent the first half-hour talking about nothing but square dancing. Ok, it might sound pretty lame but in actuality it was very cool. The bad news, of course, is that I won't be the director of Mas N' Steel in the fall...or ever. I thought I'd be able to be cool when the decision finally came but I'm really pissed. I'm not sure what qualifications I needed to have...other than being a doctoral student in Ethno. Apparently somehow this qualifies people to direct the ensemble. See, being a fool, I thought the qualities would be something along these lines:

1) Experience playing pan (check).

2) Experience playing percussion (check).

3) Experience directing ensembles (check).

4) Experience teaching (check).

5) Knowledge of all things pan including but not limited to technique, construction, music, styles (check).

6) Proven abilities as a leader (check...please refer to my SUSSAI forms).

What the hell happened? I have a g*ddam Fellowship that recognizes my teaching...granted it's for music technology, but teaching is teaching. God only know how good a teacher I could be with a subject I really care about. What else do I have to do? Leon High School is practically playing an All-Mike-Catania concert for their Spring Concert. Not that anyone other than Matt Flynn has been around long enough to play gigs with me where I played lead, but I'm pretty damn good. Give me a CD--I can play it back after I listen to it a couple times. Need an arrangement? Oh, that's me too. I do my best to get into it at concerts, do a very respectable job arranging (except for Michael's triple parts with low B's) and most importantly, I know music. I understand it like few people can because I have to rip it apart and rebuild it day after day. And when I'm not rebuilding it, I'm building it from scratch. Yeah, that's right, from nothing. Not only can I build a damn good piece from nothing, there are things that only theorists would appreciate that no performer or audience member would ever even think to look for. And that's the way I like it. I like being able to put together quality works that sound great that have those hidden things. Oh! Who did all the research so we could get a new set of cellos? ME! Me again! I see a recurring theme (leitmotif) and it's ME. ME ME ME. I build you a f'ing website that brings in 1600 hits in a year after your old one got 37 hits in two years (and no, that counts 0 hits to this journal).

Ok, so wallow in mediocrity. Chris and Michael are only going to carry you so far. I hate to break it to you, FSU faculty and future grad students, but without me, Jamie, Jara and Tom, you're already in big trouble. Unfortunately, in this situation, all the uncomfortable elbow-touching isn't going to bale you out. Really, my only wish now is to go somewhere close enough were I can build my own program and just rub it the face of Florida State. Am I being a sore loser? You betcha. Am I being unfair to the new guy? Probably. I guess..no, I know..I don't care. At all. Man, I'm so pissed.

So anyway, this page is coming down this weekend and will be replaced with this. So, press Control-D to update your bookmarks because fortunately this page will not be removed but you won't be able to access it any other way (for the one or two of you that still go to the Mas N' Steel homepage first).

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