Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The Listening Project - Arm's Way - Islands



I’m beginning to realize that a lot of Hypatia’s music (and by “Hypatia’s music” we should always already understand it to mostly “Hypatia’s ex’s music) is the sort of music that’s super awesomepants to write to, because you really don’t need to do much work to keep up with it.  This is not meant as a good or bad critique, I’m a lazy music listener, I’m totally ok with that.  But it is a trend that I’ve been noticing, and now that I’ve started back up with the Listening Project, it’s closer to the front of my mind.

I almost went to see Islands, right after I moved down to ATL, and who knows, perhaps I should have.  But given how shruggy I feel about Arm’s Way I don’t think I’ll loose any sleep over that decision.  But there’s a little local color for you.

This is a nice light album.  The sound is thin without being weak and the pace of most of the songs is up-beat.  It’s a toe-tapping kind of music.  Perhaps in the ears of someone wiling to do more work than I am with the whole “listening to music” thing can find more to say. 

Although, I think I just talked myself into really liking this album.

Favorite Track: “J’aime Vous Voire Quitter”
Least Favorite: “To a Bond”

Next up - Arular- M.I.A. (2005)

Monday, January 16, 2012

Hypatia's Girl cautiously returns to blogging, and begins quietly without all that swearing and shit


My Master’s thesis was born, like a phoenix, in a fire.  A fire that did not, directly, consume anything in my life, but took rather the worldly possessions of two good friends of mine. Including, in the case of one friend, all of the documentation that proved that he was, in fact, who he claimed to be.  There are all these interesting moments in life that offer a chance to suddenly confront an aspect of privilege that had heretofore been obscured.  The loss of a friend’s ability to politically appear, however briefly, was such a moment.  The privilege that I carry with me in my wallet filled with plastic and paper and my name and my picture and a host of other numbers and letters that are somehow me-as-I-am-politically, or digitally, was not one I had thought of before.  I was never worried that the systems of politics that arch over everything we do as a community would be unable or unwilling to recognize me.  Realizing that such a lack of recognition could be possible left me wondering about identity and the construction of the person by the state.  (We might ask how much of this precise thought was rolled into my actual thesis, but let’s not)
The text message I got this morning was of a similar kind of privilege check.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Is this thing on?


INTARWEBZ!
Hi!  I totally remembered that I had a blog that LITERALLY ONES of people kind of read.  And I was all ZOMG I should for totes go back to that sort of FUNTIMES SPECIALNESS of pouring my RAARAGE and general perplexities out into the vast, sticky tubes of the WWW.  And then I was all, eh – PHD SCHOOL IS WORK YO and went back to reading my nice Kant and Foucault and generally letting my RAARAGE worry itself out in batshit crazy papers for perfectly nice profs who for totes did not deserve having to put up with my VERY SPECIAL CRAZYTIMES writing.
But I’m a giver, what the fuck can I say?