Classical Music Appreciation with my Stoner Neighbor.

So, my one stoner neighbor downstairs has been listening to classical music on and off this past eight months or so, as I can tell from his occasionally playing Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto or "Pictures at an Exhibition" and me being able to hear that music through the floorboards.

Which, I couldn't quite figure out why he was doing that, since he plays jazz, and is always rehearsing with his band on electric guitar and drums and whatnot.

Then one day, I can't remember why, he said that he was getting more and more into the music because there was nothing like it "for the layering", and that he really really liked Mahler a lot, and had been listening to his Second and Fourth Symphonies over and over.

So, I told him about this one Sunday night radio program that I listen to that has really cool classical recordings around different topics, since that program was at that point in time playing a series of Mahler symphonies by this one mid-20th c. conductor who was known for specializing in them.

"If you ever hear me listening, just come up, you're more than welcome to join me," I was like.

He didn't during that series, but then I ran into him another Sunday at the coffee shop near us, and he started talking about Mahler again, and I mentioned the program again, and he was giving a lesson that night during most of the program, but he said he'd come up after, and he then showed up around 9:30pm, for the last part of this program with an odd hodgepodge of pieces.

One of them had been this supposedly eccentric recording of Mahler's Fourth Symphony with weird tempos and delayed downbeats and stuff, but the conductor had actually heard Mahler rehearse and play it and took extensive notes from which he later conducted, so it might actually be closer to how Mahler intended the symphony to sound.

Sadly, my one stoner neighbor wasn't there yet when they played a bit from that recording, but I told him a little about it and he was mega interested, so then we went downstairs to share some wine as he cued up that recording from YouTube and I was telling him more about the supposed style.

As soon as we got to a delayed downbeat, he was like, "Whoa, listen to that, man.  Mahler swings."

Currently, he's trying to crowdfund a surfing trip to Mexico, to inspire music.

Great art school student responses on a prompt.

For the very last day of my sex class at the art school, I taught a new unit involving contemporary trans* issues, and so had students begin class just saying whether they found the readings interesting and worthwhile and why or why not.

I also said that since they were there and it was the last day of class, they didn't have to do that, but rather I was just curious to find out their thinking on the material, since it was the first time that I was trying it out.

One student who was mega into trans* issues just wrote "YES" in big letters on their paper.

Another student gave a very thoughtful response, and then ended it by being like, "I'd write more, but I feel like my brain took a swim in a deep fat frier."

(That was the same student with the great paper ending, about how people like to take potshots at butches.  It seems she has a way with words, esp. when she gets real in her writing.)

Another workday at the library: Pore, greeting, burrito.

For some reason, I've had a few blocked pores lately.

The other week when I went to go shave in the morning, I discovered one because of a pink swelling in my left cheek, and I gently squeezed it amid the stubble and a little piece of white shot out.

Then, the other day when I have to go work at the library, I wake up, and there's a gentle pink swelling above my right eye, and I gently squeeze it, and a gob of slightly greenish-gray pops out all at once, and the pink swelling still remains, likely from a small infection or something.

Later, at the library, I was arranging books on carts in the backroom where the project I'm working on is based out of, and my supervisor was making a ton of calls.

All of a sudden, he has an outsized, high-pitched voice, and is like, "HEEEEY, [MY FIRST NAME]."

Then, he covers the phone and is like, "Sorry, just saying hi to my nephew."

Later, one of my other coworkers was saying that he was stealing Chipotle coupons from the entrance to his apartment building and also when they were lying out when he was visiting other friends' buildings.

Because of some recent scare, he said, a ton of coupons were mailed out all across the city and they were truly "no purchase necessary", so you could go in and get a huge free burrito or bowl.

"And I thought I knew how the software worked," he was like, and so he ordered double portions of double meat and all of these other extras until the burrito was like $17, and then he gave the coupon to the cashier, and when she went to enter it in, it wiped out the entire cost.

"I was like, 'Thank God,'", he was like.  "I was going to be *pissed* if I had to pay for all of that."

Two 7am wakeups!

A few weeks ago, at like 7am sounds from a garbage truck in the alley woke me up.

Then, like a week after that, the same thing happened again.

Oddly enough, the entire time I've been in my apartment, that's never happened before at all.

And then, twice in two weeks?

Weird.

A dream of overdue papers.

The other week I dreamt -

A student in my current art school class hands in a paper from a class I taught last year.

I had given her an incomplete, and not only forgotten about it, but even forgotten entirely that she had been in that class at all.

 . . .

(The dream was about a student in my current class, who wasn't in that other class at all, actually, in real life.)

Fascinating day, on deciding to file a federal complaint:

After stuff came together and I went to file a federal complaint against the art school, I had to return to the library and shelve some books for 45 minutes in order get the rest of my hours in for the week.

As I was walking back to the work area, I bumped into my one (younger) (college senior) (African-American) coworker, as she was coming back with a cart and leaving for the day.

I happened to pick that cart and go up to shelve, and it was not only some of the music scores that I had pulled back in December, but oddly enough, the first thing I went to shelve was a score of Bruckner's "Te Deum", which is the only musical piece that I've ever found so beautiful that when it was on when I turned on the radio, twice, I had to sit down and listen both times.

(That's also happened with Percy Grainger's "The Warriors" and Brian Wilson's "Heroes and Villains" when I was much, much younger, but only once each per piece of music, never twice.)

When I went to go shelve that score, too, I pulled out another score that was misshelved that I found as I was flipping through, and I laid it on the cart.

Later, I glanced down and noticed it had Latin for the title, which was something like, "Open for me the gates of justice."

Honestly, what a freaky chain of coincidences.

Later that night I told my one music teacher friend who I know from the student bar about all of that, and she thought it was some sort of divine signal.

Art school unionizing surprise:

On my lunch hour, when I went over to the studio building to go try to hit up a colleague and chat some about us unionizing, a studio door was ajar and the sign had the green "YOU MAY ENTER" side flipped, but when I started going in, I saw two (white) nude models elevated and sprawled out, one of them a (younger) guy with his legs open and his junk just all hanging down.