Graduate School + Spotify

Keen-eyed readers will note that my site looks a little different now. Weebly stopped updating or supporting my previous "theme" so it started to have annoying problems like the menu icon being invisible on the mobile version that most people use. This theme is working out better but will take some fine-tuning to get exactly the way I want it, or as close to exactly the way I want it as I can get without the bother of learning to code.

I am profoundly fatigued from my eternal sleep deprivation, which has robbed me of the stamina to complete the much better post I had planned for this weekend. Nonetheless, yesterday was the first truly happy day I've had since the incident that I keep going on about. The weather here in Logan, Utah was so gorgeous that it felt like a sin to not spend every moment of daylight outside, so I, limited by my unusually tired legs, took several brief walks punctuated by resting on benches and in grass. I also learned two very welcome pieces of information: that I've been accepted for graduate school here at USU, and a family matter that I suppose isn't my place to publicly announce at this time. The graduate school thing comes as no surprise because a. God has been pushing me to do it and b. honestly, if I wasn't good enough to make the cut, they'd only have like five graduate students at most. But having it confirmed gives me one fewer thing to worry about until the reality of what I've gotten myself into sinks in.

With higher brain functions and meaningful accomplishments like my Indiana Jones fan fiction off the table for the time being, I've lapsed into one of my music addiction phases. During these periods I rarely take my headphones off except to charge them, but even more so than listening to the songs I already know and love, I become obsessed with acquiring more and building playlists. The Spotify playlist I'm on now, "Gimme Some Space" - a spacelist if you will, a love letter to astronomy and science fiction and pretentious crap like the yearnings of the human heart - is, for better and worse, easier than some to expand. This list is arranged by topic rather than genre. Obviously it leans a lot toward electronic music that people associate with space but I try to make it as diverse as possible. So at any time I can search out more musical candidates by entering keywords associated with astronomy and/or science fiction, listen to each one time, and if I don't hate it then onto the list it goes. I spent more time than I'd care to admit on this pursuit yesterday.

As of this writing, without consciously setting out to do so, I've ended up so far with ten versions of David Bowie's magnum opus "Space Oddity" - the original version and nine covers (not counting another song that inexplicably has the same title). I also have sixteen versions of Peter Schilling's unauthorized sequel "Major Tom (Coming Home)" - the original German version, two remixes of the German version, a cover of the German version, the official English version, two remixes of the English version, four covers of the English version, four remixes of one of the covers of the English version, and a French cover. I'm way more excited about this than I should be. Probably the only song on the list that outnumbers those ones is the Star Wars theme, which comes under so many different titles ("Star Wars", "Main Theme", "Main Theme from Star Wars", etc.) that I can't be bothered to quantify it scientifically. But I could do worse than to keep replicating three of the best compositions in the universe.

The major downside of these phases is that I go to bed after a day of being obsessed with music, and my brain is like a radio that I can't turn off. One song after another after another. It makes getting to sleep even more difficult than usual and as a result I'm even more fatigued today than yesterday. Of course I know this will happen and try to be responsible and limit myself, but I am weak and subject to all manner of temptations of the flesh. Especially when I'm tired. Which is always. I've loved space stuff for a very long time and I think I've latched onto this playlist because of the spirit of escapism it embodies, which is also something I wrote about in my declaration of intent when I needed some pompous academic language to explain why I should be accepted for graduate school, and it worked. Anyway, here's the playlist in case I've sufficiently piqued your curiosity.