music and all that

I made this mix cd a while ago, in a bit of a female angsty place (my status quo, I know), but listening to it this morning, I remembered just how great it is, and have played it about five times today. Although now it might be time for something a little more cheery :)

 

I just met up with a young woman who's doing her MA dissertation on music and suffering... I thought from her emails that her wrk sounded similar to mine - but on the whole, it wasn't. Not sure whether to be pleased or slightly sad about that. As the PhD months roll on, I feel more and more isolated in my work. No one, not even my supervisor, actually knows this topic, in the same way I do (and I know if they did, there'd be no point in my PhD), which means I don't really get to talk to anyone about work in the way I'd like to. In some ways I miss working in an office where everyone had a common cause. I can't see myself going back to an NGO now, knowing what I know, but there's something very solitary about research that doesn't always make me happy. I'm at the point now  - which I did *not* understand when I first started - that when someone asks me what it is that I do, I'm genuinely at a loss for what to say. I used to say that if you couldn't describe your PhD in five words, you didn't have a clear enough idea of where you were going. And while I still believe that (my five are 'sexual violence narratives in music', or 'trauma narratives in pop music' - depending on the day), it's the follow up question, 'so what does that mean?' that has me more stumped for an answer without long, academic words in it than it used to.