Bluegrass Throwback

Tonight I had the pleasure of listening to Back Porch Music, the NPR program that plays on 91.5 WUNC on Saturday nights, on my drive to Durham (I drove to Durham this evening). And there were so many throwbacks.

It all started with the Chicken Man
When my brother and I were younger, our parents dragged us to bluegrass concerts all the time. (Can't say that I really enjoyed said concerts when I was six except for being able to dance in the front by the performers.) My parents have a CD from The Band, a soft rock/bluegrass band, that Fouad and I used to listen to all the time. One of our favorite songs on the CD was "Atlantic City." As five and six year olds, Fouad and I thought the Chicken Man was hilarious! I remember laughing at the idea of a Chicken Man, as in a man in a chicken suit.

"Atlantic City" was originally written and performed by, as the internet has recently informed me,  Bruce Springsteen. Here are the lyrics we thought were so funny when we were five and six years old:

Well they blew up the chicken man
In Philly last night
Now they blew up his house too

So, in the car tonight, I was blown away when I heard the words "chicken man" on Back Porch Music. I recognized the tune immediately and sang along with the chorus, which I still remembered:

Everything dies, baby that's a fact
Maybe everything that dies someday it comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair real pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

Here's a link to the original song if you'd like to hear it: https://youtu.be/9p4VuHTLjg0
Personally, I like The Band's cover of it better, on the Jericho 1993 album: https://youtu.be/I0eZwpHtcK4

Unidentifiable throwback
On the program tonight, Back Porch Music played a song from Chatham County Line (NC local band!) that I think I've heard before, although I can't say from where.
Just looked it up: it's the song "You Are My Light" from their latest album, Autumn. That's probably why I've heard it. Worth a listen.

Throwback to Spencer Hall, Fall 2015
Last fall, when I lived in a residence hall on campus, my RA Emmy had a hall de-stress event were we got together and made collages. My friends and I stuck various bits of postcards, magazines, and calendars onto colored construction paper. One of the very amusing postcards that I happened to glue onto my pink construction paper was from this group called the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Haha. Nut. Zippers. Squirrel. I'm so mature.

Well, I kept this collage on my door all year and one day my good friend Tirthna bursts into my room with a CD. The album is called Perennial Favorites, by none other than the Squirrel Nut Zippers! It turns out that the Squirrel Nut Zippers is also a local swing band that has been around since the 1980s (although Wikipedia says they formed in 1993). Their songs are super catchy. I listen to the CD on repeat in the car when I don't have NPR on.
Listen to "Hell" here: http://www.mtv.com/videos/squirrel-nut-zippers/10096/hell.jhtml
Listen to "Ghost of Stephen Foster" here: https://youtu.be/KJzWGkgFcTU

Tonight, the radio announcer casually mentioned that the Squirrel Nut Zippers are going to be in concert this Friday at the Carolina Theater in Durham, and I was like "Wow! I know them! We should go!" And by "we" I at first I had someone in mind but then realized that they probably wouldn't want to go.

Anyway, bluegrass tonight brought me back to last year and to way way back; thanks to Back Porch Music for making my drive to Durham a blast from the past.

School is a lot right now and I'm tired

Whenever people ask me what year of college I'm in and hear that I'm a senior, they ask me, "Are you sad this is your last year?"

My response to that question is always this: I'm ready to graduate. I've been mentally ready to graduate since sophomore year.

College is great, don't get me wrong. It has been a heck of a ride. I've been extremely lucky to study at UNC for this long. Being surrounded by my creative and thoughtful peers is wonderful. However, the uber-competitive, workaholic college environment is a toxic environment for my mental health, and everything I've just said is an attempt to sugar-coat that truth. Last year was mental hell and this year, although I'm better off right now, is not a walk in the park.

Going into my senior year at the university, I don't care about school anymore. I don't even think about school anymore: I think about what comes next. I think about what I want to do with my life once formal education is no longer what defines my day-to-day activities. Right now I pay $4000+ per semester to work my butt off for a bachelor's degree that these days isn't worth as much as job experience. If worst comes to worst, I am qualified to work as a cook in Antarctica (it's a real job, look it up).

Admittedly, I like most of my classes at the university. All of them are project-based, so I get to apply my knowledge in a dynamic and meaningful way. Unfortunately I have five different class projects all going on at the same time, plus I have two part-time jobs on top of that, which pay the rent and my student loan debt. Sometimes I like to exercise and have a social life too. I am excited about at least half of my projects, and I like my jobs, but with everything combined, it's a lot. It's only mid-September and I'm already tired.

What's really bringing me down, what I'm really writing this blog post for, are two things. I am about to type cryptically for confidentiality's sake, but bear with the metaphor.

First, this past week I burned a bridge with someone I respect, and that's business that I feel terrible about. I know it's something I can't fix because I made a promise and broke it, and I cannot expect that person to have any trust in me after breaking a promise. We're done, and it sucks.

Second, this afternoon I got a message from someone that threatened the foundation of everything I've tried to build so far this year. Someone else I respect and look to for advice just drenched the bridge between us and the surrounding riverbank in kerosene and is about to light a match. I have to fight to keep this bridge from catching fire because I refuse to let the arsonist break their promise to me. It's not fair to me and everything I've worked for--there's too much at stake this time. They can't just give up on me, not like this, not without me fighting back. I can't believe, after all this, that they'd do that to me. I can't afford to start back at square one, not now.

It's days like today, weeks like this week, that I consider dropping out of school. Learning in a dynamic and meaningful way is fun, and a lot of my college experience has been like that, but it's not reasonable to expect me to cope with so many things all at the same time.

I'm not giving up yet. But it's crossed my mind.