It’s been a minute.
It’s the end of August, and I suppose I can finally say sabbatical has begun in earnest. I should have been more prepared for the sensation of transition, or rather the lack thereof; the boundaries of academic terms are far more porous than they might seem to be, particularly in the COVID era of numerous extra meetings, loose ends from service tasks, many incompletes to deal with, etc. Looking around at what colleagues say on social media, I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that each of the past three semesters have blended into each other, with the burnout increasing exponentially each term. It was difficult to find the moment when enough loose ends were tied off to finally put up my out of office message, but I finally did that a few weeks ago and now we’re off and flying, happily ignoring Doodle polls and ever-changing campus mask guidance.
I didn’t blog much in the second half of the summer, though I kept meaning to leap back in. The title of this particular post refers to Duolingo, and my 101-day streak in German. Working on the book this fall requires me to get both my German and my French back up to speed. I’ve been focusing on the former quite intently. Since I leapt back into Duolingo around the beginning of the summer and the time of my first summer blog or two, the round numbers on Duolingo have always felt like the days when I should post an update: look, I have a 50-day streak, 75-day, etc. So here we are!
The same “porous boundaries” sensation applies to publications, apparently, which have taken a lot more attention than I might have thought over the past month. (Cue Al Pacino in the Godfather III: “Just when I thought I was out…”). Three things are imminently in the pipeline and should be out by the end of 2021:
a new essay on Hans Keller, which is my contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory. I signed off on editor edits in June, and copyedits a week ago; apparently this will be out around the end of the year online, and sometime next year on paper.
my contribution to a colloquy in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, based on this roundtable from the 2019 SMT conference in Columbus. The “accepted with revisions” revisions went in at the end of May, and then edits in mid-August. Presume copyedits and then proofs are forthcoming for an autumn issue date.
an article for Engaging Students, on a coding/making assignment for my gen-ed “Music in Video Games” class. Written for a June 1 deadline, revised in collaboration with two editors throughout late July/early August in their “open peer review” process. A bunch of formatting tasks this week, though they’ve quite evasively insisted that essays aren’t quite “accepted” yet! I’ve never encountered a publication process quite as slippery as this one—nor, since it’s hosted on Google Docs, one that tempts constant tweaking quite so much. That one should be out in early fall, barring a last-minute rejection for a misplaced comma or something like that.
those are in addition to the other Oxford Handbooks Chapter, this one on video game music, that I wrote in June/July. That won’t see print until late 2022 at the earliest though…
Currently working on: just spent much of the day on a beast of a transcription for the big R&R, which shall remain nameless out of superstition and anxiety. Re: the latter, see the above: busily throwing myself into constant copyedits and draft management, and even cleaning out my Dropbox this past week.
Soon to be working on: I was pretty disappointed that SMT has moved online for the fall, though I certainly understand why. I’m desperate to see and socialize with colleagues in three dimensions, even if it’s in Florida. The virtual conference changes the calculus of my fall semester though, and I’ve now pieced much of that presentation together in anticipation of getting it out of the way earlier. A virtual talk means I can pre-record it and have it in ready to go well before November. (Yes, talks will be given live this year, but that can, and arguably should, entail hitting “play” on a video. Pre-recorded wasn’t the problem with last year’s conference, it was the “watch everything in advance and come to Q&A”). It would also be nice to drop the “director’s cut” in some journal’s inbox just a few days afterwards. I’m also knee deep in the final push to get the big, year-old R&R off my desk. Have been doing some free-writing for the book proposal, and lining up the sources I’ll need to polish off the bigger of the two sample chapters I’ll send away. Will have to see where things stand on my AMS talk sometime soon too. And then I think I owe a colleague a sound studies article on mechanical keyboards & video games for a special issue by the end of 2021 as well. I really should make a to-do list or something…