My first big assignment

It’s very strange to know (after doing it that way ever since I started going to school 49 years ago) that while everybody back home is gearing up for the beginning of a brand new school, here at MCC we are getting ready to start mid-term exams, which would have started last week had it not been for the school closing! Back home, new beginnings, a fresh start, here at MCC; halfway through. First semester here starts (hang on while I check my MCC pocket calendar—such a handy thing, everybody uses one, so I feel like a real MCC faculty member carrying this around!)—it starts June 17th! I knew this before I got here. They do it that way for the same reason we do, to schedule summer break for the hottest time of year. But here it gets hottest during May and the first half of June. Once the monsoon comes in late June, things start to cool down. So their academic year runs about two months (and ten-and-a-half hours!) ahead of ours. As they say here, there are three kinds of weather: hot, hotter, and hottest. May and early June are hottest, late June and July are merely hotter. We’ll probably have to wait for the northeast monsoon in late October/November to see some of that nice, cool hot weather. I knew about their academic year before I came over, and at first I thought maybe I should coordinate my schedule with theirs and come over in June. But then I thought, hmm, that’s still going to be really, really hot (hotter, I should say). And then I thought, if I’m still there in December, I could catch a few days of the December Season music festival before I come home (for my two-week Christmas vacation in the States). Well that sealed the deal. It’s one of the biggest music festivals in the world. At the peak of the season there are 50 concerts every day at various locations around Madras, some starting at 6:00 a.m. ALL of the major Carnatic classical artists are here performing, and music lovers come in from around the world to enjoy some incredible music and dance. It’s like India’s Bayreuth, I suppose.

Well, I give my first lecture Tuesday, to a group of students in the philosophy department. Not sure exactly what I will say yet. I’ve got the afternoon now to figure that out. Dr. Gabriel has left things wide open for me. There should be a little something to introduce myself, I suppose a little something with some substance, factual info, ideas about music and esthetics, and so on. I’ve had discussions with a few other faculty members about lectures on perhaps some Civil War songs, the blues, music and the civil rights movement, gender equality (or the lack thereof), what to listen for in music (hommage à Copland), performer interactivity with computer/software/multimedia, or one period or another in Western music history. These are easier; the topics are clear. But then I’ve always been good at doing the assignment. Now I must think more like a philosophy professor and become more nimble, less linear and goal-oriented. I suppose I should waste less time gabbing about it and more time planning it!

Now that lunch is over, it’s warming up a bit. It rained most of the night, and there was light drizzle all morning. Not so much that you couldn’t go without an umbrella, though, and you know, this was the first morning I could get out and do a good, brisk walk! Usually I have to take a slow pace because it’s just too darned hot. I end up sweating profusely even at a slow pace. But with the rain and cloud cover, it was delightful!! I’ll have to remember this—it was so nice to walk normally and get a little exercise.

Ran into Prof. Suri for the first time the other day. Wonderful to see him! He’s on top of the world having just sent off his thesis. It’ll take 6 months to a year to get it read and approved (the British system for you!), but it’s finally off his back. He’s all ready, along with Prof. Kurian, to whisk me off to Pondicherry some weekend. It’s a unique place—a former French colony and long-time home to mystics Sri Aurobindo and his disciple, “The Mother,” and nearby is the site of Auroville, a utopian city founded on principles of Aurobindo’s thought. I’m told there’s a Spanish avant-garde composer there—could be an interesting fellow to meet. Might even get a French dinner there…down in the French Quarter (sounds familiar)!