To my surprise, I really enjoyed the History of Western Music at PA, with musician and composer Samuel Andreyev. I say to my surprise because much as I love music, I am not musically-gifted and worried during the first classes that I would not understand enough. Thankfully, as the name suggested, the actual minutiae of making music were only explained so that we might better understand its development across the centuries. So it was quite pleasurable, as it delved into the role of organized religion in the development of art, and in latter classes, in the status of the artist as we've come to understand it now.

I had an interesting conversation last night about how difficult it is not so much to be alone (though that in itself is hard a-plenty), but to admit that you are. Somehow, when you're past a certain point (and it's quite an early point in your life, too), it gets uncool and even somewhat depressing to admit you don't really fit in. You don't like, perhaps, the group you belong to, or don't even feel like you belong with them anymore. It happens. I think, if you're doing life right and changing as you're supposed to, it can happen quite often. And yet, it's something we almost never admit for fear of appearing "losers". You're supposed to know where you belong.

A significant focus in these days surrounding New Year's Eve seems to fall on looking back on where you've been, how you've been there, and where you're going. And as year end's approaches, I find myself suspiciously satisfied with where I've been so far. A lot of people around me are talking about what they're leaving behind, but I feel I've done quite well this past year (on some important levels, at least) so it's more a matter of continuing as is.

It's depressingly easy to slip into thinking that our life is special. Unique. Unprecedented. And some say it's even more depressing to acknowledge that it's really not, but I disagree. See, I think there's a great danger to this altar of 'me' that we've created, and I think there's great liberation in realizing that actually, what you're going through right now is something thousands, or perhaps even millions of people have gone through (or may be going through right now).

Well. My laptop charger died unexpectedly, so I'm writing Hive posts on my phone, something I used to do quite often when I was young and couldn't sleep in a lover's bed. Those early days of spending nights away from home, which I guess is as good a segway as any into my subject.

The minute I watched the trailer for Jason Reitman's (then) upcoming Saturday Night, I loved it. Suddenly, it was as if all the people I'd grown up with had been brought back to life. I watched the trailer twice, eyes flitting between all the fantastic, lifelike, 21st-century versions of these people I revered. I thought surely, there's no way the actual movie's gonna be this good, though. I thought most likely, they've stuffed the trailer full of big names and witty rocket-fast dialogue, but the movie itself... Well, the movie itself is somehow even better.