Writing

Fiction and Fan-fiction

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Personal Essays and Non-fiction

What Even Is Library Science?

I hate when people ask me what I’m studying in school and I tell them that I’m getting a bachelor’s in Library Science. It sometimes prompts the question: “So you like reading, then?” Yes, I happen to like reading on occasion, but library science has nothing to do with the books themselves or reading itself. If you do love books and reading, consider getting a degree in literature in whatever language you prefer. Library science is for people who love to categorize and taxonomize things, not people who love reading. Library science is all about the organization of information and NOT the format in which that information is conveyed.

Actually, I’m lying. When I tell people that I study library science, they usually don’t tell me that I must love reading, if they do they’re already a step above the rest. The usual response is “What is that?” What do you mean, what is that? It has the word library in the term. It’s the study of libraries and how to run them.

Then comes the question, regardless of whether they asked if I liked reading or if they asked what my degree even is: “You need a degree for that?” Occasionally, they’ll assume you did need a degree to run a library, but that it was a different degree, either literature like I mentioned earlier, or teaching. More often, they think anybody can work in a library. No, it’s a regulated profession that requires a higher education degree and membership in the regulatory body just like doctors and lawyers do. The fact that people assume it requires no education just shows how little they think of libraries. And to think it’s related to pedagogy just likens libraries to teaching, and to children, and libraries are much more than that. To think it’s related to literature is to reduce all library collections to fiction and poetry.

So what is library science, anyway? It’s the study of cataloging, indexing, etc. It’s about the organization of human knowledge. It’s about the human and administrative elements of running a library. It’s not about the books themselves. Nowadays, it’s closer to information technology and data science and computer-y things much more than it is about the actual physical space of a library. I’m not too fond of this fact, seeing as I’m pretty old-fashioned and like analog things, but it’s the reality of the state of the art of the profession. Next time somebody asks me what I’m studying, I might lie and say Portuguese Literature, because it invites less stupid questions. Actually, I’m not sure, they might ask me if I intend to teach high school.

My Failed History of Musicianship

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a singer. I had a good memory for memorizing lyrics as a child. I of course had all the nursery rhymes memorized, but I also memorized some of the songs on the radio. Because of my talent of just absorbing all the lyrics on first listen, I was convinced that that would be enough to be a good singer. I would put on “shows” for my parents singing all the songs I liked. I have memories of this from when I was about six, but there are pictures of me playing with a toy microphone from when I was three, so this must’ve been a mainstay for my childhood play.

When I was eight or nine, I was obsessed with the disney channel sitcom Hannah Montana. For those unaware, Hannah Montana was a show about a teenage girl who was secretly a popstar while also going to normal high school. It was very aspirational for me. I wanted to be a popstar just like Miley. I was a kid just like she was a teen, so that made me believe being a child star was within reach.

I was very dedicated to this fantasy of me as a popstar. I had a Hannah Montana branded notebook where I would write “lyrics” (just little poems) that I would sing. I asked Santa for a guitar on Christmas of 2009. Miley always wrote her songs on an acoustic guitar, so I wanted to write songs with a guitar, too. Santa gracefully gifted me with a child-sized nylon-stringed acoustic. It was a real guitar, not a toy one, it was just smaller for child hands and had less frets. I knew nothing about guitars. In the tv shows and the movies whenever somebody would pick up a guitar they would just strum and beautiful music would come out. I didn’t think I had to learn anything to play. I have a vivid memory of picking the new guitar up, tuning each string with a digital tuner my parents had also bought me, and then putting all the fingers on my left hand over a fret, and strumming once, producing an awful dissonant strangled sound. I didn’t realize I had to actually learn chords, I thought guitar was just an inherent skill that some people were born with.

My parents wanted me to take lessons, but for some reason I was convinced I could teach myself with internet tutorials. They had me go to exactly one lesson with the pastor and worship leader at our church, and he taught me three chords and a couple of finger exercises, which I proceeded to immediately forget. I was frustrated that he had taught me C, D, and G because I wanted to go in alphabetical order. I tried to learn A on my own but all of those chords hurt my left hand immensely. I could never get my fingers calloused enough to play comfortably. It was a child-sized guitar but my finger still couldn’t reach the top string.

So, I gave up on playing guitar, and mostly gave up on the dream of being a singer. It was pretty unrealistic in the first place. Only years later when I was about fourteen was my interest in music reignited. I had never really sat down and actually listened to a lot of music before my mid-teens. I was hooked on music again, and for some reason I got into 1950s doo wop music, which was how I learned that a lot of pop music uses the same four chords, and I thought to myself, “hey, I can do that!”

Despite already having disappointed my parents with guitar, I begged them to get me a keyboard and let me learn how to play piano. They bought me a casio and I had lessons with an old lady from church. This time I was very dedicated to the craft. I wrote quite a lot of pop songs down in musescore. They were all lost when my pc crashed and I hadn’t made a backup. That was part of why I gave up on music for the second time.

The more important upset that led me to give up is a longer story. I got into classical music when I was learning piano. I wasn’t good enough to play any classical pieces but I really enjoyed listening to them. For some reason that escapes me now, I was convinced I could make it as a classical composer. First, I looked into getting into a conservatory, and they would probably take me even with my mediocre skills, but they were too expensive. Then, I found out that a public university had a bachelor program in music, and that all I had to do was get in through a written general test and a written test on music theory.

I thought this was a piece of cake. I did well on the general test, I’ve always tested well. Then, came the music theory test. I knew I was absolutely fucked by the speech the man gave at the front of the classroom where we were being tested.

“I’m going to press play on a simple tune on this boombox, I will do this twice. Question two is for you to transpose this melody in the answer sheet. Ready? Three, two, one…”

And then the melody was played. I didn’t have pitch perfect hearing, and I found this task impossible. I assumed the melody was in C and assumed the first note was C and then intuited the rest of the notes from there by their relative pitch to the first one. There was no reason to assume the first note was C, I was just guessing. I guessed for the whole test except for a few questions I knew the answer to. Then, the last question was an essay and not multiple choice. What is the historical context for Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D minor?

Easy, I thought.

I wrote down something with the gist of,

The Catholic Counter-reformation was a religious movement within the catholic church that…

As soon as I got home, I looked up Bach’s religious affiliation and date of birth and death. Date of death: 1750, almost a hundred years after the counter-reformation. Religious affiliation: protestant, Lutheran. I had missed that question completely and given the exact opposite answer. I probably would’ve had the same marks if I said Tocatta and Fugue in D minor was written by Dracula to play in his castle.

I didn’t get in, and I realized again how unrealistic my dream was. I put away my keyboard in a corner that was hard to get to, and I mostly forgot about playing music. Now, I’m in the middle of becoming interested again in music, and my keyboard is in an accessible spot. I like to play piano, I like to write music, but I no longer have any pretentions. I’m not going to be a pop star, and I’m not going to be a classical composer, I’m just having fun.