Essays and Musical Archaeology

Two essays totalling 5000 words, two presentations and extra reading -this blog post is brought to you live from the eye of a storm.

I exaggerate, it's not all that bad. My Fieldwork question (Are post-processual approaches to fieldwork a dead-end?) I finished Friday night, and I'm pretty proud of the result. Since I am never averse to accepting a theoretical challange, I've prepared a critique of p-p theory building on the work for The Post Hole. The second, for The Vikings, is currently being produced and will be ready (hopefully) for Wednesday submission. The theme for that one will be early Normandy, and is already looking markedly less confrontational than the former. No less theoretical, however.

The essay will be my basis for a presentation I am scheduled to give that Wednesday.

Such endeavours naturally impinge on Nanowrimo, and Rachel and I are, unfortunately, at 5,000 words when we should be over 10,000 -we'll make up the difference I expect during the second half of the week when everything calms down. A shoutout for Steve is necessary here, who recently broke 20,000! We can only for the moment look on in envy.

On another note, there was only ever going to be one choice for today's Sunday Song. Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson has easily been the song of the week in this house, on some occasions being played 5 consecutive times. But more than that, it is a personal link to over a decade ago -when I was about 9 years old- when I was first introduced to music from the sixties. This song and others I listened to heavily over the course of a year (Keep The Customer Satisfied, Homeward Bound and The Sound of Silence in particular) remind me of long winter nights when everyone was late coming from work, being ill, trying coffee for the first time, and my collection of Ladybird books. Sadly my own personal sixties ended when my classmates subsequently made me embarressed about my musical taste, and I stopped listening to these songs completely from that point onward -only to rediscover them this week! Special distinction goes also to the Mamas & Papas song California Dreamin', which shared a similar history until its discovery a year or so ago. As Sony will not allow me to embed a YouTube video of Mrs Robinson for reasons known only to themselves, this song has been embedded instead: