Arcade Fire, "Haiti"

So, after the high-wire stress intensity of getting ready for the GRE, having the GRE delayed by weather, getting the GRE set up again, driving to Greenville to make sure I could get to the testing site, going to the testing site, taking the test, and getting out of there so I could go home and take a nap...

Now...we wait.

Thing is, I already know how I did on the test (fantastic on the reading, borderline on the math, which is kinda what I expected). I just don't know if that's good enough for Clemson. I guess this post should be about Tom Petty's "The Waiting Is the Hardest Part," but I thought that was a little on-the-nose. Plus, it occurred to me that I've never done a song post about the band whose actual name is in the title of this blog.

And I am nothing if not aware of said irony and its need to be addressed.

Plus, I need to address the post-test-taking spell that occurs, the grey limbo that comes not with not knowing how you did but with not knowing how the people you're hoping to impress into either giving you a job or more education are feeling about how you did.

It's great in that I got it over with and can now resume guilt-free reading of books that do not have "GRE" in the title unless it's "great," "gretzky," or "gregarious." The only such book I've read that falls into that category is a very good book about The Great Gatsby. I feel some relief that I can go into a library or bookstore now and look at the books without thinking "shit, I should really be focusing on studying for the GRE now." Truth be told, after the delay from my first test day thanks to snow, it was hard to open those books back up. It didn't feel like anything I hadn't read the first time around would stick any better the second or third (and I read those books, the math sections at least, like a readin' fiend). If I have to retake it, I'll review the hell out of the math sections (including actually performing some of the example problems, something that I should've done the first time around). But I was burnt out after stressing out over the test the few weeks that the first test date came around in, at the end of January. Truth be told, I might've done worse if I hadn't had the down time to think about it, to think about why I wanted to go to grad school, and to field all the questions from relatives and associates as to why I wanted to go back to grad school.

Now to Arcade Fire: the reason why I say they "saved" my life is not because Win Butler and the gang kept my school bus from going over a cliff into the valley gorge below (though that would make a cool story) but because when I got their 2007 album The Neon Bible, I was in a funk that wasn't fun. I wasn't cutting myself or driving recklessly to end it all or anything, but I felt like anything could happen and I'd be okay with it. But as dark and depressing as some of that album undoubtedly is (it wouldn't have been Arcade Fire), it gave me some reason to stop feeling miserable, and to pick my head up off the ground. The Virginia Tech shooting happened while I was in a funk, and that too helped to lift me out of it because I realized how the dreams of those victims who died as a result of some loser with an arsenal and a twisted agenda would never be realized. Also, around this time a kid who was going to be part of our family killed himself before a wedding. A month later, my friend Travis committed suicide. Out the window went the concept of suicide as "an artistic statement."

Life is too damn short to worry over some of the things we worry about, like money or popularity or whatever the hell it is that drives people. If money bought you happiness, would Donald Trump be such a miserable fucker? "Haiti" is the song by AF from their first album that is sung by Rene Chassagne, who is of Haitian descent. It predates the epic catastrophe that befell the island in 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of the country and led to a humanitarian crisis which is still very much part of the story. It's an ode to loss, though, I think. It's a beautiful song, and one that I wouldn't have discovered if I'd never been in the funk that had led me to Arcade Fire in the first place. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about them for so long; it hit too close to home.

At any rate, I hope I get into grad school for the fall, but if I don't I can always try for spring of next year. And if even then, I can try my hand at something else. Yoda was wrong about the "do or not do, there is no try." There is always a "try," sometimes it's hard to do that though. I tried with the GRE and now I await whether my try was good enough for somebody else. But it was good enough for me.