Pretty vacant

After looking at my books, I realise that most of them are Literature oriented: this is the field which interests me the most, so today I went to see about changing course.

I talked with the School Secretary and she put me in touch with someone else who told me I had to make an appointment on Monday. I have to fill out a form and spell out my exact reasons for wanting to make a move. This is difficult to articulate, but I came away at least satisfied that I've set the wheels in motion. I got a letter from Claire too.

The rest of the day was spent in the usual indolent lounging in Stu’s room with Stu, Gareth and Shawn. We had a wide ranging argument about the Sex Pistols, rock-n-roll and the Pistol's influence on music. Stu and Shawn argued that the Pistols had “destroyed the music industry,” which is just crap, while Gareth and I argued that the punk thing was nothing new, as nothing ever is, and is just another form of youth protest and rebellion like the hippies of the '60s, who in turn grew out of the Beats. If anything, the rock-n-roll revolution of the ‘50s was more shocking and had bigger repercussions than the Pistols, who existed in an already-jaded world of porn, flower power, dyed hair, bomb outrages etc.

I said the rise of rock-n-roll was linked to the demise of danceable jazz and the onset of post-swing solo-directed stuff like bebop, Miles Davis and Charlie Parker: jazz was the youth music of the '30s and '40s and all that was changed by rock-n-roll. This was something I’d never thought of before, yet the more I went on about it, the more plausible it seemed. I also said I don't like mass movements and the mass mentality; originality is hyped and ripped off by a world that drags everything down to the lowest common denominator.

I worked out my finances after paying my rent yesterday. I have £201.44 in my account, and if I can get away with spending £25 a week all term I'll have £170 left at Easter.