The Culprit Life

A Sound Militia

I went into the anatomy lab with my group today to finish up some of the dissections we had started and even though Henrietta was less than cooperative, we managed to ID her biceps, triceps, and the most difficult of all: her suboccipital triangle, in about an hour and a half. At one point, it took four of us two tries to turn her over from her back to a face down position. Surprisingly, the whole thing ended up taking about half the time I thought it would so when I got home I had some extra time to record one of the demos I didn’t get a chance to yesterday. Then it was off to Sarah Wilson’s for some more storyboarding of what will hopefully be a most hilarious scene. Then coming back home, I found time to record the second demo I had talked about earlier.
I think I probably made up for the lack of productivity yesterday. In fact, right now I could post both of these demos but alas!, I will only release this one tonight for several reasons, not the least of which being I would like to wash out the audible bitterness I’m about to release with something lighter and more tasteful later in the week.

This is probably the meanest, dirtiest song I’ve ever completed and it carries those attributes in several ways. For one, I didn’t bother to clean up any of the clips. They only contain the slightest hints of any mixing. This is probably the sloppiest recording I’ve ever produced. It’s rough. Really rough. I find it more disgusting than the last demo I posted using my cheap voice recorder. This is one of those rare instances where I chose to go with quantity rather than quality when it came to the amount of instruments I wanted on the track. Then, what will be obvious after one listen through, I think the lyrics are… um…brutally honest. And if I were to be honest right now, they are really just leftovers from the Outwatch the Bear project.
This song was not supposed to exist.
By all of my predictions and prior inclinations, I wasn’t going to write any more songs like this for a long, long time. I didn’t think I could. I didn’t want to.

So why post it then? Why go through the trouble of recording a halfhearted version of this monster and then release it into the wild?

Well, the answer to those questions is of the same type that I imagine gave validation to the actions which produced the emotional response that triggered this song.

Because I can.


“Arrows, Aim, Release (The Wolves)”

I thought a thousand suns would purge the place
Where I’ve kept the most toxic sort of sentiment
For everyone who watched me as I grew
Then swung an axe and cut me down from right above the root.
But there’s a timeless quality about
The brown-eyed ghosts who come back to haunt me in this house
From where they congragate across the bay
Making love to their egos while I suffocate.

Friendship flows between the synapses of my mistakes.
It’s beautiful in the most repulsive kind of way.

One by one the zippers of the sheep came undone
And the wolves slid out from underneath
Breaking off the branches in their mouths
And running out with the souvenirs between their teeth.
And I wondered what the Shepherd felt and thought
As He watched these creatures He had called his flock
Tear apart this thing that bore him fruit
And then as grace sold herself off as a prostitute.

It’s not like I am fond of all my phantom limbs.
But God I’ve tried and I just can’t seem to forget.

So I line them up along a wooden fence
Taking aim and shooting arrows through the rotten cores
That they have placed like halos on their heads
As if to say that the world I love is theirs to whore.
And tiny birds throw dirt over the truth
That all their fires were started with a stolen match
While foreign urns continue their abuse with painted smiles
But on the inside they still harbor death.

And then there’s one who bites off more than she can chew
Then throws up blood but returns within a year or two.

I heard the children play across the interstate
To critical acclaim while dancing on the grave they dug for me.

BW

Photo by Dan Nguyen
Today was a lot less productive than I had planned, mostly because of the 4 hours I spent on the computer trying to get my recording equipment to cooperate.
I have a love/hate relationship with technology.
So unfortunately I wasn’t able to record the two demos I wanted to this afternoon. Tomorrow is my last day of freedom for about 3 weeks so if I can’t figure it out by then, it may be a while.
Thankfully, one good thing did happen at night. Dan came over and we were finally able to take the photos I wanted and piece together the new banner for The Culprit Life.

Storyboardin!

Storyboarding is one of my absolute favorite things in the world to do. The energy in a room with several filmmakers all debating the best ways to tell a story visually is electric. I imagine it is like being in a strategic war room but instead of planning to drop bombs and shoot missiles at people you are planning the best way to push and pull an audience emotionally using only camera angles and movements with the end product being a sense of fulfillment. And at the end of a few hours, even though you’ve only created perhaps two pages of fuzzy drawings, you feel like you’ve moved mountains because all the sweat and blood that went into each of the lines on that paper.

When I storyboard, I have to get up and move around. I get excited. And I think part of it may be a slight inability to express my angles or movements properly through words and drawings alone. I also showed a few clips of Hitchcock films last night to everyone as a kind of precedence for the direction I’d like to see some of the scenes in the film go visually. There’s something about Hitchcock films that I feel no one else has been able to capture in quite the same way since.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Thanksgiving

Cut Scene

Well today was memorable. The test was difficult, as expected, and it’s hard to say how I did because the classes are divided up now so there are questions from four different classes on the same test but there is no indication of which questions come from which class. And because all of the material is quite similar, everything kind of merges together. I know about how many I missed from the group test but in any one class I could have done terrible or I could have done great. There’s no choice but to wait and see. But one thing I know I will do differently this time is fight for every possible point. In molecular medicine I think I was so worn out all the time that I didn’t ever go in to the teachers office after a test and questions the validity of questions. This time around I definitely will. The most discouraging thing to me about the test wasn’t what was on it as much as what wasn’t on it. We knew so much. I knew so much. And we were not tested on the vast majority of it. I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know if that’s the way things are supposed to work. But I have a feeling something is faulty because there is no way that someone can accurately assess the amount of information we know about physiology, neuroscience, and anatomy from the test we just took.

In the afternoon, I worked on mixing the 4th song of Outwatch the Bear. And then at night I briefly stopped by the Kaleisia Tea Lounge where my friends Dan and Joyce were finishing up their mixed media piece for the back wall. Of course it turned out fantastic because, well, they’re brilliant.

Then, while mixing some more, I decided to passively watch my favorite Godard film, Breathless. There is this one bedroom scene in the middle of the film that’s about 24 minutes long. It’s one of the most important scenes in all of cinema. And while I was watching and rewatching it, I ended up writing a song. I took some of the lines from the scene and wrote them down and got out my guitar. It was so natural, I finished in about 2 hours. Nearly the entire song is made up of lines straight out of that scene so it’s very “conversational”. I’ve never done this kind of thing before although I’ve thought about it many times, but this wasn’t premeditated, it just kind of happened and I’m really happy with the results. It’s kind of a cinematic exercise in songwriting. Hopefully I can find time to record it this weekend and post it on here.

Also, there is another song that I finished the music for today. It’s one that I wrote the lyrics to over a relatively long period of time and just finished up a couple weeks ago. This one is a lot different though. It’s extremely personal and probably slightly offensive to a few people but I’m gonna try to find time to record it this weekend as well and post it. All this comes at a time when I am thinking more and more about the set list I am going to perform for the show at Kaleisia one dec. 29th. I’m really excited about it because there seems to be quite a few people coming and it will be the first time I really present the material from The Culprit Life to everyone.

I’m feeling pretty good about this test right now.
Pretty good, not really good.

The physiology clinical small group discussion was more layed back than I thought today. The only thing I didn’t like was when our faculty leader said that he thought we shouldn’t always look at the PT students when it came time to talk about the physical therapy questions. He thought that we (the med school students) should have a decent knowledge of that stuff too.
Right. Because I like to study physical therapy treatment plans in my spare time.
Hello! PT students should be required to answer these questions, it’s what they’re interested in after all. It’s why they’re here! And when I become a real doctor, I’m just going to leave all the physical therapy decisions up to a real physical therapist anyway because that’s what they’re trained to do! In fact, I think it would be obnoxious for me to chime in when they’re talking because it’s as if I’m saying “Hey, hold on, I know you’re in physical therepy training but I think I know more than you about this even though I’m just a medical student and haven’t taken any of your physical therapy classes”.
Give me a break.

Also today, I had to tell my good friend Omar that I could not collaborate musically with him. It broke my heart a little as Omar is a good song writer and an even better guy. But I have to learn to say no and the truth is that Omar has all the talent and skill he needs to make great albums on his own. I told him I would lend my support in other ways though if they were needed. Of course he took it splendidly. Omar will make a fantastic doctor one day. I know this because he is a fantastic human being right now.

The only other thing we had today was an anatomy review session that I felt went pretty well.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving eve. I can almost smell the turkey, thanks to my olfactory nerve and nucleus which are located in the midbrain between the superior colliculi.

I cut into my first chest today. It was exciting to run the scalpel from right below the neck to the bottom of the rib cage. It was somewhat of a blind cut though because we couldn’t ID the sternum exactly and once I opened her up I knew why. The tip of my scalpel was buried inside a layer of solid, gelatinous, bright yellow fat that was at least 2 inches thick. This could have been seen as a setback except that our cadaver (which we affectionately named Henrietta today) has a much more well preserved anterior than posterior (back). And although turning her over was a hassle (it took four of us and there were skin flaps falling and bodily juices leaking out everywhere) it was well worth it when we found her pectoralis major and minor in such good condition.
That was in the afternoon. In the morning we were given three lectures, the first was one of Bennet’s best and the last two were taught by a new guy who spoke very slow. In short, it was boring. And we were all kind of ticked that they would give us three new lectures two days before the test but most of the material the last guy presented turned out to be review stuff.

After the anatomy lab in the afternoon we had a neuroscience review that transformed my very positive outlook on this test into a melancholy one that came coupled with a flash bout of depression. I was familiar with 99% of what was said in the review but our course director talked so fast (and with a thick accent) that all his technical words blended together and I couldn’t write down most of the things I wanted to. It was one of those moments when you think no matter how much you’ve studied and no matter how well you think you know the information, you will never know it the way that they expect you to. I felt so bad on the drive home, I thought about what I would do if I flunked out of another class while listening to Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan album. I don’t think I would be resilient enough to take the year over. I don’t think I would have that much confidence in my path as a doctor to do that. I think I would just quit medicine entirely.

I thought about how when you’re little, everyone tells you that you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up, especially your parents. I thought about the times that I’ve even said that to people. And then I thought about how it’s an easy way out for the person who is saying it. It’s easy to tell children that they can be whatever they want to be. Nobody wants to tell them that if they want to do something like become a doctor, they may want it really bad but there is a very real possibility that they will fail. Even if they’ve made it very far and are only a few years away, they could still fail. And then what? You never hear the stories of the man or woman who went to med school and then didn’t make it. For some reason those aren’t the stories people like telling. What happens to those people? Do they just disappear? Does everyone just forget about them? I may find out one day first hand.

And then I thought about how this is such a unique thing for me to experience. Failure. Not failure in a relational sense or in an artistic sense (I’ve had plenty of those), but failure in a core dream, in a professional, life long ambition, in something that seemed so cut and dry, in something, basically that I’ve never failed at. Arguably the only thing I’ve never failed at. My education. And now I’m failing. And it’s almost unbearable.

But for now I’m at home, on my couch watching five straight lectures on neuroscience as a last ditch effort to solidify all this stuff in my brain because… well I’m not sure why exactly. I have no reason for hope, and I’m not really hopeful, I’m actually almost indifferent right now. I think I’m just going through the motions.

While driving around today, I wrote a little bit more of a song I started a while back. It’s kind of this odd blend of desperation, love, anxiety, resolve, helplessness, and hope. Maybe it’s not so odd though. Maybe it’s a kaleidoscope of what I’ve been feeling for the past three months. And maybe I’ll never finish it.

Study Study Study

Today was one of those days when I wish I wouldn’t have even bothered to wake up. Literally.
I forced myself to get out of bed and attend two physiology lectures in the morning because I thought I would understand them easily and it would be lazy of me to get the extra sleep and watch them online later. Turns out I wasted two hours of my life today sitting in class because I didn’t understand 75% of what was said. And I know, as soon as I watch the lectures again online where I am able to pause and digest the information, that I will get it. It’s just that I actually have to take the time to sit through them again when I could have just watched them online and understood everything the first time around. It may seem very trivial to complain about losing two hours in a day but when you’re in medical school, two hours is a huge amount of time. And it’s an amount of time I could have used to be studying things I actually am interested in like anatomy and neuroscience.
Now, there’s nothing left to do but push forward into another long weekend of studying.

In On Doctoring today we watched a documentary called The English Surgeon about a neurosurgeon from England who has been traveling to the Ukraine to work in a resource deprived hospital there for over 15 years. In short, the film was incredible. It was well shot and emotionally rich. Afterward, myself and the course director asked the class if they would be interested in having an alternative films series that would screen films about 4 times a year and bring guests in to talk about the films. They responded positively so I guess that means we’re gonna do it! The course director suggested this idea last week to me and I was hesitating on bringing it up to the class through email but while listening to the surprisingly positive reactions of everyone around me during the film I knew that it would be the perfect time to make the suggestion to them. The first film I want to show in the new series is Dear Jack, the documentary about Andrew McMahon going through leukemia.

In the afternoon we had a PD skills workshop that was pretty lax. Some more advanced students in the college of physical therapy ran us through the basic upper body range of motion tests we need to be able to perform on our patients.

And finally tonight, I was involved in a meeting concerning a certain top secret filmmaking project that will remain as much under-wraps as possible in the coming months. But I did want to mention that I feel really lucky to be working with a group of people who are willing to plan many of the activities around the times when I don’t have to study. I don’t even have the most important role in this thing and they are still willing to work with my obstinate medical school schedule so I can be involved. Based on that fact alone, I think this experience is gonna be magic.

Experimentin’

So I made these two little CD holders today that I’m going to install in both sides of the histo lab tomorrow. In case the picture isn’t as self explanatory as I think it is: the idea is that someone from the class can take a mix cd from the holder and then make a mix cd of their own to replace it then someone else from the class can take that one and make one of their own and on and on and on. I’m starting them off with six copies of my own mix. I don’t know if it’ll catch on but I think it would be pretty cool if it does.

Why do this? Because I can.
Also, it’s a social experiment in community building through art. And I love experiments (of the social kind at least).
We’ll see what happens.

Not much in medicine today. After two histology lectures, the last of which reminded me of molecular medicine a bit (ew), I attended a pretty interesting Jewish Medical Student Association meeting. The Rabbi who led it had us do a breathing exercise to open up and then went on to discuss lessons about healing from stories in the Jewish scriptures. The lessons mostly reminded us to center ourselves around the patient when we are with them and to meet them where they are mentally and emotionally. It was really good and focused heavily on a sort of humanism approach to medicine. I’m not Jewish but I think the talk was something that would be beneficial for all of us students regardless of differences in belief.

“God, I love this.”

That was the single most overwhelming thought I had today. And I had it while hugging my white coat and looking down at my right, wrist watch wearing hand as I stood in the hallway outside a patient’s room waiting for my LCE doctor to finish up a chart.

My LCE doctor doesn’t wear a white coat. He doesn’t even wear a tie. He wears a stripped blue and white dress shirt with the top two buttons open and his plain black stethoscope draped around his neck. His demeanor is controlled, calculative, communal. Around the nurses, other doctors, and myself, he speaks of medicine matter of factly and jokes with a seemingly intentional deep jovial boom. When he talks with his patients, his voice gains energy, becomes louder and more high pitched, and communicates the one thing that it would appear all of his actions are working toward: a deep sense of hope. He curses, frequently. But not obnoxiously as a teenager or a sports fan. It is tactful. Almost eloquent or scripted and indeed after a few hours I can almost correctly anticipate the coming of a four letter word. After a while, I notice they are less like language and more like exhalations, the venting of an intrinsic vulnerability to the pain of the people he has devoted his life to rescuing from the grave.

Together, we transverse the construction ridden floors of the island bound hospital walking speedily through the long, often empty, poorly lit hallways, taking various elevators from floor one to two to five to eight back to two and then one again. We slow our pace when we reach corridors lined with patient rooms and nurses’ stations. As I trot passed each room, following after the doctor, my eyes become a camera and my body a dolly on track recording smooth images of open doors, human beings attached to machines and the scenic view of downtown peering in from each of their horizontal windows. I pan back and forth in tight quarters, listening in on conversations between the doctor and several staff members. They curse on a regular basis but never at each other. It is a less obvious sharing of the aforementioned profound empathy of the doctor, this time presenting itself in a similar, yet not quite as affecting, manner and one that is reciprocated by the rest of the staff. The doctor shares photos and the story of a recent hunting trip with his son in Wyoming with virtually everyone he comes into contact with (a few patients included). Both are almost universally well received but occasionally spawn a playful retort and sympathy for the 800 pound elk who became victim to a single ascending shot through the heart taken by the doctor’s son, a first for the boy who’s previous best endeavor at hunting game was a dove. Before every new patient encounter, the doctor briefs me with a quick run down of the primary complaints, recent history, and current course of treatment. I often don’t fully comprehend a considerable amount of the terminology he uses and sometimes, when I perceive it beneficial to my practical understanding and believe it will not result in a time consuming explanation, I ask him to clarify. When attempting to describe a patient’s elevated level of bodily compounds, the doctor always refers to the levels in my own body as a reference point, an action which I equate with listing the norm of such levels but may in fact be somewhat skewed if the doctor takes into account that I am young and fairly slender before delivering these numeric values. So I take notes and use the curved version of the equal sign that stands for approximation when indicating the amount of specific chemicals present in the general population.

At the end of the shift, my LCE doctor tells me that whatever I learn during this experience is simply supplemental to my formal medical education. Quietly, I nod in agreement as he moves on to more logistical information regarding the coming months but while he is speaking, in my mind, I begin to form a quite different opinion than the one I have just been presented with. And, no, I am wrong in thinking the thought has been emanating from my brain because, as I soon realize, it is coming from another vital organ: the stomach. I now recognize that the simple, resonating truth that has begun to gnaw through the internal lining of my gut is that this longitudinal clinical experience is not supplemental to my medical education at all but instead it will prove to be essential to my transformation into a good physician.


NOTE: the above is an essay that may or may not change and reappear in different places in the future. That said, I feel like it accurately sums up my feelings on this morning’s LCE in the cardiopulmonary (lung transplant department) of TGH.

At lunch, I had attended the first surgical interest group meeting of the year and was thrilled to hear a phenomenal personal account from a faculty member about his medical career. He also gave a story about a 4th year who was near the bottom of her class who ended up actually getting a somewhat decent residency in general surgery. Read days 1 through 99 for explanation on why this was comforting. Additionally, I learned today that, although I currently aim to become a transplant surgeon, what I will really be is a general surgeon who goes on to specialize in transplant surgery. While I already kind of guessed at this fact, it is interesting because general surgeons are what seems to be a dying breed in today’s super specialized surgical environment. Which brings to mind my current standing as someone who is not really great at any one thing but just kinda descent at a lot of different things. Hmmmmm… it seems like this is a trend that may continue for the rest of my life…

After lunch was my class’s very first dissection lab! And the first time I believe most of us had ever driven a scalpel into another human being (granted it was a dead one, but still). As I wielded the scalpel somewhat clumsily, I told my lab partners that it felt surreal. And it did at times but largely it was fairly disgusting and not as fun as I had hoped. I’m not squeamish and don’t get grossed out too easily (I love being in the OR) but it was still a bit unsettling standing over a descended human being for five hours, tearing at all kinds of muscle, fat, and tendon in vain attempts to positively identify structures on my own. So of course my team and I asked and received help from the instructors and our fellow students but by the end of the class we, like most of the groups, hadn’t quite finished all of the dissection steps written in the lab manual for today’s exercise. Our cadaver was just plain bad. It had apparently been bed ridden because the level of atrophy in the back muscles was extreme. They were all very thin and had to separate. Other groups had massively obese cadavers and they had to cut through tons of fat to find anything so by the end of the lab their coats were nearly drenched with oils and God knows what else we were required to dig through. I was lucky to not come out that disgusting after everything was over. And, according to several people, I didn’t even smell that bad. Now if you feel like throwing up while reading this account, I have no sympathy for you because you’re reading this of your own free will, most likely in the comforts of your own, neutral smelling home. Try being in a room with 30 teams of people all doing the same thing on 30 different cadavers. And also, if you’re thinking “this kid thinks he can become a surgeon???!! Yeah right, look at how grossed out he is by this!!”, your logic is flawed. Cadavers are in smell, touch, and appearance significantly different than living human beings who are being operated on. And I’ve probably spent more time in the OR than the majority of the people in my class. Also, I’m not really all that “grossed out”, the fact that this activity is disgusting is just that, a fact. I’m only attempting to relay that. And, like I have stated before, I do consider it an amazing opportunity and honor to learn in this way.

And now I feel I must close I must close this extremely long account of my 100th day in medical school with the second most overwhelming thought I had today.

“God, this is gross.”

Another set of great physiology lectures this morning convinced me that Dr. Bennet is perhaps my favorite teacher so far (shhh, don’t tell Dr. Williams). Other highlights of the day included a clinical correlation that was barely correlated clinically. And there was no patient present. I don’t know why we even needed to don our white coats! And then in the afternoon I spoke privately with our course director about the best ways to study anatomy and then realized that I already know how to study anatomy. I just have to practice. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over…

Just Say No

At church, there was a message on saying no to things and really it affected me more than I thought it would. Our pastor asked us make a list of the different areas in our lives and write down goals for each one. He’s been doing this each week but in slightly different ways. This week, I simply made a list of things to say no to. Some of them have to do with music, some of them have to do with the internet. And really they are small things because it’s rare that I ever spend a couple hours doing something other than studying. But they are things that I think will save me 5 or 10 minutes here and there and could potentially add up in the long run. It’s sort of like “fine tuning” my daily life and, on this day at least, it payed off. I finished a neuroscience review and watched (and took notes on) four different lectures all before 10:30pm. That’s about as productive as it gets. Of course it helps that the things that I’m learning now are things I actually WANT to be learning. They are things that I actually care to know and things that I will actually be using quite frequently throughout the rest of my life. So that makes saying no to things outside of studying A LOT easier.

Now, along with the list of things to say no to, I also had a short list of things to say yes too, one of which is finishing Outwatch the Bear mostly because I just want to finish it and also because I feel like I will be under a lot less personal stress once it’s done. So at night, after studying, I nearly finished editing the third video.

Another thing that became apparent today (through a series of facebook comments none the less) was that I am probably the person in my class who is most excited about our current courses. I pretty much love them. And I should. After all I’ve been waiting about 15 years to learn this stuff. This is why I’m in medical school. So I’m somewhat shocked at the bored and annoyed attitude of many of the other people in my class. We are finally studying real, relevant medical science and they are wishing we were back in molec med with all the molecules and pathways. Are you kidding me??!! The most immediate correlation that came to my mind when I recognized this was that of the Israelites who, after being freed from brutal slavery, wandering the desert for decades and finally getting close to the promise land, complained to Moses saying they rather go back to Egypt where things were familiar.
Seriously.

Now, I understand most people in my class have taken anatomy before and I never have so I’m super excited about all of it even though there is a ton of memorization, and also the material is often poorly presented in class by teachers who haven’t seen the inside of an OR in 40 years if ever, but really? People would rather go back to molecular medicine than study muscles, bones and nerves, dissect ACTUAL human corpses, and go on rotation once a week in the hospital?
Seriously?
I guess I just had my fill of irrelevant, undergraduate science during the four years that I took it while getting my bachelors degree.

Win!

I studied all day by myself and then for a couple hours with Valerie before leaving to go to the Best of the Fest screenings/award show for the Independent’s Film Festival. Rhapsody won a Florida Choice Award! My friend Dan Bakst also won an award for his film “Cinq” which competed along side of Rhapsody in Campus Movies Fest so many months ago. It’s now been about a year since I first started working on Rhapsody and I must say, as corny as it sounds, that little film changed my life. I think it changed a lot of our lives (the people that helped make it). In some way, I feel it ignited all of the passion we already had for filmmaking and increased it exponentially. Maybe it was a combination of actually making the film and then getting recognized for it that did this to us. It’s not that we care as much about the awards as we do about the actual art of filmmaking but I think none of us had ever been recognized to this degree before for what we were doing and it’s impact was amplified by the fact that (for myself at least) it didn’t even seem possible for this little film to take us this far.

To Write Love On Her Arms

Seven hours of lecture today. Yes, seven.
A bit insane if you asked me. I only thoroughly understood 3 of them and bits and pieces of the others. I’m not sure if anatomy is a subject I should just attack on my own or if I should continue going to the lectures because they seem to just confuse me. My first two lectures of physiology went great though. I understood absolutely everything and that almost never happens in class for me.

Today was To Write Love On Her Arms day and being as such, I asked my good friend Joyce to write the word “love” on my arm to raise awareness for the organization. It worked pretty well too I think. Quite a few people in my class noticed my sharpie tattoo and I was able to tell them about all the great work TWLOHA does.

After class, Zahra and I went to see Eisley perform at the State Theater in St. Pete. I would say it was wonderful except for it wasn’t, but not because of anything the band did. The mix was awful. I knew that after watching the first band, Miniature Tigers, who I was also really excited about seeing. Also, because Eisley was not headlining, they played a seemingly small set. Despite all this, I still enjoyed myself and the band really played well under the circumstances. The new stuff sounded mostly great and the old stuff was delightful as always. It seems to me that the band is writing some of the best songs they’ve ever written right now.
Afterward, I spent some time speaking with their dad/manager/graphic designer, Boyd. I really liked his views on things in the music industry and his attitude concerning everything with the band. Plus, we seem to have similar tastes in music which is cool. Eisley is at kind of an odd place right now (and perhaps have been for some time). They are an indie band on a major label which means a lot of things but one big one is that they don’t get the attention/publicity/promotional tools that they deserve because their label is busy catering to their mainstream artists who bring in lots of money. Its a shame because not only is Eisley definitely one of the most talented groups of young American songwriters but they’re also just really great people who deserve a good break for the way they conduct themselves with honesty, sincerity, hard work, and tact. It is rare to find such a wholly wonderful group of folks in that environment.

So I met with the dean of student affairs today to discus my less than stunning performance in molecular medicine. Basically, I failed.
Barely, but I did. Now I have to take a remedial course in the summer. I’m not sure all of what that entails yet but I know I will be taking the same tests again.
I thought the dean was going to scold me for doing poorly or scrutinize me for my study habits but instead he was very empathetic and concerned. Of course he offered any help that the college could give me.

There are a lot of things I could draw from this. Most of the reasons why this is just plain bad are obvious. One that might not be is I don’t get a summer off to do what I want now (which would be becoming a rodie for Invisible Children). But there are reasons why this is good too. I know that right about now it sounds like I’ve gone completely insane but here are the facts:
- By retaking the course in the summer I will be much better prepared to take my USMLE step 1 at the end of my second year.
- My understanding and retention of these seemingly rarely talked about pathways will greatly increase so I may be able to catch things in future patients that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
- It’s humbling, and that’s always a good thing.
- God almost never does anything really awesome or noteworthy with people who were always awesome or noteworthy. Moses murdered a guy, ran away to the desert for 40 years and went on to lead an entire nation out of slavery. David got another man’s wife pregnant and then practically murdered that man and is known as one of the greatest kings that ever lived. Gideon was the youngest person in the smallest family in the smallest clan of the smallest tribe in Israel and went on to drive out the tribes of people who were terrorizing his whole country. I’m not putting myself next to those guys, but maybe I am. I will be a good doctor. I will do great things. I know this. But now, because I failed, people will know that all those things aren’t because I was simply more intelligent or skilled than others. Hopefully they will trace it back to a divine presence. In conversations 30 years from now when people talk about me someone will always say something like “yeah but did you know he flunked out of his first med school class? Crazy huh?”. And I’m happy about that.

My life will be an awesome story. A story where one of the early chapters is pretty dark and you’re not sure if the character is going to make it. Think about it this way: a doctor who’s made great grades all his life, graduated first in his class from Harvard, and got a top neurological residency finds the cure for a cancer. Totally expected. Totally believable. Totally boring. And who gets all the credit for everything? The doctor. Maybe partly his parents. It’s totally narcissistic. Who wants to watch that movie? Answer: no one.
That is the movie I might have been living. But I was saved from it.
I was saved from it when I developed a love for literature at a young age. I was saved from it when I become obsessed with creating music and films in college. And I was saved from it when I failed my first course in medical school. Right now, my life has a fantastic set up for an epic movie. One that people will pay $35 to see 50 years from now (think of the box office inflation rates!). Who do audiences want to watch walk across that stage in four years and trade his short white coat for a long white coat? The gunners? The top 5% of the class? No. The audience doesn’t care about them. They know they’re gonna make it. There’s no risk. The audience probably doesn’t even know their names. Who do they want to see make it? The oddball artsy kid who fails his first class, can’t convince people to study with him, and tries to find subtle ways to inject hope into the lives of people who maybe don’t need it as much as he does himself. And that kid just so happens to be me.

Edit Edit Edit
Lots of editing today. With the help of Dan Nguyen, I was able to finish most of the third video for Outwatch the Bear. I don’t know when the rest of it is gonna get done seeing as how I have a truck load of anatomy to memorize but hopefully soonish.

Fact: everything in the brain looks the same: gray.
Especially when looking through slide after slide of radiological cross-sections.
Still, it’s ten times better than getting another lecture on metabolic pathways. Thank God that’s over.
After giving his third confusing, one hour lecture, Dr. Arslan talked with a few of us outside for about 20 minutes. Through various analogies, he tried to comfort us and ease our worries concerning the ginormous amount of new material we have to learn. While his intentions were good, and I actually came away feeling like I had spoken to a really heartfelt and genuine man, the dire reality of our situation was just heightened after the conversation. The highlight for me was when he actually compared neuro-anatomy to a car crash. Again, he was trying to be comforting, but really, a car crash???

Also today in class, I got an email to schedule a meeting with the dean of student affairs about molecular medicine. I kind of expected this but still cringed a bit. I’m not really sure what to expect. I don’t think the dean has ever had to deal with a student quite like me before so I’m interested to hear what he’ll have to say. Maybe he’ll compare my life to a car crash. He wouldn’t be too far off right now.

After studying some more interesting things (for the second day in a row!!!) I finished mixing the final track of Outwatch the Bear tonight. This is actually the third track I’ve finished mixing but it comes last on the record. It was a little tricky because the whole song changes dramatically about 2/3 of the way into it and also there’s a string section at the end with several cellos and violins that I had to EQ and mix. I’ve never EQed violins before and my first time EQing cellos was less than a week ago but I think it turned out alright. I feel like I brought through the warmth of the violins the best I could. After listening to the three finished tracks in my car I was happy to hear that there were very few changes that needed to be made. They are not quite studio quality but close. Pretty darn good for recording in an apartment and noisy school of music rooms with a tiny, dual input interface. And anyway, the project is supposed to be imperfect. That’s part of the goal.

A final thought: string sections are beautiful and I will definitely be using them on almost every record I put out from now on.

Welly well well, look who arrived! Relevance and all his glory has decided to grace my graduate education with his presence. And I was beginning to think he might never show up. Turns out he was just fashionably late.

After a painfully dense introduction to neuroscience this morning, I bought the book and found it very helpful and what’s more, quite interesting!
Now, I should mention that I am not particularly interested in the brain at all. I think it is way overrated as an organ. I mean, it just sits up there and sucks glucose all day. The liver, now there’s an admirable organ. But, the fact that I’m actually studying organs in the first place is awesome and something to be grateful for.
Anatomy started this afternoon as well and I was actually quite pleased with the teacher even if the subject of embryology is less than thrilling to me. Our course director gave an introduction to the course before hand though and I must say it got me thinking a little bit. He talked about the cadavers we would be using and how we should respect them. There was also a mention in class of a ceremony we will have at the end of the lab course where we will honor these silent teachers of ours, the people who donated their bodies to further our education. I think this is a great thing.
It will be an honor and privilege to cut into those bodies in the coming months, an opportunity very few people will ever get. I don’t know what else to say besides I have an overwhelming feeling of respect for those people and their bodies. I am looking forward to cutting and learning the most I can. It’s my hope that through the knowledge I gain, I will make their sacrifice (and their family’s) worthwhile.

It’s About Time

Tonight I experienced one of those rare moments in life when your expectations actually materialize in reality. It started about six months ago when I first dreamed up this project called Outwatch the Bear. I was finishing up my British and American Literature minor and had recently written a paper on Milton and Poe and the correlations that exist between their views of melancholy. Taking those aesthetic principles as a foundation, I developed a plan to create a piece of art that would embody a spirit of melancholy using my three favorite mediums: songwriting, photography, and filmmaking. Then I kept it to myself for a little over a month, turning over the various facets of the project again and again in my head. Was it over ambitious? Would I have time to carry it out? Would I be able to get the footage I needed while traveling? Would the technical resources I needed be available? Would my friends be able to help me at the right times? And most importantly, would I be able to channel the memories and relationships from my past that haunt me the most into a real, tangible, piece of thought provoking, emotion conjuring art? Was the inspiration there?
It is my great pleasure to announce that the answer to all of those questions is a resounding yes.
This evening, Dan Bakst and I watched 1/5 of the finished product. The song “Anchor Your Soul” with all of its water imagery and bitter declarations rang through the speakers of Dan Nguyen and Joyce Yong’s production computer as what seemed to be old damaged 8mm camera footage flickered on screen the abstract narrative I had pieced together in my head so many months before.
Before California.
Before winning awards.
Before medical school. And here it was, in front of me, just as I had imagined it. And even better perhaps because every second of footage and song carried memories of some of my closest friends lending their talents and skills to help me create an intensely personal work of art and one that I believe will stand the test of time better than anything I’ve ever created.
The whole thing is surreal.

This little break has proven much more profound than I originally predicted. Tomorrow I will stride into my new medically relevant, science centered classes with a sense of loss, gain, and achievement.

Assembly Lines

It is a well known fact that I have the best group of friends ever assembled. How awesome are they exactly? The world may never know.
I think Andy Warhol would probably be trying to steal them away from me if he were still alive.
They are that cool.

This morning, I shot the final scene for one of the Outwatch the Bear videos with Kevin and Amber. Sarah Wilson lent her directing skills to the shoot which I was extremely grateful for because I am a very poor director (I can’t communicate with actors properly). Then Sarah and I went back to my place and edited the first video for the project together. I really like the way it turned out. Sarah had some great ideas on speeding up and slowing down certain clips that really worked well.
At night, Laura came over to help put together the homemade dvd cases which is a slightly massive undertaking in and of itself. Joyce and Dan Nguyen came a little later to assist Laura while Dan Bakst joined me in the dining room turned editing studio to work on another one of the films.

While hanging around my house waiting for a call (that never came) from a man who owns a great field and beautiful horses that I want to shoot for one of the Outwatch the Bear films, Joyce and Dan surprised me with a cool little drawing done on sticky notes placed on a wall in my dining room. Later, they started working on the logos for The Two Keys Press, a type of art label we are starting up. There will be more to say about that very soon I believe.
Meanwhile, I finished mixing and mastering the first track of Outwatch the Bear. I ran into some EQ issues I’ve never dealt with before (mainly percussion) and implemented some clever panning of a couple cello parts. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job. The only real way for me to tell though is to burn it on a cd and drive around listening to it in my Jeep. That’s my favorite way of listening to recorded music, probably because the Jeep contains the best stereo system I own so I can pick up on most of the tiny details and, because of it’s speaker positions, it provides the best way for me to analyze specific pans.

Here’s to 100,000 more!

Almost exactly two years ago to the day, I watched MuteMath put on the best live show I had ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot of shows. Tonight I experienced a bit of deja vous as they once again played to a packed house at Orlando’s House of Blues and left everyone with their jaws on the floor.
How can a band be this good? My guess is divine help. Somewhere, a benevolent God wants to give us some small glimpse of what heaven is like
Yes, it was that good.
MuteMath is by far the tightest band I’ve ever witnessed. They improvise several times during their shows and it still looks like they’re all on the same page. Unbelievable.
Their skills as musicians are unparalleled. Every one of the four guys in the band plays their primary instrument at the highest level I’ve seen in any rock outfit.
And they get the showy stuff right too. Somehow, without ever coming off as cocky, they manage to do things like play drums on giant circular pads on a projection screen that shoots off patterns whenever the drum sticks hit, do hand stands, flips and generally beat up on a large keyboard at center stage, crowd surf while standing straight on top of a bass drum, and play to the absolute best light show I’ve ever seen in any type of show.
Everyone can keep their $165 U2 tickets. I’ll pay $20 to watch MuteMath instead any day of the week.

A Good Night’s Sleep

Photo by Joyce Yong

The botanical gardens are a little hidden gem at USF, a gem that for many poor reasons I have never seen with my own eyes. But this morning, Joyce brought me there to shoot some additional footage for Outwatch the Bear. I operated Dan’s little HD handheld and Joyce worked with the 5D to get some incredible looking shots of the landscape.
Later, the two of us scouted a location a little east of my house for one of the films. The field was nice but we probably wont use it because we need to shoot on other side of a barbwire fence and no one around was home to give us access.
In the afternoon, we picked up Dan and the three of us worked on kites for another one of the films. Dan made an awesome new kite on his own but when the two of us went down to Davis Island to try and fly it and the one Joyce and I built, the results were less than impressive. We could hardly get them in the air before they began spinning wildly out of control. I’m not sure if it was a design flaw or if the wind was too multidirectional but we were quite disappointed and came back to the house after about an hour.
At night, Joyce and I went to see Sleeping At Last perform live on a local tv show. The show is filmed at Southeastern University in Lakeland on a surprisingly nice set. They even had a quality jib! I was so jealous.
The band played a few songs on the show and then gave us a nice little concert after the official taping was over. Ryan O’Neal happens to be my all time favorite lyricist so it was a real treat for me to see him perform for the third time. Also, the other guy in the band, Dan, was incredible to watch play because of the giant effort he puts in to create a multitude of different sounds on his own simultaneously. Because the band can not always tour with a real string section, Dan has to set off the right string parts at the right times through multiple foot pedals and keyboards. Plus he has to play bass and the occasional piano line. Crazy. Their touring drummer also deserves some credit though for being able to sync up with prerecorded string parts without a metronome. A lot of bands would just play to a backing track and use in ear monitors that give them a metronome but it tells a lot about the character of a band when they decide to use loop stations and pedals for individual string parts throughout a song instead. It shows that they are genuine and that they care a lot about putting on a good live performance in whatever way they can. I was so inspired, I decided to soon buy some midi cables and a little recording interface of my own (instead of borrowing my friend Paul’s) so I can produce some higher quality piano and drum parts electronically.
After the show I got to talk to Jeremy Larson a little bit. He’s the guy who wrote and recorded most of the string parts for Sleeping At Last’s new album and all of the strings for MuteMath’s new album. He was touring with Sleeping At Last and opening up for them with his own stuff but because it was an odd tv show performance tonight, he just played some guitar and piano pieces on their songs.

Kite Work

The final molecular medicine test came and went and with it left my brief but significant affair with a consistent feeling of optimism.
Judging from the group test, I did bad.
Just bad enough to probably not pass the course.
But I’ll have to wait for the official grades to come out to know for sure.
Until then, I’ll be engaged in a subtle effort to ward off depression.
After the test, I continued to mix some of the tracks for Outwatch the Bear. Then Joyce came over and we made a great looking kite that we couldn’t get to fly. The kite is supposed to be for one of the two short films we’re rushing to finish during this short break so I can finally release Outwatch the Bear and move on to other things (mostly The Culprit Life, and, oh yeah, medicine).
Even with the looming threat of my educational failure, it feels nice to breath a little and embrace art fully once again. I’m sure this too will be a brief but significant affair.

There is a peace that surpasses all understanding.
That’s not coming from the Bible. Although that may be in there.
That’s coming from me, right now, in this place. This place being the night before the final exam for molecular medicine when I’m borderline passing and responsible for an unimaginable amount of material.
Now the peace itself, well I believe that is coming from God. Today was a good day, I think mostly because the prospect of being less that 24 hours away from experiencing five days of no science, lots of art, and lots of friends is exhilarating for me. I accomplished all of the organized reviewing I set out to do and then some so I can once again say I have no regrets. And unlike the night before the third test (or any of the other tests for that matter) it feels a little bit less like the eve of the apocalypse and a little bit more like Christmas eve.

I am happy.
And I am excited for the future, whatever it may hold.

Studied with mom again today! Luckily, she possesses a strange interest in grotesque diseases. Maybe that’s where I get it from. I have slightly enjoyed studying for this final because I am partly focusing on a set of 35 or so diseases who’s causes and symptoms I am committing to memory.

I really like diseases.

I realize that’s an odd thing to say but wouldn’t you rather have a doctor who finds diseases fascinating than a doctor who finds them completely dull and wants nothing to do with them?
I would choose the former in nearly all cases, except if maybe I was black man with syphilis in the mid 1900’s living in rural Alabama. Then maybe I’d seek a second opinion. Tuskegee anyone?

Seriously though, it’s a wonderful thing in life to stumble upon something in which you are passionate. This weekend it was diseases for me. Hopefully I can keep that in mind when I’m drowning under the weight of all of them in second year.

Study Study Study

My chicken tenders dressed up as dinosaurs for Halloween.
Tasty, tasty dinosaurs…