You all know, there are some occasions on which winter times steal a day or two to July and August. Weather is suddenly sunny, not a single breeze blows, and clouds are only seen far in the distant horizon. I noticed, during this last year, that gazing at the reflections on the sea surface in the mornings happens to be a delight, indeed. It’s then when you realize that East coast has its own charms, in a way.

There have not been many distractions lately. Some people went off for a few days, feeling sick. Some others are in stays, or in improvised holidays. It feels like all of sudden the majority of people dissapeared, and that there is no rush to get things done. And that makes working so much more pleasant. I do transfections; I transfect, as I am in charge of carrying out the experiments. I’m happy I found what was wrong about the protocol. This time, I am managing to perform multiple exps a day, even if I am alone. And I keep on this. Soon, I will give another take on the pending cloning. Just step by step.

Things are calm. I can keep easily focused on routinary things for my project, and I keep learning technique. I even find some time to read a paper or two a day, even if I do it only to discard them later. My main conversations are about last-half of the century music, from basque psychedellic country to brit-pop. About the importance of an album, as a holistic piece of work, in terms of design and technique. It’s a good thing that this tech guy, who sits next to me, is always around; same as with that one postdoc – topics never become boring when chatting with them. As I said before, there is few people to hang around, but it’s a bit better like this sometimes. I happen to handle people better when one by one.

Speaking of music, I have been jumping from genre to genre every one or two weeks. I keep discovering groups, bands, singers, names, genres, mixtapes, beat-tapes. What a nice discovery the lo-fi hip hop was, together with basic terms as downtempo or ambient. Influences are merging in my understanding of music, which engages me to keep listening to stuff even if later on they dissapear in the stream of videos and bandcamps I hit every day, as I’m reading or pipetting.

And after routine at work, which ends around seven (depending on how satisfied I feel that day), I go back home while listening to my own beats and tapes, just to keep doing new stuff when arriving. Recording, sampling, looping. Syncing. Learning how to find the equilibrium inside songs, between notes and silences, between beats and noises. In a very elemental way. In the end, about twelve or thirteen demos are done in one month. Just as I cross to-do’s from my lists.

I like it like that. Simple productivity. Constance, in the way I work, in the way I feel. New stimuli come and go, and they help to break a bit the routine, liberating you from the smallest frustration. Overall, despite bad thoughts, misbeliefs and irrationalisms, I still long for tranquility and zen, as the aura that surrounds me. Together with my work, that will be the way to live forever after.

I want to remember this precious state of stasis. I want to be remembered as one of these people who brings this stasis we all need from time to time.

What a good time.

Good time for a change
see, the luck I’ve had
can make a good man
turn bad

So please please please
let me, let me, let me
let me get what I want

this time.