:: My Divided Soul ::

For awhile now, I’ve been thinking about a tattoo. Is it me or does such a thing not fit with me? I look at the middle of my right forearm and see it as a prime spot for some ink. More than that, I’ve been pondering as a tattoo the background you see on Cold’s MySpace Page.

It is the symbol for the band Cold, whose new album came out today, incidentally, and it is completely amazing. I do like Cold, it is true, but my interest in the symbol does not stem from some unhealthy obsession with said band. There is something that just draws me to the spider as a tattoo more and more. Does anyone actually think this is a remotely reasonable thing for me to do?

I am now officially running for the office of PhD. In other words, I passed my A-exam. I’d say the presentation went quite well, as there were at least a few people who didn’t seem completely baffled by the work. A number of people even asked questions, which was the part I dreaded the most. However, they were all answerable questions and I’d like to think I held my own in responding. This means I now have my Masters degree and, as Dexter said, “all you have to do now is write a thesis.”

On Friday, I will be presenting my A-Exam for admission to candidacy in the PhD program. The work is based on the paper I presented at MKM in Germany. Below is the announcement for my exam and any of you in Ithaca are more than welcome to attend!

Title: A Proof-Theoretic Approach to Hierarchical Math Library Organization
Speaker: Kamal Aboul-Hosn
When: Friday, 19 August 2005 at 11:00am
Location: Rhodes 484

The relationship between theorems and lemmas in mathematical reasoning is often vague. Nevertheless, the decisions we make in creating lemmas provide an inherent hierarchical structure to the statements we prove. Theorem provers generally have flat library structures with no formal distinction between lemmas and theorems. The reasons to distinguish lemmas from theorems in these systems is the same as the reasons in papers: to ascribe various levels of importance and to introduce dependency or scoping relationships. We seek to formalize these notions and provide a proof-theoretic means by which to organize a set of proofs in a hierarchical fashion that reflects this natural structure.

In this talk, we propose a system that represents and manipulates scope formally through the structure of the library of proofs. We provide a representation of proofs, a set of rules to manipulate proofs, and several motivating examples. We believe that the ability to create and manage complex scoping and dependency relationships among proofs will allow systems for formalized mathematics to more accurately reflect the natural structure of mathematical knowledge.

I know that this is the third entry in a row that has something to do with drumming. That fact probably accurately reflects how important drumming is in my life. Something has happened in my drumming life that I have wanted for many, many years: I got to play rock songs in front of people.

I now play in a band with Dexter and Joel. They have been playing music together for many years, most recently in the band The Burning Sensations. Their drummer left and now we’ve started jamming together, getting through a number of songs pretty quickly.

Our first gig happened last week, at a fraternity. However, the show was for a bunch of lovely ladies from the vet school…and they were in togas. Playing some of my favorite songs in front of a bunch of women in togas. Can life get any better? We ran through a bunch of awesome songs including “Rearviewmirror” by Pearl Jam, “Inside Out” by Eve 6, and “I Alone” by Live. The songs that really got the crowd jumping were “Vertigo” by U2 and the originals that The Burning Sensations had written. It was my first time being exposed to the latter songs, so I had to fake my way through them.

For my first rock show in front of people in eight years, I’d say it went very well. I remember messing up a few times to the point that Dexter looked at me with a confused look on his face. I doubt many in the audience noticed, as a number of them had consumed a significant amount of alcohol. Nevertheless, I was rockin’ out with my head banging and my sticks twirling. As we were doing “sound check” Joel comments that I would probably have to play more quietly but, yeah, that didn’t happen. I played the church show with Dexter using brushes, so I wanted to take full advantage of the fact that I had my drumsticks in my hands for this show. One simply cannot play a song like “Rearviewmirror” quietly! This is why I wear earplugs. I think I left some of the audience and Dexter and Joel wishing they had done the same.

We played for more than two hours and had a number of sing-alongs with the members of the audience. The next morning, my arms hurt, my neck hurt, and my back hurt. It is the kind of pain that comes with the satisfaction of having had a lot of fun fulfilling a lifelong dream. I can’t wait until we get the opportunity to play again. We just practiced again tonight, learning a couple new tunes. We are looking to play some gigs that will be open to the public so those of you in I-Town can come rock out with us!

I mentioned a few things in my previous post about being a drummer for life and I feel the need to go into a bit more detail about that. I’ve been playing drumset for thirteen years and it has become a part of me. Playing an instrument like the drums is more than just making sound. It is freeing myself from the rest of the world in short moments of bliss, where all that exists are the drums, the music, and me.

It took years to get to that point. When I was in elementary school, I played percussion. It was at this time I learned the fundamentals and played on a little rubber pad with small sticks that matched my small size. In middle school, I started in the band, but quit when the conductor told kids to hit each other if they messed up and also threatened to put “Wind-up Monkey” next to my name in the program if I continued with my cymbal playing technique. The following year, I started private lessons with a Penn State student, Doug Stephens. He was the perfect teacher: patient, encouraging, and good at what he did. He continued my lessons on snare drum until half a year later when I was ready to move to drumset.

A thirteen-year-old really can’t feel much cooler than when he receives his first set of drums. I remember I skipped my weekly Energy Club meeting to open the box and put the drums together. I doubt anyone will fault me for that. My first lessons on the entire kit were spent just trying to get the coordination down. It takes a bit of work to get the limbs to work independently. I had a blast doing it, though, as well as just randomly banging around.

By the time I entered high school, I tried out for and made jazz band. Granted, I was in by default, as only two of us tried out and they took two drummers. It was my first experience playing with a group and was I ever bad at it. The music should have been relatively easy, but I still struggled. One can read music and practice alone, but it does not provide much preparation for an ensemble situation. The next year, I tried out again–my audition went horribly–and didn’t get in.

A couple years later, I was in my first band called Mandalla. Oh, those were fun times, having the guys in my basement playing and writing songs. We thought we were awesome. In fact, Mandalla is a bit of a legend at State College High School, where we played a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” so loudly, they could hear it across the street.

Over the years, I continued weekly lessons with Doug and then with another Penn State student, Gregg Goldner, as well as played in another band called The Whole Nine. At least, that’s the name we had for the longest. We managed to get one show in before I left the band because of personality conflicts.

It wasn’t until I started playing with my musical partners in crime that the drums became to me what they are today. I am of course referring to BNG, Lee, and Matt. We didn’t have the goal of playing shows in public. We didn’t feel the pressure to write our own songs, although we did enjoy doing so at times. The guys would come over pretty much weekly and we’d run through our favorite songs: “Rearviewmirror,” “Them Bones,” “I Alone,” “Wax Ecstatic,” the list goes on. My drumming developed a great deal during the years I played with those gentlemen. We have a musical connection that is still felt whenever the rare opportunity comes to play together. I think those who saw me mess up in the jazz band would be impressed by my improvement.

At that point, I had stopped taking lessons and the drums became only something I wanted to do, not something I ever had to do. It became a release for me. When sad. When upset. When energetic. When aggressive. When really happy.

Since coming to Cornell, I’ve jammed with Steve Chong and a number of other people. Steve and I were even in a jazz ensemble that was developing nicely until most of the people left the university. It seems my next musical endeavor is to be joining the band Dexter plays in. It seems I might finally get to live out my lifelong dream of playing in a rock band at a party or bar in front of people.

I am by no means a professional drummer. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be, as it would make drumming something I had to do. For now, I’m quite content coming home in the evening, putting my iPod on my belt and my headphones in my ears, and playing along to my favorite songs. I get lost in it for five minutes or ten minutes or an hour–whatever I am feeling at the moment. When I nail a particularly interesting part, I scream “Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!” as I continue to play. If I cut myself, I simply bleed on the drums and finish the song. Drumming for me truly is a way of life.

For those who are interested, I’ve posted a few songs, although I make no claims to their quality:

• Nothing Up Your Sleeve (3.72 MB) with Steve
• You Wanna Believe In Something (3.76MB) with Steve
• That Funky Pedal Thing (7.46 MB) improv with BNG, Lee, and Matt
• The Roman Candle (3.67 MB) with BNG

For those even more interested, here are a current picture and schematic diagram of my drumset, too.

A couple weekends ago, I got to do something I haven’t done in a long while: play music in front of people. In this case, it was playing the background music for the First Congregational Church musical production “Daniel” with Dexter. Actually, we did the show at Dexter’s church a month or so ago, before this writing outlet even existed for me. The second time we did the show was at the First Presbyterian Church in Trumansburg.

The last time I got to play music in front of people was doing some quiet jazz with Matt at a frat where a bunch of stuffy rich white boys walked around with their proud fathers drinking and laughing. At that show, we were paid in beer, which I don’t drink. But that past show is not what is important here.

Playing in “Daniel” came about when Dexter asked me five days before the show if I’d be willing to do it, as their drummer had pulled out at the last minute. The prospect of playing music in front of people again excited me a great deal and so I agreed. The thought also made me a bit nervous. While the jazz show with Matt went all right, it wasn’t exactly done at a volume at which mistakes could be noticed, and I made plenty of mistakes. This show was a bit different as my playing not only affected the other musicians, but the twenty or thirty kids singing, dancing, and acting.

In my favor, I suppose, was that there was no actual drum part written, so I could improv it. At the first rehearsal, I realized that sixteen years of playing drums and percussion has given the hands and feet an ability to just know what to play. My brain didn’t need to send signals actively, most of the time. The right foot naturally locked into Dexter’s bass playing. The hands knew which notes to accent in order to complement Bill’s piano. I really felt like a drummer. We were the “Babylon Band.”

Bill wrote all the songs for the show and I have to say he did an amazing job. The songs were catchy and upbeat, with swing, 50s rock, and ballads. The kids seemed to have a blast doing the show and I think the parents and attendees enjoyed it, too. I find the songs running through my head at times, in particular, a lovely little ditty with a bunch of young children dressed up as lions singing, “Munch, munch, where’s our lunch? Crunch, crunch, thanks a bunch!”

Watching the kids react to my drumming reminded me of my days in the show South Pacific when I was 10. It was that show that was partially responsible for cultivating my interest in drumming. During breaks in rehearsal, I would go up to the orchestra pit (yes, the pit was above the stage) and bang around on the drums and have a grand ol’ time. During rehearsal for “Daniel,” I noticed a few of the kids smiling and air drumming as they walked passed me. That made me smile. It seems the drums are just an instrument that draws people in. I mean, who doesn’t want to beat something with sticks?

It all makes me think that I could be interested in teaching drum lessons someday. However, I’m not sure I have the technique and ability necessary to do so. What I do know is that I am definitely a drummer for life.