The last degree of separation

Each time I left my job to study for a degree, it felt harder than the previous. I call the latest my last degree of separation, for truly it was more arduous than I had ever expected — a physical and geographical estrangement from those closest to me, rocketing me out of my comfort zone, plunging me into long bouts of solitary confinement and emotional isolation. Yet to do my research, I had to deliberately mingle with crowds of strangers who bonded with me in ways I never imagined possible. That is the paradox.

Two days before my final deadline, I discovered I had left out a chunk of research critical to my argument. How was I to integrate the phenomenon of music revivals into my already voluminous master’s thesis?

Panic set in.

I took a deep breath. It was late Saturday night. For the past two years, I had declined nearly all invitations. I had alienated myself so I could concentrate. In the last month, I reduced my visits to the gym. I skipped the daily ritual of washing my hair so I could free up time to write. I bought microwaveable meals instead of fresh vegetables that needed to be washed, chopped and cooked.

Here was the final sprint. I could do it. I just needed to cut.

Cut what?  The precious words that I had painstakingly invented and counted? When I finally reached the 12,000 word limit, I couldn’t stop. I kept going. How could I cut when each word was so deliberately and painfully created?

Suddenly I recalled the wise words of my first boss, a Filipino American man who set up the Singapore office of the British consulting firm I joined in London. At 23, I was dumbfounded whenever he looked at my spreadsheet results, shrugged his shoulders and said, “So what?!” Was my work not good enough? What did he mean by “so what”?

It’s useful now. Ask “so what” until whatever remains is the true “what” —  the thing that really matters. Pare it down to the bare bones — the essence. Everything else that is not relevant is noise.

Emboldened by that epiphany, I deleted an entire section detailing my personal reasons for researching the ukulele.

By now, I had become proficient at reading passive tense. Just distill one or two sentences, mash them up in active tense and put a new spin in this context. It sounded easy when I had the luxury of time.

Twelve hours before the deadline, I met the word count but I could not fathom writing a word of the abstract.

Something else nagged at me. No one had read any part of my thesis. Should I send it to El Maestro Doctor?  I had read his doctorate dissertation countless number of times. He could read and comment on my second draft while I slept. The five-hour time difference was a god send.

Monday 1st October 2018.  I woke up at 8 am and stared wide-eyed at the string of comments from El Maestro Doctor on my Google Doc. As I read each of his comments, I grew increasingly worried. How was I to revise my thesis and write the abstract in two hours? I had made an appointment for 10:30 am because I was so confident I could meet the noon deadline.

I e-mailed my tutor to beg for an extension. As I resolved each Google Doc comment and revised my final draft, I checked my e-mails for her response.

No word.

I called my tutor’s home number. She hadn’t read her e-mails. Sympathetic that I needed more time, she apologised that she was not authorised to give me an extension for this final assignment. “You would have to call the university’s support team and have very good reasons.”

By now, my aching, sleep-starved body was rebelling against my life being held hostage. Not an hour or a day more, it cried.

I cancelled my appointment. I needed every remaining minute to meet the deadline.

Determined to finish, I forced myself to crank out the abstract.

Paradox of Simplicity:
Song Sheets for Participative Music Making in Ukulele Groups

The amateur ukulele club scene is a kind of musical revival of participative music making, reminiscent of the sixties folk music and eighties rock band, with the ukulele as a self-accompanying instrument for singers and nonsingers alike. The explosive growth of ukulele clubs and sales raises the question: how does the combination of a simple song sheet with no music symbol or notation and a small, lightweight four-stringed acoustic instrument provide sufficient material for group music making by performers who are not trained to read music or at all in music? For classically trained musicians who require Western notation and its myriad of symbols and terms to communicate and execute a musical work as accurately and completely as possible, the one-page song sheet used in ukulele groups seems a paradox of simplicity. The answers to the research questions arising from this paradox are found after extensive literature review and qualitative research conducted via participant observation, survey, discussion forums, e-mail correspondence, and conversation with creators of song sheets and group leaders.