hello, poindexter!

January 24, 2010

After spending the past 7 months doing little besides constantly promoting and touring for our last album, Still Night Still Light, it’s finally time for me to return to Columbia University and continue to chip away at my second undergraduate degree, and I am absolutely ELATED about this decision.

So many things are different for me than they were the last time I was at Columbia (nearly two years ago!) but the most important things have remained the same. In the time that has passed I’ve gotten the chance to travel all over the world–I’ve seen so many new cities, met countless wonderful people, and have had the privilege of being in Au Revoir Simone everyday. I can’t even believe my own life half the time–waking up in Beijing, going to sleep in Seoul, playing sold out venues in Paris–I’m a really lucky girl. For any of you who came and saw us for the SNSL tour, thank you so much for sharing that time with me, Annie, and Erika. We’ve been committed to making our shows better than ever before, and we’re so proud of the last album and how well it’s done, thanks to all the people who have supported us for nearly 6 years now.

Most people don’t really get it when I say that despite all of this, I long to get back to science–I’ve been longing, for years now, to return to school. As much as I love music, this desire to do research and participate in the world of ideas is so much a greater part of who I am and how I feel I can best contribute to the planet. The greatest thing about my job now is that I get to make people happy. Those times when someone comes up to me after a show just to tell me how much a song has meant to them or gotten them through a difficult time, are the rare moments when I feel I’m not completely wasting my time in a harsh and silly industry. I think I’ve always had a somewhat conflicted relationship with the idea of being an ‘artist’–it takes a certain amount of ego to convince yourself that what you have to say is so important that it trumps doing something more useful with your life. And as good as it feels to write, record, and play music, those things make up only a fraction of what I actually do as a partner in a small business. Being in a band is a job like any other. It has its glamorous moments, but mostly it’s a lot of really hard work, and most of it seems absurd, especially at a time like this, when everyone should be doing their part to actively make the world a better place.

It’s with this thought in mind that I’ve found my initial interest in doing Astrophysics has shifted towards doing something more Biology and Ecology based. I’ve always loved all the sciences pretty equally, so I’m just as excited about getting the chance to study microbial mats as I was about getting to go on observing runs at telescopes. Maybe I’ll even get to do both, who knows.

I have to get back to my homework (Chemistry is kind of brutal!) but I’ll be here more regularly now, expounding on the trials and tribulations of being a 30 year old undergraduate science student. Adventures await.

H