crazy party weekend by Vincent H. '23

when i attended cpw as a senior in high school, my favorite events were cpwacc, firehose, next sing karaoke, and handwhistling. this past weekend was my last ever cpw, so i decided to revisit some of the same events i attended four years ago

cpwacc

cpwacc, short for cpw a cappella concert, is an annual event where all the mit a cappella groups perform for around ten minutes each

in high school i watched the ohms sing this mashup of ennodu nee irundhaal and permanent. the first few seconds of that performance were some of the most ethereal and gorgeous sounds i’d ever heard, and the chords in the climax of permanent some three minutes later were so perfect, and that was when i knew i wanted to join the ohms even though i didn’t have formal singing experience and knew nothing about south asian music other than having watched three idiots

now i’m part of the ohms, and we performed for the high schoolers at cpwacc last friday. i’ve spent the past four years singing and writing a lot of music, trying to create sounds as beautiful as the ones i heard back then and failing for the most part. it’s been a lot of fun and we’ve had some good concerts and i’ve become a much better vocalist in the process, but… i’ve scoured the musical world during college, taking world music and film music and western music classes, searching for and finding and mashing up songs in english hindi tamil spanish french german welsh mandarin sanskrit, trying to find the right modes and harmonies and syllables, and still, why do i feel things when i listen to other peoples’ performances but not my own? why does nothing ever sound as powerful as the songs in my memories? why is none of the music i write good enough?

maybe discovering new musical genres always feels like this. maybe music always sounds better as a first-time listener than as a composer or performer. even so, i can’t help but feel like i’ve failed, both as a creator and a musician. i’ve already written all the music i will ever write for the ohms, and none of it will ever be as good as the first song i heard from them

firehose

firehose is an event hosted by esp (educational studies program), a student group that organizes educational programs for local middle schoolers and high schoolers. basically the way firehose works is that current mit students teach classes on whatever topics they want to, and then you can show up for whichever classes you want

as a high schooler i liked firehose because esp seemed to have people who were passionate about running educational events smoothly, and because they had cute plushies. nowadays i still think that assessment was correct; i’ve had great experiences teaching and helping out with esp programs over the past few years, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that they’re the only logistically competent student group i’ve encountered at mit (some other student groups also run large events and do a decent job, but they often struggle heavily with problems like procrastination and delegation or regularly end up in situations where a few people end up having to do everyone else’s tasks). there’s a lot of focus on maintenance and documentation and organizational improvement, and because of this they’re one of the communities at mit that i respect very highly

anyway, the last time i went to firehose i tried to bake something and failed because i mixed up tablespoons and teaspoons. when i went on thursday i watched some high schoolers bake correctly, and then i taught some math and python

next sing karaoke

next house is a dorm at mit, and they have a group called next sing where people sing together. they also throw large karaoke parties twice a year, one of which happens during cpw

when i was in high school i basically only listened to classical music because i spent a lot of time playing cello in orchestras, and as a result i didn’t know much about non-classical music. so when i went to karaoke events i didn’t sing much, but i still thought they were fun, and i was jealous of people who knew a lot of pop music because they seemed popular and socially competent and well-adjusted and i was none of those things

i took my lack of music knowledge very seriously, to the point where i began making lists of songs to learn, and then i would go through the list one song at a time and loop that song continuously for thirty minutes or an hour or however long it took until i had it memorized, at which point i would move onto the next song. i memorized a few hundred songs in that manner, and afterwards i felt a little less insecure about my music knowledge

that all happened at the end of high school. nowadays i know a lot of songs and sing a lot at karaoke events, but there are other concerns on my radar – for instance, other people move their bodies to music a lot more naturally than i do. maybe someday i’ll decide to take that seriously too, and then i’ll spend a few dozen hours figuring out how to move better, but it’s not a priority for me at the moment. i think i’ve realized there will always be people that look cooler than you at parties

handwhistling

when i first went to cpw there were some east campus residents who ran an event teaching people how to handwhistle (whistling by making specific shapes with your hands and blowing air through them). i can’t whistle normally, but i got really close to figuring out handwhistling before the event ended, and then i forgot about it and stopped practicing

so i looked for an event on this year’s cpw schedule that would allow me to finish learning handwhistling, and didn’t see one. then i realized that probably all the avid handwhistlers had graduated already, and that almost nobody from my first cpw was still around

god i feel so old