Sam Strasser

I have this paper for a “class” I’m taking right now. The class details, with excruciating precision, the musical history of African American pop music of the 1960s. The class, taught by visiting professor Robert Fink is, without a doubt, the hippest class I’ve ever been a part of. Professor Fink makes us all sing and laugh, and stories of Smokey Robinson, Berry Gordy and Marvin Gaye do really make us all forget we are in school.

But now I have to write a paper, 2500-3000 words on a topic of my choosing. I could either analyze a song, which I’m horribly unqualified to do, or analyze some texts. I’ve chosen option 2, but have now run into another problem: musicology does not provide any thesis I disagree with and its most compelling controversies fail to compel me at all. I have no thesis to my paper (due tomorrow) because I have no interest in it. The problem is relatively common to me, and unless I’m particularly compelled by a subject, I find writing on it impossible.

So if anyone has 2500 words on, say, the struggles of Motown in the early 70s, I’d be happy to turn that in. Otherwise, wish me luck.