| I'm desperate |
[May. 5th, 2009|01:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  yes | ] |
| [ | music |
| | cloud cult | ] |
I want to be beautiful. I want. To. Make things beautiful. I. want.
I have marinated on my decision, and I say. Yes.
Yes. Is such a beautiful word.
Yes.
Say it. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Will I graduate? Yes.
Am I happy? Yes.
Who am I? Yes.
Where will I be in 20 years? Yes.
See. Yes.
I have a song in my mind, and if I weren't working on a paper, I would record it.
Right now I'm trying not to cry.
Yes. |
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| This one actually helps me write my paper |
[May. 3rd, 2009|04:04 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | everything, apparently | ] |
So, music can be defined as organized sound. Plain and simple, no bravura, just sound that is also organized. It's not so different form sound really. It is sound. The word "organized" only serves to differentiate music from noise. So, what type of organization makes sound into music? This definition has historically included pleasing natural sounds such as running water and birdsong. Does it then also include non-natural sounds like machinery? Also, who draws the line at continuous sounds? Running water and birdsong typically exhibit an underlying pattern or identifiable rhythm. Repetition, as well as certain qualities of pitch and timbre, make these sounds qualify as "music."
But, what if the human mind creates a rhythm, or an organization of "noise" sounds. Can something then be classified as music when a person hears not the clatter of stones, an errant gust of wind, a distant exclamation, a passing car, but hears a pattern of sounds. Even though the particular sonic qualities of those sounds may never repeat themselves in the same fashion again. Isn't this just an exaggeration of all music? No two performances of Beethoven's fifth are ever the same, but we perceive them to be the same by approximation. It is through the power of perception that we classify something as music.
So, think about Cage's bell thing. I don't know what it's called, but basically he wrote a piece of music where a bell is sounded once every thousand years. It would be impossible for one human being to hear more than one note of this piece in his lifetime, but it is still organized, and it is still sound. Furthermore it was composed and was written for a musical instrument. It is a piece that will never end, and that noone can ever listen to in its entirety, but it is still music.
What makes pi a number anyway? It never really ends, just keeps going on and on forever (and that really makes much less sense than Cage's bell thing) but it's still called a number. It's a rather important number, too.
Aw crap, I'm out of meandering thoughts. Did this have a point that hasn't already been beaten to death by contemporary music theorists? No. But now I have to go back to writing my paper.
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| I should really keep these thoughts to myself |
[May. 3rd, 2009|01:07 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | gorgas library | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  (not really)awake(since 10pm) | ] |
| [ | music |
| | gin and tonic | ] |
Next time I give a lecture/presentation and I mention E. O. Wilson, or anyone who has any connection to him whatsoever, I will say this:
"And for those of you who don't know who E. O. Wilson is, the world refers to him as the only smart person to come out of Alabama."
I really should keep these things to myself. The idea is rather complex and poorly stated here. What I really meant to say was:
"Dude's from Alabama! RepreSENT!!!" |
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| successful in every way, except the ones I've invested capital in. |
[May. 3rd, 2009|08:11 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  prolly delirious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | mah crazee beets | ] |
Okok, so my drummer can beatbox. Makes sense. I mean, I can whistle good because I play a wind instrument. He can beatbox good because he plays drums. Reason is amazing.
So, I asked him how one might go about learning how to beatbox, and he said something like "Make a 'puh' sound. Ok, now say 'ch'. Ok, now do that alot until you get good." So I tried it for ~ ten seconds and said, "This is hard, screw it." And never tried again.
Then today (which is weeks later), I was avoiding doing my paper(s) and started makin funny noises cuz I was tired of singing. Then out of nowhere BOOM I was beatboxing. Sick. I am so advanced at beatboxing right now. I am a prodigy, biotches.
Gifts just rain inexplicably from the heavens for some people--people like me. I have a gift: a gift from GOD. I shall tame wild beasts with my skillz, appease the capricious humours of man, and spread peace throughout the land.
Don't be jealous that I have been chosen instead of you. Rejoice, children. A new age is upon us. |
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| Sometimes I Think I'm Clever |
[May. 2nd, 2009|05:50 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | foooooool | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  devious | ] |
| [ | music |
| | ummmm, yeah still some horses | ] |
Scenario One:
I want to invent a post-modernist anecdote full of tragic existential beauty, just so I can end it with the phrase, "and Leonard Cohen can suck my balls!!!"
Scenario Two:
Four friends: 1).Me, 2). a good friend who is privy to the conversation, 3.) one male who was born on Mother's Day, and 4). a friend to whom I am introducing #3 to.
Me: "Oh, have you met 3). yet? Yeah, he was born on Mother's Day."
friend 4: "Oh, that's neat."
Me: "Yeah, he's one bad Mother--"
friend 2: "Watch yo' mouth!"
Me: "I'm just talkin' 'bout how a child isn't a very good Mother's Day present. I mean, he was a difficult child; I know his mother. She told me all about how difficult the labor was. Big head, you know. Said it was one of the worst days of her life. Really, I was just gonna say 'He's one bad Mother's Day present'..."
I don't know why that second one amuses me so.
Anyway, papers are important.
---edit----
Scenario Three:
I came back to my paper having forgotten that the last sentence I had written is: "In this way I hope to find a greater understanding of why music is such a big fucking deal."
Breaks are important. Also, re-reading your work. Very important. (I mean really, did I start that sentence with a preposition?! "this way" = VAGUE! That's just weak writing.)
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| I Can't Believe I'm Going to Graduate |
[May. 2nd, 2009|02:52 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | the moon | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  apathetic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | band of horses | ] |
Really. I don't believe that I will.
I have, let's count them chronologically: 1 from three years ago, 1 from a year ago, 1...2.3..4 late papers from this semester. Six? I have six papers that are late. That I have to turn in next week. Plus one more paper that is not yet late, plus a 16 page explanation for why I suck due on Monday. Aaaaaand. What else? Is that it? My, not so bad as I thought.
Point is
I'm screwed.
And I suck at life.
I'm shooting for average, but I'll be happy if I pass. I really don't give two fucks about my GPA. The things I want to do can't be learned in any case. Not with a rubric. Not within a quantified bell curve.
And my lack of caring has ceased to surprise me.
College, I am so over you. |
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| I have some irrational fears |
[Apr. 30th, 2009|02:25 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | gorgas library | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  embarrassed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | ugly casanova | ] |
But when those fears prove to be founded in life more substantial than paranoia... I handle it surprisingly well.
I thought, perhaps, I might become an inadvertent subject of an internet porn site. Now how might this happen? I thought. My instances of public nudity are fairly few. And most of them recent: this is an old fear. Where did it come from? Surely, not from those moments of impassioned abandon in scattered parking lots? I thought. Those are not very common, nor are they predictable.
It never occurred to me that the third floor was a suitable vantage point for wandering eyes. Well, to be honest, it did occur to me. But surely not from the third floor, with the windows at such an angle... in the daylight I never turn on my own lights. Surely the glare of sunlight from those glossy panes make them seem very mirrors to the outside world. At night, I'm very careful to turn the lights out before anything remotely revealing happens. Surely, I thought, surely this paranoia is ill-founded. Surely this irrational fear is not worth the effort of shutting and re-opening the blinds several times each day. I do love sunlight, and sometimes I'm in a rush. Five minutes to class time is not enough time to dress properly, make myself presentable AND close the blinds. Not enough time to make it to class at a reasonable moment.
Until I get a phone call. Apparently there is a potluck on the lawn beneath my window, at a nearby academic building. "I know you're home, I can see your window! Come down here right now! There's a potluck!"
Casual conversation. I glance up at my exposed window, dark now and impenetrable in the deep evening moonlight. Wow, you really can see into my window from here. The one spot I've neglected to notice, just below the shrouded veil of perfectly landscaped birch. How... I wonder if you can see in during the daylight. "Oh yes." Panic. "I was laying down on the grass here one day when you were changing. I saw your nipples."
Oh dear God.
You know how you walk into a room, and someone says hello, grins, and looks at you like "oh, if you only knew what I know now, things would never be the same"? Does anyone else ever get that? I've been getting that alot recently. In class. At the library. The coffee shop. Every moment of odd introductions and, "Hey, you remind me of my sister-in-law" or "I don't know you, but you're cute" and "I saw you the other day, and didn't say hi. I don't think you could see me" for the past four months are suddenly being recalled from that ambiguous file in my memory bank labeled "that was odd for some reason..." and reevaluated in a horrifying new light.
Back in the lawn, a handful of acquaintances, friends, and one distant ex lounging in the grass, huddled about a picnic table, I hear the conversation proceed unprovoked. "Yeah, just imagine how many people, how many strangers have walked by and seen you. People that would never admit to having seen you."
No, I'd rather not, really. Thanks so much. Your insight into the worse possible thing to ever say right now is amazing.
I'm in the library right now, so I'm not going to google image "open window naked girl" or "co-ed voyeurism" and search obsessively for some indication that I am insane. That there is no internet porn site with a section about me changing in the midmorning sunlight to prying eyes. I'm going to sit here and write an insightful and grade-salvaging essay on immigration in America and its connection to social justice and global crises. And not think about meeting people on the street who have secretly seen me naked on the internet. And possibly added me to their spank bank. And possibly are stalking me. And many other equally horrible and possible things.
oh, darn it all. |
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| How Am I Going to Make It Right? |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  summer | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Bjork - Medulla | ] |
"With a palm full of stars
I throw them like dice
On the table
Repeatedly
I shake them like dice
And throw them on the table
Repeatedly
Until the desired constellation appears."
Some things are so beautiful you can't be sad. I'm sad, then I see something that is so contrary to depression that I cannot help but see my self-pitiful state as an imposed anomaly in a wonderful world. Though
there are some things I have no right to reconcile. There are certain things in certain cases that deserve suffering in its full term.
But I don't care. Suffering doesn't change the daylight streaming into my window, nor the half of a milky-blue robbin's egg.
And sometimes I'm evil. Evil doesn't stop the lovely things existing. If I find joy in them, is that unfair? Is it unjust?
Being evil has never made me happy, and isn't that the point? I suppose it is easier that way. Or is it harder? Well
I'll just keep casting. |
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| Happy Holidays |
[Apr. 21st, 2009|01:55 am] |
I'm sick. Oh, woe. My neck aches on the insides, all the way down. My neck aches on the outsides, all the way around.
HOW does it do that? How does this illness manifest in so many different and unpleasant ways? Oh, agony has hit with the swiftness of a clever fox.
Bodies are stoopit. Just because I'm not sleeping (because of the school), not eating (because of the monies), and generally all-around stressed to the max, that is NO EXCUSE for you to let tiny organisms attack my body, body! What type of evolutionary hell-spiral is this? You're not able to take care of your body, so your body just GIVES UP? Nay! I say you should be stronger than ever, immune system! You should be overcompensating, picking up the slack; why else would I let you chill with me on the weekends? Damn you, you bloody backstabbing boob! You are not the dog's bollocks today, no sir. You have lost major coolness points with this stunt, body. Major points.
Really. If I were lost in the wilderness and I needed you to get me out of a jam, how do I know you'd be there for me? I just don't know what to think about you anymore, body. You've changed (and what is this! pubic hair????? Wait, no. Different kind of change....different kind of change....).
Ok, so in summation: ouch. My body sucks for letting me down. |
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| hoooooo |
[Apr. 12th, 2009|08:50 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | a fish tank? | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | too awake | ] |
| [ | music |
| | major organ and the adding machine | ] |
I think that Easter should be a holiday in which one is nice to seemingly insane people.
No other holiday supports the implausible quite like Easter does.
So, though seemingly insane claims might be hard to believe now, one day alot of people might consider them completely valid. The crazies of today are the prophets of tomorrow.
So, be nice to crazy people on Easter.
You never know.
And Jesus is my hero. Peace and love are worth it. |
|
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| AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa |
[Apr. 8th, 2009|01:57 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | da dorm | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  40 pages in 2 nights. | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Amon Tobin - Bricolage | ] |
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaa
a
amphetamines
rhymes with
the end to a means.
And it means
no more sweet dreams.
Why eat cake when we can make a mountain of the myth?
*clappityclappity*
This is how I deal with stress. Livejournal, you are my little squishy ball that I keep in the top drawer of my desk. |
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| Nudity as a coping mechanism |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|02:03 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | enjoy yourself | ] |
| [ | music |
| | whistles in the distance | ] |
As a child, I had severe anxiety. I was lucky enough to have a handful of compassionate souls become my most treasured companions. This kept me sane. However, when I reached adulthood, anxiety attacked my consciousness as a great tension suddenly released: like a taut spring, a rubber band gun, or the Big Bang.
Since arriving in college and becoming a student of music, I have measured all accounts of my life--from the diligence of my willpower to the act of making love--to music. So, when I began my journey as a performance major I was forced, against my will by the sheer force of innate brain activity, to equate musical performance with the eptitude of my soul. I found it impossible in my first three years of intensive instruction to separate the act of performing from the perception that within that act, I was displaying my naked, honest soul to complete strangers.
That thought worried me. I have led a life of underachieving with the intrinsic philosophy that if I do not expend every ounce of my energy to one task, I cannot discover that everything I can give is not enough. Basically, to avoid at all costs the knowledge that I am inadequate.
With the belief that music is the manifestation of one's whole being, and with the belief that my music is a representation of my soul, I was so afraid of discovering who I really was that I never had the courage to look. I was convinced of the feebleness of my own nature and tried at all costs to hide my true nature from myself and, with utmost intensity, from others. This, in short, is why I could not continue the performance tract.
Then, I learned how to be naked. The realization did not happen all at once. I took a great deal of time, and an even greater deal of caution exploring the limits of my own self-awareness. It began when I committed myself to a company of 150 some odd youths who each relied on me, personally, to realize their dreams. And I relied on 150 individuals to actualize my own aspirations. If one failed, we all failed, and that reality made me ashamed. I failed. I failed horribly, and was replaced by another, less worthy, but more qualified individual. This failure haunted me for years; but, I realized slowly that there is no room for self-doubt in a world of love, a world of dedication, a world of absolute trust in one's companion, and the complete--almost desperate--resolve to push oneself to perfection. We all failed. And this is the key:
We all fail. We fail miserably. Painfully. With grandeur and with disgrace. We all fail.
Failure is a celebration. Failure, imperfection, and inadequacy are beautiful. It seems wrong. We all want to be perfect, to make something of ourselves, to be recognized and respected. To impact human life in such a way, we shall never be forgotten. Yet, to understand that to be forgotten completely is the greatest honor humanity can bestow, that to be utterly imperfect is a mark of beauty, is to understand yourself.
So, I say: if you can stand naked before your companions, your mentors, jurors and strangers alike, then you are free. If I can be completely unashamed of my physical self; mark, realize, and celebrate every inch of my body publicly and without fear of what others will see--of what I will see--then how should I be afraid of my soul?
Get naked. Anxiety is a construct. Strip it away, bare yourself to the world and see what you are. Then you can no longer be afraid, only aware.
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| splode |
[Sep. 17th, 2006|11:49 pm] |
It's so hard to write about something you really care about as an assignment. How does one go about discussing the deep nagging tugs that throw dust into your thoughts? Baaaaaa.. what do I say about capitalism and socialism and the failure of revolution in image? I feel like that little tinge of dissonance I've felt all my life has been given a name, but I still cannot put it into words. ................................................................................................................................................................... why is the elipse so comforting....... it sets me free, I no loner have to feel like there is a beginning... nor an ending........ I can continue on for as long or as short as I like and the elipse justifies it all. It is space to think. An illustrated pause. Ambiguous and mysterious and alluding to something....... You fill in the blanks, you connect the dots.
................................................................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Screaming in text just isn't as satisfying.
catharsis... catharsis... catharsis... catharsis...
But. It's dry.
Some people never change. |
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| maaaaaah, don't die! |
[Sep. 7th, 2006|12:34 am] |
So, my poor acoustic guitar has heard his bell tolling and seen the zenith of his flight. The bridge is slowly pulling itself free from the body and a neck long twisted is becoming increasingly distant from the strings it once loved.
Anyway... anyone have an old guitar they're willing to sell? Or donate? Or lend, even? Rent, perhaps? Hollow bodies are great. I need an electric anyway. Acoustic is where the heart is. Any will work. Ask around--there's nothing more beautiful than a good used guitar.
(as always, I'm also in the market for any musical instrument one may be interested in getting rid of. Trupets, flutes, tambourines, drums, violins... anything really. Let me know what you've got and I'll probably want it).
Urgency may or may not be needed. |
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| Carolina Crown Royal |
[Jul. 11th, 2006|12:46 am] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | hoooooome | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | hot hot heat in ma head | ] |
Dear me, so I've been home for some time now. Drum corps is muchley missed and the plan is to volunteer from July 18th to the 29th. That will take me from AL to LA, a good week in TX (in which there will be a free day) AR TN and back to GA as preparation for Madison rises to a crescendo!!! Oh, this is exciting, Crown broke 80 this weekend and I only wish I were still on the field.
( Here's the story on how I fell out of commission if you haven't already heard it all. )
Short story =
The doctor verified a pulled groin muscle that would take a month to heal. Noone in their right mind would let me march. Matt put Jevon in my spot... dropped me to alternate. It still stings. But I got my tuition refunded, boarded a greyhound bus at midnight and spent the next day in transit... it was a long day.
Two buses, a trolly, two airplanes, two car rides, and twelve shots of espresso later, I was home.
And I was lonely. Never thought I'd think of showers as lonely, nor of beds as awkward. Never thought I'd miss food truck lines or morning stretches. I partied... somehow it doesn't even compare. In the beginning I wanted home more than anything. Then I realized I'd be in agony if I weren't on tour. I began to love Drum Corps, really understand it... and the people. And now I'm home. It feels like home again, but at first I could have sworn I was leaving it instead. I needed that 15 hours of bus stations and airport terminals... I needed time to forget where I was coming from. Forgetting is easy. Especially in sleeplessness and books and headphones.
Ah well, life goes on. It's a rare gift to be able to watch a show I once marched, live from the stands. I'm ready for that shock and awe.
tired now,
Mika |
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