I once had a brain

I don't know much about science or math, and this bothers me. I've never known all that much, and a lot of what I did know, I've forgotten.
I want to know. I want to think, I want to learn. I want to know how the world works, about the stars and the oceans and molecules. I want to be able to manipulate numbers, explore the cosmos from that end. I want to know what philosophers think about the world and what scientists have found out. I want knowledge.

But I'm in music school. And a large part of many of the academic classes I've taken feels pointless, exercises in wasting time. And I don't know how to do it alone.

yeah, I haven't been updating, I'm busy, no one reads this anyway

Seen a lot of great concerts, played some awesome music, met some new people. I've got a lot to do, but I'm managing, I think. I got to see two of my heroes both in concert and giving a masterclass. The weather is cold, but the sun is shining and there's flowers starting to bloom in purple and yellow and the grass is green.

But being left out still hurts.

it's been a long week

I got donuts in class today - our teacher had bet us that we couldn't do an assignment without making a certain mistake, and promised to bring us donuts if we did. Promise me sugary treats, and I turn into a little kid. At least I managed to eat it without smearing the cream filling (!!!) all over my face. At least I think I did.

Also, I like glazed and poofy better than cake-style donuts.

This has been such a long week, and I'm not really sure why. It's the middle of winter, it's snowing all the time (no one warned me that getting snow up my nose was a danger of coming to school up here) it's gray and gloomy all the time. Falling snow, though, is so beautiful - all the little white specks in the sky reflecting light, swirling and falling and rising and dancing like wild bacchants, unpredictable and so light-seeming and floating and so many of them. I performed in studio class, a piece by a German composer dedicated to a Spaniard based on Scottish themes. My practicing, though, has been haphazard.

One of the students set off the fire alarm Wednesday night by cooking bacon. I had just finished showering, and put on clothes and grabbed my shoes and coat and instrument and shivered in the cold for a while. Watching all the people coming out of the building was like an anthill that had gotten kicked in - people were running up and down the stairs, coming out of their rooms then going back in and grabbing something - an instrument, warmer clothes, keys, wallet - and running out and then huddling in a mass outside the building. Without my contacts, everyone looks more or less the same - I'm only able to pick out my friends by their relative heights and builds as they cluster together.

I wish I had a vacuum cleaner of my own. I borrowed a friend's tonight, and dusted and vacuumed my room, and then borrowed another friend's Swiffer and mopped the floor. It feels so nice to have the room clean.

I lost my colored pencils the other day, the day I went to a visiting artist's recital which was probably one of the best performances I've ever seen. Everything about the performance - how she moved, her facial expression, the way she put her bow on the string - everything created the perfect atmosphere in which the music could exist. Her playing, of course, was superb. I wish I could find my pencils, though.

conscious versus subconscious

This is what I did today:
7:00 - get up, get dressed and washed, try to eat breakfast without waking my roommate
7:45 - go over to the music building to practice. Wonder why it's so cold outside.
8:30 - get a drink of water. Practice some more.
10:20 - Stop practicing. Go to theory.
11:20 - Go to dorm room. Check email, turn on phone. Find out that a girl in my studio has sent me two emails, a facebook message, and three text messages. All the messages except one of the texts are frantically begging me to switch my private lesson time from tomorrow to this afternoon. The last text says, "Never mind, I found someone, but thanks anyway!"
11:40 - Go to cafeteria. Eat lunch.
12:15 - Walk back from lunch. Freeze to death.
12:45 - piano lesson.
1:30 - read Aristotle for class.
2:40 - leave for said class. Attend said class. Enjoy said class.
4:15 - walk over to the concert hall to get a ticket for this weekend's concert. Brahms, Don Juan, a violin concerto - it sounds like a fantastic program.
4:40 - browse the internets
5:00 - practice.
6:00 - eat dinner.
7:00 - practice.
10:00 - do my sightsinging homework. Browse the internets.

My dream from last night:
Lots of running and chasing and being chased. There was some kind of humanoid monster involved. It was an epic tale, full of drama and intrigue, blood and romance, and I think it somehow involved music theory. I remember a strong red hue, a boy with glowing (literally glowing) eyes, and explosions, but I can't fit them together any more.

My day from last week:
pretty much the same as today. Minus the text messages.

My dream from last week:
I was about to die, and then I died while standing on a ladder and became a ghost. I sat around missing my family for a while (which was probably because I had just gone back to school in actuality) and then proceeded to go through the various levels of a sort of Faustian hell, except the levels were not very much like literature. The first level was a rental-car service with cars from Alabama and Georgia and California and all over and people sitting on the curb doing drugs. Somewhere in the next few levels I passed a girl with whom I was in a chamber group. She was complaining about her current group. I got stuck in the fifth level; it was blood-red, with a ladder leaning against the wall.

My day four or so years ago:
Pretty much the same as today. Less practicing, less cold, more school.

My dreams from four or so years ago:
I was an escaping slave from a Southern plantation. I ran through the woods, hid in the attic of a nice Victorian house, ran through more woods. There were a few exciting chase scenes, lots of nice woodland scenery, and some chestnut-colored horses. It ended with my riding a boxcar train into the sunset. I'm not making this up.

There was a flooded woodland with a house in it that had plastic inflatable pool-toy style horses. I had several different dreams in this setting; I don't remember specifics of any of them, but I remember dreaming that I was wading through a dark pool.

I'm in a beach house on vacation, and on the beach is a bomb, and no one recognizes it but me. I diffuse it.

Conclusion: The worlds my subconscious comes up with are more interesting, exciting, dramatic than the one I live in. On the other hand, this world is less dangerous.

What is this white stuff?

I am back at school and it is cold.

The ground is covered with a thick blanket of snow - a foot deep, maybe? This is my first winter with snow, and I'm a bit "snow snow snow snow snow!!!!" It's so beautiful - thick and white and sparkly and smooth, and I love the big gaping holes that footprints make. I love the fractal snowflakes, the little many-pointed stars. They're so tiny. It's amazing.

First day of classes was today. So far, I'm hopeful for all of them - the seminar looks promising, the South Indian drumming seems fun, theory is theory, my quintet should be awesome. I'm starting to get back into some sort of practice schedule.

It's so cold outside.

I'm flyingggggggggggg

I was sitting in this airport a year and a week ago. I had just auditioned for the school that I almost went to and it was snowing. I remember watching the snow blow across the concrete of the airport, rivers and streams of hypnotic movement.

I was sitting in this airport a year minus a month ago. It was snowing, again, and the snow was blowing. I had just auditioned at the school I currently go to; it was quite possibly the worst audition I did last year.

I was sitting in this airport a year and a half ago. I was coming back from a music camp, and there were storms all up and down the east coast. My flight was delayed; I waited all afternoon, and got home after midnight.

I know this airport. I know where the bagel stand is, where the newsstands are, at which gates you can find wifi. I know the trek between the two gates, the endless-seeming tunnel of steel and dead, mechanical voices. I know that you can never expect your plane to be on time. I've run from a flight that was delayed coming in to my connection that would be leaving in twenty minutes, expecting to miss it, only to find that that flight was delayed for the next three hours. I've had gate agents ask me if I'm carrying a violin, a viola, a guitar. I've waited with family and friends, I've waited alone.


It was the best of airports, it was the worst of airports.

I'm going home.

peace, solitude, loneliness

On Saturday morning, I woke up and thought I was at home. The dorms were quiet; no one was showering, going up and down the stairs, slamming doors, talking. All but a handful of people were gone by Sunday morning. I have a late final, so am one of the last people here, and it's a strange feeling - somewhat isolated, actually, since I've mostly stayed in my room the past few days, studying and practicing and whatnot. Moments, though, feel more familiar, like being woken up at 6AM by someone yelling in Chinese outside my room as they moved suitcases down the stairwell.

I picked up a cold last week, probably caused by a few too many late nights spent hanging out with my friends. It's still lingering, despite the twelve or so cups of tea I've consumed in the past few days.

Speaking of which, I've developed a real love for tea these past few weeks.

I went to a performance of the Messiah done by the local symphony orchestra, which is one of the best in the world. They did it baroque-style, with a countertenor singing the alto parts, and it was beautiful.

I miss my friends, both those who go to school with me and those who are a thousand miles away. I'm ready to sleep in my own bed and my own room again, to shower without zoris, to eat better food than served in the cafeteria (where, by the way, they've gone into leftover mode).

I took a walk today. It's been nice the past few days, slightly warmer - 40 F or so. Something about the quality of the sunlight, the temperature, the smell of mud in the air reminded me of a birdwatching trip I took with my mother when I was younger. I don't remember where it was or what birds I saw.

I need to practice.