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.

Snow

This is what the world looked like last week.

dilemmas

The campus cafeteria generally has three types of fruit: bananas, apples, and oranges. Sometimes they have unripe pears, too. Once they may have had plums, but those may just have been strange-looking apples. The apples are generally bruised and sometimes wormy; the bananas are sometimes good and sometimes bruised. The oranges tend to be ugly-looking but tasty.

I've been eating a lot of oranges lately because of this, and a lot of them have this funny-looking knob of orange-flesh at the top (or maybe it's the bottom, I'm not a student of orange anatomy). What is one supposed to do with that? Should I eat it? Generally I can't get the peel off of that section, so I leave it. Such a waste of orange, though.

I have the same problem with the little black thing when you open the banana the way it's supposed to be opened, by pinching the non-stem end. I generally break it off and leave it, but it gets messy.

SNOW

IT'S SNOWING THIS IS AMAZING.




Yeah, I grew up in the south, why do you ask?

(picture is from last year, actually - one of the few times it's ever snowed in Cowtown, where I grew up)

Dorm life

Semi-hypocritical self-righteousness:

• Dear vocalists: I love the Magic Flute as much as the next person (heh heh heh), but when you've been blasting it in the lounge all afternoon, my tolerance will be very low when you come in after quiet hours and start singing.
• Dear woodwinds and violist: Remember what I was saying to the vocalists about quiet hours being, you know, quiet? That goes for talking outside my door, too.
• Dear roommate: Your theory teacher did not give you a B because she hates you. She gave you a B because you missed 4 questions out of 20 on one part of the test, and forgot some accidentals (equivalent to using a similar-sounding / similar-spelled but wrong word on a foreign language test) on the dictation.
• Dear whoever uses the second stall in the bathroom: Flush, please.

Things I like about the dorm:

• Being around my friends, all the time.
• Being able to wake up at 7:28 and be on time for a 7:30 class, as roommate has done a few times.
• Not having to clean the bathrooms.
• Whoever put the "please do not masturbate in the showers, the drains can't take it" signs in the boy's bathroom.
• Toilets that flush automatically, most of the time
  
• The lounge
• Friends

after 4ish hours of practice

So I'm thinking that my fingerboard and / or strings might be getting a bit schmutzic...

Why I'm an atheist

My roommate is a fundamentalist Christian, and toward the beginning of the year we had a conversation in which she asked how I could stand to live without God. This is how:

I am an atheist because I do not believe that the existence of some god, a superhuman, supernatural being, omnipotent and omniscient, creator of everything, is at all likely. Where would such a being come from? If such a being exists, why hasn't he/she revealed him/herself in an unmistakable manner? Forget these "God whispers in my head," I want lightning bolts coming from glowing figures in the clouds.

I am an atheist because I think that humans don't need the help, both for the horrible acts and the beautiful. To me, that the human mind can create the Pyramids, Starry Night, television, the steam engine is more wonderful and terrifying than any god.

I am an atheist because I take responsibility for my actions. No God will come clean up my messes, fix my boo-boos, make me pass a test I haven't studied for, save the rainforest. That is up to me. It would be comforting to believe that everything would magically get better, but the problems would still be there. It's up to us to take action.

I am an atheist because religion does not offer answers. "It's God's will" does not cure the sick or help us understand the universe or tell us why we're the way we are. There, science rules, and religion just adds a further step of complication.

I am an atheist because I do not need to believe in a deity to behave morally.

I am an atheist because I believe that promoting xenophobia is reprehensible; because I believe that condemning someone to torture for different beliefs is childish and petty; because I believe that obliging half of the population to live as second-class citizens due to their genitalia is repugnant; because I believe that life is more precious than any doctrine or dogma.

I am an atheist because I am not such a special snowflake that the universe cares whether my team wins, or what I do on Sundays, or what I drink, or if I cover my hair, or who I sleep with, or what I believe. My mother does care, though.

I am an atheist because no god who allows war / famine / genocide / natural disasters to occur and millions to starve is worth worshiping.

I am an atheist because the knowledge that this life is all I get inspires me to make the most of it. If we lived eternally, I would have no motivation to accomplish anything of worth - there'd always be tomorrow - but with no afterlife, making a positive contribution to the world (and enjoying myself now) becomes all the more important.

I am an atheist because I find more peace in playing unaccompanied Bach or watching birds than in rituals and superstition.

I am an atheist.

(so I'm also in a late-night-philosophizing mood and taking myself too seriously, so sue me)

oops

So maybe taking most of Thanksgiving break off from practicing wasn't the best idea?


At least it's highly improbable that my orchestra audition tomorrow can go any worse than my lesson today...


(view from the window of the bedroom where I was staying)

anticipation

I've never been able to cope well with suspense or waiting. I get anxious and jumpy. My stomach gets upset, my throat gets sore. I start pacing, I talk faster than normal, I'm unable to concentrate.

Sometimes practicing helps me calm down. The familiarity of taking my violin out of the case, rosining the bow, tuning, playing scales allows me to relax; having something to focus on, fix my attention to, can snap me out of the jittery state.

Sometimes I'm unable to focus on even that. Sometimes it isn't an option, like when I'm watching a movie. I can only watch movies with a friend narrating - I can't handle suspense without knowing what's going to happen, (and I have problems dealing with major emotional turmoil).

Maybe everyone deals with this.

But for now, the taxi that takes me to the airport is almost here, and my flight to Big City of Lights leaves in a few hours.


(Re: my theory final - the part I was worrying about ended up not being on there. I got an A+)

bleh

I've had a post kicking around in my head in response to the Ray Comfort Origin of Species handout deal for a while, since Wednesday at least.

I'm too tired and stressed to write it.

I have a theory final tomorrow, which I don't feel prepared for. I know that I'm going to miss one section of eartraining completely - so much for my A+ in the class - and I'm worried that I'm going to make a stupid mistake or forget one of my idioms, stuff that I should know.

I have a lesson tomorrow. I won't have time to warm up because I'll be studying for my theory final. Not to mention a quartet performance.

I began today euphoric. Last night was amazing to a degree that makes me feel somewhat guilty; mood-alteration is far too tempting to repeat any time in the near future. I had a great practice session, was relaxed, happy, glad to be alive.

Now I'm just stressed.

my life, in haiku

Orchestra again?
Good music, but so tired.
I just want to sleep.

Loud people: shut up.
I don't want to hear you skype
with boyfriend, roommate.

My theory class: oy.
Eartraining final Monday,
I'm so not ready.

Ray Comfort's intro
to Origin of Species:
Simply laughable.

firsts

My freshman year of high school, I went away from home for the first time, for the four days of all-state orchestra. I played in my first full orchestra, playing Shostakovich 5 and Bernstein's Overture to Candide (second violin, inside), sat next to the first (and, so far, only) boy on whom I've had a serious crush. We said maybe two words to each other the first three days (he offered me a gummy bear, I accepted); the last day, he asked me for my email and phone number.

A year later, we met again, at all-state, this time playing I think it was Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. We spent the entire time together, and, a few days later, he became my first boyfriend. A few months after that, when he went off to college, I went off to summer camp, and we realized we'd never see each other again, we broke up.

This weekend, I went to a dance / party at the university that my school is kind-of-sort-of-maybe a part of. It wasn't very good, but a guy asked me to dance; I accepted. Eventually, we ended up making out, my first kiss.

Now he's calling me. I don't know what to do; he's not really my type and I feel embarrassed about the whole situation.

I'm playing Shostakovich 5 and Bernstein's Overture to Candide in the same program in my school's orchestra. I'm second violin, inside part.

FUBAR

My body is a mess.

Both forearms and wrists are rather fragile, and have been wavering on the border between tendonitis and not-tendonitis since I was thirteen; they were fine for some years, but once I started practicing more when I reached college, they went kaplooie. Fortunately, they un-kaplooied after I took a few weeks easy.

My lower back is crooked, thanks to my hip. It's genetic - my mother and grandmother were both born with the same crooked right hip as I have.

I had a nosebleed this morning.

My violin hickey is inflamed, and hurts when anything comes into contact with it.

I haven't gotten enough sleep for a week or two, and so am headache-y and stomach ache-y and have a sore throat. Not to mention lack of ability to concentrate.

Because of the aforementioned hickey, I've been holding my violin slightly differently for the past few days. Now my shoulder starts to hurt whenever I practice more than two hours in one session.

My abs are sore, too.


At least I have my health.


(yeah, it's not actually that bad, just having a good whinge)

slip away across the universe

A teacher with whom I studied violin for six weeks two summers ago died last night. She had a truly inspirational career as a performer and teacher, was one of the first female section leaders of a major US orchestra, and, above all, was one of the most optimistic, generous, open, loving people I've ever known. I was working on the Tchaikovsky violin concerto that summer, mostly the second and third movements, and she taught me how to play it musically, how to get across the emotions that the music is begging to release. She helped me with my college applications, writing recommendations for me and helping me figure out my options.

What I remember most, though, is how she seemed to exude joy with everything she did, how, by example, she made you realize what a wonderful thing it was to be alive and playing music. Her smile, too, was contagious - and I remember her telling a story about her car breaking down or something along those lines and concluding with the thought that a smile can be one of one's most useful tools. Watching her made me want to be a better person.


Ihr Leben ließ die Kunst zu sterben
In unverrückter Übung sehn;
Unmöglich konnt es denn geschehn,
Sich vor dem Tode zu entfärben.
- Bach Cantata BWV 198