lots o updateyness
I'm sick. I suppose it just goes to show that while I might be able to make my brain function on less the optimal sleep, my immune system won't have any of it. All in all, I think it's probably good this happened sooner rather than later; its a good reminder for me. You'd think that after 25 years I'd be more adept at recognizing symptoms, but you'd be wrong. Fever dreams, for me, are imbued with a sense of purpose. Once I wake up I can never figure out what the purpose was, but it sure as hell meant that I had to roll around like crazy, lie at diagonals and upside down on the bed, and tangle myself in the sheets. And while it's happening I'm never aware that I'm feverish. I'm a semi-lucid dreamer normally. I have some amount of control over directing my dreams as they happen, and I'm generally aware that I'm dreaming, especially if it's unpleasant. Not so with fever dreams. I found it amusing that I exactly predicted what temp my thermometer would read. 99.7. Lucky guess. I hate that though I'm sleep deprived I still couldn't make myself go to bed before 12:30, with the plan of getting up at 7:30. My fever broke me of that goal, however. No more sleep this morning for me.
I suppose I should write something about school. It took me a while to get into the swing of things, but I think I'm just about there now. Today will be the end of week 3.
• Class Piano TA: this takes up a lot of my time, more so far than the classes in which I'm a student. It's getting easier though. When I prepare well enough, I have fun with it. I got some nice feedback yesterday. While checking out CDs from the music library, the checker dude asked me if I was the new piano TA. Apparantly he's the ear training TA, and he overheard some of his students saying good things about me. Yay!
• Piano lessons: I feel a little bit funny about these. It's the third week of school, I've had 2.5 lessons, and I've played for a sum total of 5 minutes during those lessons. Some of the talking is very necessary; we've determined gaps in my training that we want to remedy and how to go about that. We've spent a while talking about repertoire, since I need to be planning for a recital from the get go. It's frustrating though that sometimes Dr. Hamilton is more long winded than necessary about unimportant things where I already get it. Hopefully some of this changes as we get to know each other better. I have minimal feedback on my playing so far though, which makes practicing more difficult and less satisfying. The feedback I've gotten leaves me confused; I'm not sure how to accomplish what he wants. I'm used to learning music in a very deliberate, slow, methodical manner. I break it down into little parts go as slow as I need to. He wants me to do this same kind of practice, but add another kind as well. He wants me to right from the get go play the piece at tempo. This is to make it so you always have the musical idea in mind. Too much slow practice can lead to thinking of the music in ways that don't fit when played at tempo, so this is mediate that. I don't know how to do it though. One of my big weaknesses is learning notes quickly, and sightreading, which are linked. I want to work on these things, but I don't know how to just play things at tempo right away. He says I can leave things out, etc., which I understand, but with hard music there's still no way I can do it right now. This leads me to the next item...
• I received an email about 12 hours ago offering me a $1000 scholarship that requires me to accompany for 2 hours per week. Not a big deal for most pianists, but I think I'm going to decline the scholarship. Accompanying terrifies me more than just about anything. Given sufficient time, I think I'd really enjoy it, but it requires being able to sight read and learn music very fast. I want to say yes, I'll do it, so that I can rise the challenge and learn from it. It's just about the best way to force yourself to learn to sightread. But my better judgment says no. I already feel close to overbooked, and this would add more stress than most things. I seriously feel like I have PTSD from sightreading. It gives me a feeling of panic that I never feel for anything else. It's like I know I will fail, and there is nothing I can do about it. And someone else is depending on me, so there's no recourse. I hate feeling like a lobsided pianist. I can play hard music, but I have few practical piano skills. I can't sightread, accompany, harmonize, improvise, transpose, learn music quickly when under pressure, etc. It makes my career options in music much more limited. I can teach, and maybe I can perform. But no chamber music, accompanying, etc. I hate this. Music should be free and joyful, and these limitations make me feel weak and constrained.
• I suck at bullets. Too verbose.
• I've been disappointed by what I've seen of the yoga classes/teachers here so far. It makes me realize that I've been lucky to have some really wonderful teachers. Speaking of which, I still need to post about the yoga training I did. And post pictures and stuff. I promise it will happen.
• I did find an acroyoga teacher however, which is cool. No official classes, but he leads a jam twice monthly, and he sounded open to getting together to practice at other times.
• So far, Phoenix, ASU, and the people here are just what I was expecting: lame. I keep looking for places to find community. So far I'm disappointed with the yoga community. Haven't been able to find circusy people or jugglers or fire spinners or artist types. I do have some leads to follow up on though. Portland, I miss you so hard. Some of the music students seem nice enough, but musicians as a group are not really my thing either. Interest in music doesn't seem to have much bearing on whether or not I'll get along with someone. I suppose I should remember that I've never in my life found a group I completely identified with, and as far as friends, I'm selective and they come from wherever.
• I really, really need to go dancing. I haven't really danced since Portland. I plan to go to Earthdance this weekend (if I'm not too sick!!), so hopefully that will be good.
• Bike commuting seems to be working well now that I've gotten the bike adjusted to fit me. It's only 2.5 miles to school, so it takes 12-15 min. This means I ride 5-10 miles/day.
• Candy came down to visit me two weeks ago. She is still awesometastic. It was really nice to have a friendly face around. I was going through some serious touch withdrawal. We spent the whole friggin time dealing with furniture, trying to get my place set up. She deserves a medal for putting up with me. I decided that yes, I could get nicer things with patience and craigslisting, but it was taking up too much time. I needed it to just be over already. So I am now throughly Ikeafied. I'm not proud of it, but I did what I needed to do. I just made things so much simpler, and then it was DONE. I can be the new posterboy for the Malm series bedroom set. Hopefully, I'll finish unpacking soon, and then I'll take some pics of my new place for y'all to see.
• I'm now ovo-lacto vegetarian. I think I could probably sustain this, where as I was really struggling with veganism. I definitely need more recipe ideas though. Last night I really really wanted chicken soup. So I tried to make vegetable soup the way I do my chicken soup. It's disappointing. I shouldn't be surprised though. You can't use the same recipe, take out the major ingredient, and expect it to be the same. I need to remember that when I suspect my cooking endeavor will be disappointing, I shouldn't make 20 servings of it.
• I had an interesting observation the other day. I tend characterize my current relationship with exes to be very amicable, and in most cases friendly. As in, we're still in regular contact. I realized this isn't really true though. At this point, I'm only in close contact with my most recent, Candy. Christine and I still talk every month or so and visit when in town, but we're not close the way we were for the first few post breakup years. Rylee long ago unfriended me from myspace (ironic because I only joined myspace to read her blog) and stopped returning emails. Rebecca and I still feel warmly toward each other, but we never talk and never see each other. For over a year I called her semi regularly and tried to set up times to meet, but through whatever combination of legitimate med school busyness and needing space, whether consciously or not, we hardly ever saw each other. Right before I moved, I finally pinned her down to having lunch with me for a half hour, which is the longest I'd seen her for since breaking up. It was really nice. As for Crystal, she stopped communicating once she went to Amsterdam. Now that she's back she's still not communicating. She made time to hang out with my mom and have dinner with her, and supposedly said that she wanted to see me, but she's not returning calls or emails. I dunno. I guess for most people its very unusual to stay close with exes. Crystal's 2 best friends are exes though, so it's something more specific to me, or perhaps its the physical distance. This all makes me sad though. My girlfriend is invariably my best friend, so breaking up usually means that I no longer have a social life, or the support I had come to rely on.
• Seriously, I suck at bullets.
• Emiliana Torrini has a new album. I'll have to check it out.
I suppose I should write something about school. It took me a while to get into the swing of things, but I think I'm just about there now. Today will be the end of week 3.
• Class Piano TA: this takes up a lot of my time, more so far than the classes in which I'm a student. It's getting easier though. When I prepare well enough, I have fun with it. I got some nice feedback yesterday. While checking out CDs from the music library, the checker dude asked me if I was the new piano TA. Apparantly he's the ear training TA, and he overheard some of his students saying good things about me. Yay!
• Piano lessons: I feel a little bit funny about these. It's the third week of school, I've had 2.5 lessons, and I've played for a sum total of 5 minutes during those lessons. Some of the talking is very necessary; we've determined gaps in my training that we want to remedy and how to go about that. We've spent a while talking about repertoire, since I need to be planning for a recital from the get go. It's frustrating though that sometimes Dr. Hamilton is more long winded than necessary about unimportant things where I already get it. Hopefully some of this changes as we get to know each other better. I have minimal feedback on my playing so far though, which makes practicing more difficult and less satisfying. The feedback I've gotten leaves me confused; I'm not sure how to accomplish what he wants. I'm used to learning music in a very deliberate, slow, methodical manner. I break it down into little parts go as slow as I need to. He wants me to do this same kind of practice, but add another kind as well. He wants me to right from the get go play the piece at tempo. This is to make it so you always have the musical idea in mind. Too much slow practice can lead to thinking of the music in ways that don't fit when played at tempo, so this is mediate that. I don't know how to do it though. One of my big weaknesses is learning notes quickly, and sightreading, which are linked. I want to work on these things, but I don't know how to just play things at tempo right away. He says I can leave things out, etc., which I understand, but with hard music there's still no way I can do it right now. This leads me to the next item...
• I received an email about 12 hours ago offering me a $1000 scholarship that requires me to accompany for 2 hours per week. Not a big deal for most pianists, but I think I'm going to decline the scholarship. Accompanying terrifies me more than just about anything. Given sufficient time, I think I'd really enjoy it, but it requires being able to sight read and learn music very fast. I want to say yes, I'll do it, so that I can rise the challenge and learn from it. It's just about the best way to force yourself to learn to sightread. But my better judgment says no. I already feel close to overbooked, and this would add more stress than most things. I seriously feel like I have PTSD from sightreading. It gives me a feeling of panic that I never feel for anything else. It's like I know I will fail, and there is nothing I can do about it. And someone else is depending on me, so there's no recourse. I hate feeling like a lobsided pianist. I can play hard music, but I have few practical piano skills. I can't sightread, accompany, harmonize, improvise, transpose, learn music quickly when under pressure, etc. It makes my career options in music much more limited. I can teach, and maybe I can perform. But no chamber music, accompanying, etc. I hate this. Music should be free and joyful, and these limitations make me feel weak and constrained.
• I suck at bullets. Too verbose.
• I've been disappointed by what I've seen of the yoga classes/teachers here so far. It makes me realize that I've been lucky to have some really wonderful teachers. Speaking of which, I still need to post about the yoga training I did. And post pictures and stuff. I promise it will happen.
• I did find an acroyoga teacher however, which is cool. No official classes, but he leads a jam twice monthly, and he sounded open to getting together to practice at other times.
• So far, Phoenix, ASU, and the people here are just what I was expecting: lame. I keep looking for places to find community. So far I'm disappointed with the yoga community. Haven't been able to find circusy people or jugglers or fire spinners or artist types. I do have some leads to follow up on though. Portland, I miss you so hard. Some of the music students seem nice enough, but musicians as a group are not really my thing either. Interest in music doesn't seem to have much bearing on whether or not I'll get along with someone. I suppose I should remember that I've never in my life found a group I completely identified with, and as far as friends, I'm selective and they come from wherever.
• I really, really need to go dancing. I haven't really danced since Portland. I plan to go to Earthdance this weekend (if I'm not too sick!!), so hopefully that will be good.
• Bike commuting seems to be working well now that I've gotten the bike adjusted to fit me. It's only 2.5 miles to school, so it takes 12-15 min. This means I ride 5-10 miles/day.
• Candy came down to visit me two weeks ago. She is still awesometastic. It was really nice to have a friendly face around. I was going through some serious touch withdrawal. We spent the whole friggin time dealing with furniture, trying to get my place set up. She deserves a medal for putting up with me. I decided that yes, I could get nicer things with patience and craigslisting, but it was taking up too much time. I needed it to just be over already. So I am now throughly Ikeafied. I'm not proud of it, but I did what I needed to do. I just made things so much simpler, and then it was DONE. I can be the new posterboy for the Malm series bedroom set. Hopefully, I'll finish unpacking soon, and then I'll take some pics of my new place for y'all to see.
• I'm now ovo-lacto vegetarian. I think I could probably sustain this, where as I was really struggling with veganism. I definitely need more recipe ideas though. Last night I really really wanted chicken soup. So I tried to make vegetable soup the way I do my chicken soup. It's disappointing. I shouldn't be surprised though. You can't use the same recipe, take out the major ingredient, and expect it to be the same. I need to remember that when I suspect my cooking endeavor will be disappointing, I shouldn't make 20 servings of it.
• I had an interesting observation the other day. I tend characterize my current relationship with exes to be very amicable, and in most cases friendly. As in, we're still in regular contact. I realized this isn't really true though. At this point, I'm only in close contact with my most recent, Candy. Christine and I still talk every month or so and visit when in town, but we're not close the way we were for the first few post breakup years. Rylee long ago unfriended me from myspace (ironic because I only joined myspace to read her blog) and stopped returning emails. Rebecca and I still feel warmly toward each other, but we never talk and never see each other. For over a year I called her semi regularly and tried to set up times to meet, but through whatever combination of legitimate med school busyness and needing space, whether consciously or not, we hardly ever saw each other. Right before I moved, I finally pinned her down to having lunch with me for a half hour, which is the longest I'd seen her for since breaking up. It was really nice. As for Crystal, she stopped communicating once she went to Amsterdam. Now that she's back she's still not communicating. She made time to hang out with my mom and have dinner with her, and supposedly said that she wanted to see me, but she's not returning calls or emails. I dunno. I guess for most people its very unusual to stay close with exes. Crystal's 2 best friends are exes though, so it's something more specific to me, or perhaps its the physical distance. This all makes me sad though. My girlfriend is invariably my best friend, so breaking up usually means that I no longer have a social life, or the support I had come to rely on.
• Seriously, I suck at bullets.
• Emiliana Torrini has a new album. I'll have to check it out.