[but no I was out for stars]
It's been awhile since I updated. I think because I've finally found my perfect balance of busy-ness-- with the addition of piano, cello, and choir to my schedule, I'm finally just stressed enough to be perfectly content, barring the sky falling.
This is what I'm studying this semester in cello:
It's famous; standard repertoire that everyone studies and very few get right. I got my jury comments back and I know why he chose this for me. Sound still shy. Many passages performed with little to no vibrato. Play with more confidence in sound. More variance between colors. This piece is new colors every minute or so-- it'll be good for me. The cello faces I make playing it will be spectacular.
This is what I'm singing (or attempting really hideously) to sing in choir:
This piece, when I heard it sung live at GHP two summers ago, made me cry. I curled up in my seat and cried. It was too beautiful. It's still too beautiful. The breaking of the tension in never kissing-- oh god stop me now, I will start talking about Whitacre and I won't stop. All our pieces are beautiful this semester-- we're singing a suite of Frost poems and a Shakespeare poem with strange and wonderful changes in time signature (4/4 3/4 4/4 7/8 4/4 5/4 4/4 BREEEEEEATHE).
Actually, I'm just going to be surrounded by beautiful things in my classes this semester. Anthropology of Religion Muggle Studies, for all that 100+ pages of reading a week are only barely happening, is sociological in the sense of okay first read everything everyone else knows and now tell me how you feel about God. We listened to Tibetan monks throat-singing, which will always be a miracle in my mind. Someday I'll make it to Asia and hear that live, because Huston Smith called it "the holiest sound he'd ever heard" and I think I might agree. In Poetry my class has finally clicked (and figured out that discussing homosexuality in the context of Shakespeare and puns on the word "prick" will not get us kicked out of the classroom). German... well, the language is beautiful and so is the French exchange student, so. I CAN'T COMPLAIN.
And next week Arashi is going to play at Oklahoma City's Zen Buddhist Monastery (WHO FUCKING KNEW, RIGHT) for the Lunar New Year. I learned this monstrosity last week:
And I'm playing chu, not shime! SO! Lots of flailing going on! (I begged my way into shime for Omiyage, though. My fear of bachi-twirling has not been conquered yet.)
So! Yeah. Boring life update. My friends are cool, I do fun things, I actually get some studying done; today I'm going to have a transcontinental movie-watching with the Future Dictator of the World, after food, coffee, and my piano books have been obtained. Maybe I'll play some today. Or cloister myself in the library and read fifty more pages of anthropology and smell the books.
You know, though? I'm a little bit homesick. Just a little bit. It'll pass as the semester continues, I know, but I kind of wanted a sleepover this weekend.
...reading on the evolving death ritual in modern Japan will just have to suffice. |D I can live with that.
This is what I'm studying this semester in cello:
It's famous; standard repertoire that everyone studies and very few get right. I got my jury comments back and I know why he chose this for me. Sound still shy. Many passages performed with little to no vibrato. Play with more confidence in sound. More variance between colors. This piece is new colors every minute or so-- it'll be good for me. The cello faces I make playing it will be spectacular.
This is what I'm singing (or attempting really hideously) to sing in choir:
This piece, when I heard it sung live at GHP two summers ago, made me cry. I curled up in my seat and cried. It was too beautiful. It's still too beautiful. The breaking of the tension in never kissing-- oh god stop me now, I will start talking about Whitacre and I won't stop. All our pieces are beautiful this semester-- we're singing a suite of Frost poems and a Shakespeare poem with strange and wonderful changes in time signature (4/4 3/4 4/4 7/8 4/4 5/4 4/4 BREEEEEEATHE).
Actually, I'm just going to be surrounded by beautiful things in my classes this semester. Anthropology of Religion Muggle Studies, for all that 100+ pages of reading a week are only barely happening, is sociological in the sense of okay first read everything everyone else knows and now tell me how you feel about God. We listened to Tibetan monks throat-singing, which will always be a miracle in my mind. Someday I'll make it to Asia and hear that live, because Huston Smith called it "the holiest sound he'd ever heard" and I think I might agree. In Poetry my class has finally clicked (and figured out that discussing homosexuality in the context of Shakespeare and puns on the word "prick" will not get us kicked out of the classroom). German... well, the language is beautiful and so is the French exchange student, so. I CAN'T COMPLAIN.
And next week Arashi is going to play at Oklahoma City's Zen Buddhist Monastery (WHO FUCKING KNEW, RIGHT) for the Lunar New Year. I learned this monstrosity last week:
And I'm playing chu, not shime! SO! Lots of flailing going on! (I begged my way into shime for Omiyage, though. My fear of bachi-twirling has not been conquered yet.)
So! Yeah. Boring life update. My friends are cool, I do fun things, I actually get some studying done; today I'm going to have a transcontinental movie-watching with the Future Dictator of the World, after food, coffee, and my piano books have been obtained. Maybe I'll play some today. Or cloister myself in the library and read fifty more pages of anthropology and smell the books.
You know, though? I'm a little bit homesick. Just a little bit. It'll pass as the semester continues, I know, but I kind of wanted a sleepover this weekend.
...reading on the evolving death ritual in modern Japan will just have to suffice. |D I can live with that.