First post of the new year (both Western and Chinese) and it’s now March.  Life has gotten itself on an interestingly skewed track again and as soon as the confidence to put some persona of myself in the public returns, I’ll be back here more.  I miss this semi-sanctuary and everyone one around it, but disrespect and ignorance HURTS, and recovery is hard.  Self-reflection has become almost as routine as a shower.  Finding the courage to enjoy performing music – without fear, without inhibition – again is the first great obstacle.   Family is beautiful.

So though there there’s been considerable slackage here, the reading list is still being maintained; not that there has been much time to read lately.  The old habit of reading alongside a meal has been passed up to either not having the proper time to put towards this, to newspapers, or to having meals with kind, mostly new acquaintances – which is typically a good excursion too.  In the meantime, every so often, something is written on the [Twitter] about the musical events around.  And instead of reading literature, a few hours a week are spent reading a score alongside its recording.  This activity is nothing entirely new (see previous posts on music) but lately it’s been happening on a kind of weekly basis.

I probably won’t include scores in the reading list though given that the manner of study is quite different from reading a book.  I may start keeping list of performances, however, because I keep forgetting to sign into the myspace to update it.

This week’s composition of fascination is Michael Nyman’s String Quartet No. 2, particularly movements 3 and 4.  I found the other three quartets somewhat underwhelming, but full of good intentions to complement the good writing.  However, String Quartet No. 2 appeals to me in the same fashion as Bloch’s String Quintets and Gorecki’s String Quartet No. 3 – the intense but balanced exploration of culture, rhythmical architectures, and a certain kind of desperation and triumph pervading throughout.

Last week was Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major.  That piece pretty much explains itself (especially if Martha Argerich is at the helm.)  The second movement of the concerto is heartbreaking and unexpected while the overall intricacy and detail of the entire concerto is stunning.  What was almost as surprising, however, was the ratio of string to wind players that were familiar with the composition.  Apparently, many standard wind excerpts are taken from the concerto (The bassoon solo in the third movement is particularly impressive.   During our next rehearsal together,  my bassoon teaching assistant friend casually performed the excerpt for me on the spot – by memory.) but to many of my string colleagues, the piece is unfamiliar.  I wonder which other pieces can be placed in this category.

It’s interesting, involves a lot of nudity, feeling quite out of place – though intrigued – and I’ll probably never do it again.

Paper: 1/3:  Article for the Music Educators Journal
Progress: optimistic only out of context with the other papers
Theme?: the lyrics kill me at some point or other; hi, December.winter
Tracks: (all files uploaded onto zshare.net. Music is rightful property of the artists. I don’t own any of these…Please buy their music and support them.)

+ [Last Night] – Justin Timberlake

+ [I'll Never Smile Again] – Priscilla Ahn (Frank Sinatra cover)

+ [Winter Song] – Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

+  words probably overused
—————————————–
probably
perhaps
considerably
quite
realize
emulate
simultaneously
assimilate
likewise
fascination
interesting
fairly
complex
various
derive

January 1-4, 2010.
Hilton Marks Center
Alexandria, VA

[Select Start] is returning to [MAGFest]!!  I’ll also be sitting in a few songs with [The Oneups.]   Look at the guest list ([Sid Meier] anyone?) and the band list ([Armcannon]! [The Megas]!)! Everyone should go!

More information to come soon.  I’m very very excited.

With the exception of Facebook, I’ve always procrastinated when it comes to joining social network tools. Yesterday, for whatever same reasons I created a now-defunct personal myspace page back in the day, I created a Twitter page. The first post read “wonder if i’ll stick with it.

Given the number of times I have visited the homepage today, written something, and then decided not to publish it (There’s still only one “tweet” on my page.), Twitter just may turn out to be something of a personal challenge.

Or I could just not utilize it. But then, what was the point of having one? Is impulse required when using Twitter? How might this destroy me…?

Months later, after a fairly trying day, the thought of a veggie wrap and beer was highly appealing.  I was too late: They had changed the menu and the vegetable wrap no longer existed.  After an awkward second or two standing around wondering whether or not to pull a Subway and stay regardless, I decided the beers on tap that month weren’t tantalizing enough and probably forgot all about eating after that.

Part III: Whole Foods
+ The exact night of the Titanic failure that I realized I had a lifeboat after all: my friend Jenny, a bona fide vegetarian.  Surely she would know a place with good vegetable wraps.

Alas – from having lived on campus for her entire college career so far, she did not know of any one specific place where the wraps were lovely beyond belief.  But she did suggest a few places to try.  The first was Whole Foods, which I kicked myself for not having thought of, given that I frequent the store for groceries.  The second was a Publix (a grocery chain in mostly the Southern United States), but she warned against the one closest to school.

Within a few days, upon inspection, somewhat shockingly, most of the Whole Foods wraps contained meat, unless it was the $8 sliced up caprese wrap that, as delicious as it probably would have been, was not what I had in mind.  There were no custom made wraps, though in hindsight, maybe I should have asked the guy behind the deli panel – but I had a sneaking suspicion with Whole Food’s reputation the way it is that this wrap would have probably run me up much higher than a wrap needed to be.  I would save that for true desperation.  Perhaps this visit was simply at the wrong time of day.

As it is a grocery store, I wondered if maybe I had made this elusive wrap myself once upon some day.  After picking up the appropriate materials, dinner was settled with a spinach and feta croissant, some tea, and Nick Hornby.

Why exactly a vegetable wrap is also unclear.  I am not a vegetarian.  But this most definitely did not involve meat.

For as long as it takes, pocket universe will be documenting this increasingly desperate attempt to re-discover what was once known.  These accounts are fairly chronological, with anywhere from one to eight days between ventures.

BASIC INGREDIENTS:
- assorted vegetables (but definitely involving spinach)
- a tortilla.wrap (probably that spinach or sun-dried tomato variety.)
-  provolone cheese
- some spread that was most likely basil pesto mayonnaise (plain mayonnaise will substitute just fine for the purpose of this quest)
- additional seasonings may or may not have included oregano, olive oil, ground black pepper
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART I: Subway
+ There is a Subway situated in the law school right across from the main auditorium of the music school, or home.   (I’d like to point out that by some miracle, I have not made a single typo up to this point in this post.  I almost feel credible.  Moving on…)  In the past, I have paid, literally, many visits to this little station mostly because it’s open until midnight, which is later than all but two other places on campus to grab that dinner I forgot to eat again.

I recalled they had wraps, and their possession of vegetables is as common knowledge as Harry Potter.  So by the super-powers of deduction granted upon me by grade-school education, as this memory of The Best Vegetable Wrap Ever strikes, I go.

The lady behind the counter pluckily informs that they haven’t had wraps “…in a while!  But we have the flatbread!” (Hey – flatbread’s a typo, Google Chrome?)   In her defense, I had never ordered a wrap from this particular Subway before.  She was just the messenger, and though dejected in my mild hunger, I surrendered and conceded to her enthusiasm.  I haven’t checked any off-campus Subways – The idea has never truly occurred ever since discovering there’s one right at home. – but my faith was about as toasted as the flatbread vegetable sandwich gnawed to bits that night anyway.

Agonizing is a luxury.

I’m surprised it took, of all publications, the [New York Times] this long to write some variation of this sentence – namely using “long way” in combination with “bleeps and bloops.”  Fairly nice article otherwise, though.

In other news, it’s time to  find a new sentence, or just onomatopoeic sounds, to describe how evolved video game music and the culture such around has become, methinks.

I am still computer-less, though not for lack of trying.  The last four weeks have involved various companies and distributors sending me all the wrong parts to assemble together my non-functioning computer.  I can’t say I’m thrilled.  In fact, now that my professors are asking why a graduate student doesn’t have a computer of her own, I am downright frustrated.  I have spent more time on call waiting than I did writing this post.

Today, after calling a company again to complain that they had sent me the wrong part for the second time, at last, I understand the feeling of empowerment.  The moments are intoxicating, strengthening, and all so more sensational when you know, without a doubt, that you did nothing wrong at all.

Except perhaps have ordered the product in the first place.