On the eve of my twenty-fourth birthday, all I can think about (aside from how much grief happened in twenty-three) is my parents. Sometimes people might find it rather difficult to vocalize their appreciation for their parents, but I have somehow found myself doing just that pretty much every Sunday afternoon to the parents who wait patiently for their children to finish orchestra rehearsal. I just never really find that courage to say this to MY parents.
What can truly be said to thank them, though? I’m still alive (perhaps not as happy as they would have hoped) and that’s a big credit to them from the start. At this point, I really have to start to take the steps to end up at that place where I can turn right back around and give them back as much as possible. And to be as little a worry as possible (which is just about impossible.)
What was 23? 23 was destruction and reformation over and over. 23 was perseverance even through perpetual rejection, discovering the darkest sides of me (In other words: I learned to drive.), what it meant to unconditionally love, how painful that can be, and knowing who I am and will always be. (Though I confess, I’d my sense of humour back, please.)
Thanks, Mum and Dad, for all you do. Because of you, I have survived the path behind me and can keep stepping forward – no matter how difficult the path ahead.[/cheese]
—-
(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.)
+ [Little Secrets] – Passion Pit
+ [Lullaby] (Noir) – Tulivu Donna Cumberbatch
+ [Adieu] (Cowboy Bebop) – Emily Bindinger
+ [Goodbye to Yesterday] (Metal Gear Solid II) – Rika Muranaka
April 17 2010 | music and waffle | 1 Comment »
Upcoming performance:
Saturday – April 10, 2010. 1pm EST
University of Miami – Clarke Recital Hall
Miami, FL
My Master’s recital. Supposedly you can watch from online if you click [here] about a half hour or so before the performance. It didn’t work last time, but maybe it’s worth mentioning for those of you that are interested in hearing me play. The program will cover Ysaÿe, Dvo?ák, Schoenfield, Korngold, and Brahms. Hope you can tune in.
April 02 2010 | music and performances | No Comments »
Aside from the creative development and exercise of one’s own calming techniques, is there really any life lesson to be learned from dedicating and striving for two hours on the world’s most impossible software (MS Word) to achieve the “correct” academic formatting for a paper?
March 23 2010 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Has anyone ever seen a male in a commercial where bathroom scum is the main villain? If so, has he ever been the one horrified and/or cleaning said antagonist? Even in Mr. Clean advertisements, it seems as though he just stands next to a woman who is cleaning or has had success cleaning. The feminist in me is very curious, but she has never watched enough television to know for sure. What if the Brawny paper towel man is a metaphor for wanting to use a man to wipe up stuff?
March 21 2010 | musings | 2 Comments »
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.
March 07 2010 | music and musings and waffle | No Comments »
Getting a 90 minute professional massage at a 5-star spa and hotel as the first professional massage of my life was not entirely like my first experience of going to a strip club almost exactly a year ago.
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
December 13 2009 | music and musings and travels | 1 Comment »
+ consistently misspelled words
—————————————–
camouflage
preceding
embarrassment
+ words probably overused
—————————————–
probably
perhaps
considerably
quite
realize
emulate
simultaneously
assimilate
likewise
fascination
interesting
fairly
complex
various
derive
November 24 2009 | words | No Comments »
Upcoming performance:
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.
November 21 2009 | games and music and performances and travels | No Comments »
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…?
November 19 2009 | musings | 1 Comment »
the deducted:
- Subway
~~~~~~~~~~~
Part II: Titanic Brewery
+ [Titanic] is this cheeky little brewery and restaurant on the edge of campus. They sometimes serve lovely seasonal ales on tap that likewise sometimes get me in troubles of sorts. Back in April, they celebrated an anniversary, complete with specials, one of which included a beer and veggie wrap and some other lovely provision or two. This was my order. It was delicious and that was actually one of the nicest dinners I had ever had the privilege of participating in.
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.
November 16 2009 | food and travels | No Comments »
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