+

bye, bb

2010-04-23T19:51:00.002-05:00

9/08 - 4/10

things I were:

young

yours

sparrows

2010-04-15T12:47:00.001-05:00

no technical value

2010-03-16T22:06:00.000-05:00

(untitled)

i have been listening to the music of old you
and angel city of that winter when i was happy
and i wonder if who you were isn’t really dead
it just lives in the sound because when i hear
it i can smell the musk of your skin and of the
lilies that were beside your bed that week both
of which became stronger when the sun went
down and you played bill evans for lovers except
that single track you didn’t like and always got up
to change in the middle of things and i’ve got one
of those snapshot memories in my head of you
stark naked switching the song while i tried to
sit at an attractive angle on your little gray twin
bed waiting for you to come back and we didn’t
sleep until three and even then it was only for an
hour or so or maybe you never slept at all because
you were the one who woke me with your hand on
my waist and your lips on the back of my neck and
we kissed for hours again until the sun started to
come up so we went to the balcony to watch it
rise as airplanes left l.a.x. like slow crows and
you made strong black coffee and ate those
brown sugar poptarts you like and i sat in
your lap with the cats watching us wondering
why we were up so early why the person you
were has crumbled through my fingers like the
clammy sand of venice beach where i took
those pictures that have since been the
background of every electronic i own
because i want so much to go back to
that to go back to you to pull your
pieces out of the music by taking all
the letters of this big block of words
and linking them into a chain that
will lasso the you that i so loved
and that so loved me back into
the cramped twin bed where
we never got any sleep after
christmas in california

hacking it off in May

2010-03-09T15:30:00.002-06:00

Cutting Ties

I know the statement that a
short cut puts off to society:
“Screw your female ideals
I’m sexy in my androgyny”
either that, or “I like pussy”

and I know you tend to like a kind of
those girls whose hair is shorter than
yours; the ones who smell wild like blood
and sex, with their septum piercings and
shallow paintings – ones with elaborate
clothing, expensive habits, and who
self-destruct like fireworks
that explode over and over again

but I am nothing like that. I smell
like Dove shampoo, wear simple shirts,
and there’s a different metal in my body.
What I’m really after
is the irony
of that look on me

so I’m going to cut off all my
hair, my long long hair, and
with it all the memories that
it carries, the frayed splits
and dead ends, the last years
of my purest naiveté, my most
meaningless wastes of time;
I’m going to stop holding it
back with elastics and bobby
pins and big jaw clips and
stick barrettes and just cut
it loose, so maybe I can lift
my head for the first time since
everything stopped making perfect
childish sense and run the course
without the weight of the past
on my shoulders and in my eyes
I’m going to cut all my old ties

for such an insecure wad

2010-02-27T01:16:00.004-06:00

weird mirrors

2010-02-26T16:08:00.004-06:00

When it comes to social adaptation, how good is too good? When your mode for one person starts seeping into who you really are, or makes you feel as though you're losing part of you? When you have to question the validity of your emotions? When lines that were clear before become blurred? Or is that more of a sign that you're not good at it, that you should be able to separate the chameleon colors from your original shade?

I think it's a sign that it isn't necessary. I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't pretend parts of me don't exist, or that they are different. I don't have to impress all of myself upon people, of course, but I shouldn't be censoring to this degree. So many questions of the self that I'd originally had fairly settled have been kicked up again in the past few weeks, the biggest trigger being the fact(?) that my head's not even screwed on straight. I have a somewhat formed idea of who I am by now. I need to get that idea back to the forefront of my concerns and continue working on it as hard as I was before. No more of this excessive people-pleasing - not only is it clogging up my schedule, it's throwing all the critical balances way off.

I know I began this blog trying not to do too many of these useless rambling personal kinds of posts, but I think it's good for me to have this pulled out of the current chaos in my brain and clearly recorded. Besides, February's looking a little skimpy - only 5 posts. So in the interest of mental health and aesthetics, hey-o, I'm not dead again. Just out of commission on several levels. I should be back to writing breathlessly about youth and art and all that soon enough.

in lieu of studying

2010-02-21T23:52:00.000-06:00

February

a foot of it out,
still falling
and it feels like
winter will never end
I’m trying to find my voice
after laryngitis, streptococcus,
and sinus infections
tea, cough drops,
took antibiotics
and a lot of acetaminophen
when I had the weeklong virus
but I think it’s in the snow
covered in small talk smart jargon
screaming party conversation
and scattered in pieces
like hundreds of keys
I keep trying the lock with
but the tumblers switch
every time

I am waiting to
hear myself speak
I am waiting for time
to give me clarity
for the lock to click
and lead me to
the next room of keys

I am waiting to see my feet
on the ground again, in new grass
I always start so sure of myself

thinking of mew

2010-02-08T18:48:00.003-06:00

Sekunden, by Swod

2010-02-07T00:51:00.001-06:00

So, as far as where Swod's album Gehen "went," for me it was a satisfying aural experience. Makes sense then that I'd move on to their second and most recent album, Sekunden, or "seconds," and see how they fared the second time around.

The entire mood of Sekunden is decidedly more hopeful than Gehen. Where Gehen was dark and pensive, Sekunden is like a glowing, positive response. Maybe this was what they were going for, observing the opposing track titles: Gehen's Nein (No), and Sekunden's Ja (Yes). The chords are valiant and trills are shimmering, and the electronic aspect of it is bright and open rather than ominous. Not that Swod's entire sound underwent a drastic transformation to bubbly electronica (I would've been outraged, believe me) - they still retain a bit of the eeriness of their first album, in this light it's just less mysterious and more dreamy. They ditched most of the creepy static and speech in favor of more playful beeps and whines, and also focus more on the main acoustics at their disposal: piano, bass guitar, and some cymbal.

Sekundun opens with a stream of echoing piano against hushed static, and the sound strolls steadily along as if to lead the listener into the rest of the album, just like a proper first track should. Suddenly, the steady electric buzzing cuts, and the music surfaces and takes a breath. Ja is patterned with clear, vibrant chords, their old staple of foreign samples, and electronic murmurs that fling like boomerangs through it. As always, Swod is minimal, but their sound feels deep and wide, and travels especially fluidly through this album.

The tracks Deer and Insects extends Swod's play with the illusion of natural ambience that they experimented with near the end of their previous album. Belgien is my favorite of the album, and ripples with whirling, broken chords that rise and fall as quickly and dramatically as breath. The two tracks that end the album return somewhat to the sound the pervaded Gehen - colder and narrower. In fact, Patinage is distinctly reminiscent of Gehen, with a much more minor-sounding construction backed by pattering beeps and a quivering cymbal. Sekunden resolves with Swod's sound enveloped once again in shadow.

Swod seems to have come full circle, from dark to light and light back to dark. My overall impression of this album is definitely a positive one, but it didn't strike me quite the same way Gehen did. I suppose I could attribute that to my notion that tragedy is often just innately more interesting than cheer, and I felt drawn further in to the bleak vibe of Gehen than I did to the airiness of Sekunden. This was, however, a pleasant listening experience, one that I'm sure would feel more than appropriate should the right mood befall me. Isn't that what music is all about, anyway? Providing the soundtrack to your soul's current state of being, accenting or transcending the words you could use to describe it? Something like that.

rosy-faced

2010-02-06T16:15:00.019-06:00

So the groundhog sees his shadow, and immediately we get dumped on!

These photos are actually from my second time sledding, with Loren, Elizabeth, and Jess, earlier this afternoon. Yesterday I went out to the same hill with Brad, Nick, Bill, Bryan, Alex, and Derek. Admittedly, I felt a little out of place, being the only girl as well as the only freshman, but there's other far more complicated reasoning behind that feeling too that I don't really care to elaborate on. It's just another detail of the whole run-with-three-crowds-claim-none scenario, plus I think too much. They're nice guys though, and I had fun. In fact, this Tuesday night Brad and Alex and probably Bryan and I are going to watch Ikiru together, so that should be interesting.

On my way down the hill at one point while I was sledding I hit a rough bump, so I anticipate a nasty bruise to blossom above my ass and change all kinds of colors over the next week. I also rolled over onto some packed down snow at one point so I'm a little achy around my shoulders. On top of all that, my entire body hurts from working out on the elliptical yesterday, dancing a bit last night, and stomping around in snow for a total of four hours within two days. So I'm pretty banged up and sore in general. Call me a masochist, but it's satisfying - winter weather and pain are two things that assure me I'm alive. My body's reactions and recovery are comforting to witness.

Ever the ass of the group.

me in cat form

2010-01-29T00:45:00.002-06:00

not dead

2010-01-28T16:19:00.006-06:00

Not like Salinger is, anyway. More than a bit of a freak, but c'est la vie, some geniuses are. I remember I tried to tackle Catcher in the Rye for the first time in the seventh grade, but not surprisingly I wasn't yet able to process it at the age of twelve. I don't think I picked it up again until sophomore year, at which point I believe I burned through it within a week, excited by it on a level I didn't wholly understand yet but became eager to explore. In fact, I think Catcher was what opened the floodgates for me and serious literature - after it, I unconsciously started to drop genre reading and juvenile/general lit altogether and gradually moved into the classics' territory, and I've rarely ventured out ever since.

Speaking of venturing out, I've been really terrible about my resolution to keep to myself more often than not this semester. I blame it on just being a nice gal. Too polite to turn down invitations, not devious enough to come up with a convincing lie. And maybe just a little bit lonely, but that's always true, and it's never alleviated, no matter how many radically different crowds I experiment with. Right now, there are 4 event invites staring at me on Facebook - one from Phi Kappa (sorority/fraternity kid crowd) one for a poetry slam (hipster crowd), one for a themed party (hipster crowd), and one for a themed birthday party (hipster crowd. I am admittedly most popular with the hipsters). All of which would occupy both of my Friday and Saturday nights for the next two weeks, and a couple of which conflict with each other. On top of all that, I've been roped in to being a wingwoman for a night of blacklights, booze, and general debauchery this Friday with the neighborly crowd, and that will make me mesh crowds with the sorority/fraternity kid crowd, and meshing crowds never works, ever, and that night is also the themed birthday party with the hipster crowd for which the birthday girl herself invited me personally, and I'm about to flip a shit.

I know it sounds awful and ungrateful, bitching about being in high demand socially, and really, I'm not kidding myself - I know that my company is not considered that valuable or anything. My presence is always enjoyed, but it never makes or breaks an event, except maybe for the few people from each kind of group who do notice when I'm not in attendance and text me about it, i.e. sweeter people, softer souls, and guys who want my lovin's. So I'm not being cocky and stupid. I'm saying that what's really difficult about this is that three entirely different groups that I cannot mix together and often schedule over each other are all after my time.

And damn it, I wouldn't have to hang out with so many people if I were satisfied and fit with a single group, but I'm not, and I don't. The neighborly crowd is made up of just kind, decent people, the hipster crowd is the most intelligent and/or culture-conscious that I can find, and the sorority/fraternity kids are just wild and fun. There isn't a single person on this campus who doesn't underwhelm me within the first ten minutes that I spend talking to them, but they're all great in their own ways. So it's not the loneliness that will make me bother to get dressed up and attend these parties - I would feel alone no matter how many people I surround myself with. It's more the guilt that would come with lying to them to get out (or worse, telling the truth), and the obligation to maintain all the relationships that both they and I have bothered to build.

I would like to match the way I feel with the way I physically am. I don't want to go to parties or poetry slams or this thing and that. I don't want to be on lagom with everyone. If I'm going to bother spending time and energy on and with someone, I want that someone to be able to understand and accept me for everything that I am. So far the only person that can do that is - uh, my mom.

My ex calls me "dull" and "common." He says it will be easy for me to find someone new. God damn. I beg to differ.

Never Trust the Chinese, by Mr. Meeble

2010-01-19T20:57:00.021-06:00

"Never Trust the Chinese" by Mr. Meeble was an excellent listening experience for me, especially in the wake of a relationship gone terribly awry. It's been a great soundtrack for me, and the most amazing thing of all is that the title and even the (awesome) album art couldn't mesh more perfectly with the irony of my situation. Which is one that I refuse to elaborate on as I've promised myself this blog won't become another collection of me whining so here I go with my review/wordy walk through the album.

Mr. Meeble is fairly new, and fairly behind-the-scenes. They first dropped NTTC in July of 2008, and released a limited version of it again in 2009, but it's their only work thus far and I stumbled upon it by chance just a few days ago. The trio sticks to a trip-hoppy vibe and swirling electronic noise as their home sound, but they wander away often and to great effect, and color their music with a wide range of effects and emotions.

The album opens with soaring glitches and beeps, then jumps right into the first groove. Two voices bent by distortion and accented with electronic embellishes swap turns singing while a traditional drum sound keeps things moving along. "raindrops" is a fantastic track that incorporates an echoing, ever-so-slightly altered "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" among a plethora of other electronic beeps and instruments, including a bass guitar and hip-hoppy beat. And with this sound setting the stage, it moves seamlessly from this funked-up tribute to a classic song, to a relaxed Rhodes piano and slammed poem. In writing, that probably sounds like it wouldn't work, but damn it if it does.

raindrops

Following this impressive mashup, the album travels into darker, glitchier territory, and temporarily ditches the vocalizing for a little ethereal background sound along with some scratched up samples. "dragonfly" returns to singing, with a very poppy and slightly R&B sound, and "it all came to pass" is a distinct turn into soul territory with a dark beat. Then the vocalizing goes back to being nothing more than repeated samples, set against quiet, melancholy sweeps that swell into a purposeful drumbeat.

"every thing is good (part 1)" seems to be the precursor to an actual story. While tracks 1-5 seemed to recount the feelings and experiences of how it all began, "every thing is good (part 1)" quickly rehashes a time when things were calm and happy, then sets off into a steady series of telling vocal tracks that mourn the way it all fell apart. They talk of being "left with something I can't fix," of "leaving something beautiful," of how it's "hard to swallow, all gone south, fucked up for real." Finally, the album closes with a bittersweet, speechless instrumental, appropriately titled: "forget this ever happened."

100 pills

I could really feel the love and loss happening behind this album. It was thrilling, hopeful, and heartbreaking - in other words, it was full of the crazy, beautiful, inconsistent stuff that life is made of. Maybe what it has made me feel is more acute because of all that I'm going through now, but I think whether you can relate or not, Never Trust The Chinese will still manage to pull you by the skin of your teeth into its story.

Excerpts from an interview
Wired.com: What do you have against the Chinese? Don’t you know they own all our debt?
Devin: We love the Chinese. But my ex was Chinese, and she kinda fucked my world up, that’s all.

Wired.com: Who is Mr. Meeble?
Devin: Mr. Meeble is not a person. He just sounds like a person. And we talk about him like he’s a person. I think he’s this super big-hearted guy that occasionally has very, very bad thoughts. I wish I had a good answer to that question.
Blain: Mr Meeble has many arms and many legs. Quite a few people collaborated with us on this record.
Michael: Mr. Meeble is an idiot savant.

kozies

2010-01-12T21:15:00.016-06:00

No more using my nose to turn up the volume on my iPod.

After over a year of just garter stitch and stockinette, I've finally learned a new stitch: the rib stitch. And now I can make fingerless gloves, which are very good instant-gratifiers because they don't take long to complete. Also, about those bandaids all over my fingers - the cold here is brutal, makes my skin split like kleenex. I got tired of bleeding everywhere so I just patched 'em up.

I dropped public speaking so I wouldn't suffocate under this semester's workload, and in its place, I picked up a dinky little one-credit library science course. It just feels like too much of a cop-out taking 13 credit hours when the lowest limit is 12, especially when 4 of those hours will be spent learning a language I can already read and speak. So having 14 feels just a little less guilty, even though the class hardly counts for a thing. Library science will probably come in handy though; I might could get a job this summer at the library with this credit on my resume, and I'd obviously love that. In fact, that could be what I do next year.

I don't like to take up space with trivial updates like this - to be honest I just wanted an excuse to showcase my nice gloves, and then decided I might as well babble a little about what's going on with school while I'm at it and have a small window of time with which to do it. I refuse to post again until I have something worthwhile to talk about.

Also, here is a Tyler.

xxxxxx

2010-01-09T00:38:00.001-06:00

my life in 300 words

2010-01-08T19:37:00.007-06:00

What's going down for the first half of spring semester, daily-schedule-wise.

Monday:
World Civ Since 1700 11:30 - 12:20

Tuesday/Thursday:
Perspectives in Music: Classical 9:00 - 10:20
Intro to Linguistics 10:30 - 11:50
Chinese 1:30 - 2:20

Wednesday/Friday:
World Civ Since 1700 11:30 - 12:20
Chinese 1:30 - 2:20

M-H 6:00 yoga-lates/yoga
F 5:00 yoga

As far as my unofficial extracurriculars go, I am determined to take full advantage of Pickler's excellent movie collection before I leave. I'm determined to take full advantage of Pickler in general - now that I've dipped my foot in the whole partying/drunken revelry and realized how lame and embarrassing it all is, I've lost almost all interest in keeping up with much of a social life. Unless I'm begged to stay, I won't be doing much more than making an obligatory and early appearance at the hipster frat and better thought-out house parties like Ludachristmas. There's only so much connection-working you can do before everyone gets too drunk to remember how cool you were to talk to.

January - A couple more Bergman gems, and a classic that comes highly recommended: The Virgin Spring, Fanny & Alexander, It's a Wonderful Life
February - is for Kurosawa: Rashomon, Ran, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo
March - Chipping away at various reputable films: The Godfather I and II (over spring break?), Sunrise, Bicycle Thieves, Passion of Joan of Arc
April - cont'd: City Lights, Apocalypse Now, Dr. Strangelove, Andrei Rubelev
May - cont'd: Jules et Jim

In the literary realm I'm hoping to take down Lolita, The Day of the Locust, and The Idiot. When I get back home for the summer I will just watch whatever my mother Netflixes, and that's if I have time, as I expect to be working myself to death. Hopefully I'll be able to save up some $2000, and really hopefully I can get my own vehicle, and start paying that off. Then...the real fun begins...

samsonette

2010-01-06T05:25:00.005-06:00

I worry sometimes that the bulk of my beauty is attributed to my superlong hair, and that if I were to cut it I wouldn't be considered attractive anymore.

Yeesh, that sounds like the stuff of a postsecret, doesn't it? In light of that, I should probably cut it, and drastically, simply for the exercise in self-empowerment. It would be a little symbolic too, as I've not altered the length of it at all since I was 17, and I've developed so much since. The longest ends of my hair now were the same ends around my collarbone way back when I was whining about Hunter, and it's more than a little bit disgusting to think that I am constantly carrying around a physical remnant of that stupid phase. So a haircut would be kind of a nice way to literally cut ties with who I used to be. But it's not just the insecurity that's holding me back, it's common sense; I am not well known for rocking short cuts. My face is just too damn big. I have to swallow it up some with hair.

But! This post is not about to just be some tedious thinking-out-loud about superfluities such as my hairstyle. The main attraction is that after three weeks of not having to write nonstop, I'm starting to get the old itch back. If that wasn't evident enough by my rebirth of blogging. It's just exciting to know that my main creative lifeblood is finally circulating again, and what's even more exciting is that I think those weeks and weeks of intensive production have helped to refine my technique. Here's to my writing ventures in 2010.

Feh, the more I think about hacking my hair off, the more I want to do it...for now it keeps me marginally warmer though, and versus Kirksville winter deathfreeze I need all the help I can get. I'll give it some more serious thought come spring.

good talk

2010-01-04T19:00:00.002-06:00

LVP

2010-01-03T18:23:00.054-06:00

This post is going to sound aggressive. It's been a rough...I hesitate to say "day," as the start and end time has been so scrambled. I haven't washed my hair or had a full meal in 20+ hours, my sleep schedule has been intermittently screwed, the coffee I had to finally wake me up at 3 p.m. tasted like cardboard, 66.6% of the company was less-than-desirable, my company was less-than-desirable to 66.6%, and, as usual, I'm having some annoyingly paradoxical internal conflict. Which is the primary causative agent of the shadow over this shitshow.

I'm not aesthetically made for the grungy sort of lifestyle. I get zits if I don't pay attention. My hair's on the thin side. I can't stand being stubbly for more than two days. I like to get up at a normal time, exercise regularly, eat right, and keep tabs on my hygiene. Right now I look like a damn hipster, all sans makeup with bedhead and wearing this ridiculous lumberjack flannel onesie shirtdress sinfully comfortable thing, and I smell like body oils and sleep. This kind of thing does work for me occasionally, I love it when it does - more often in the winter, nights of euphoria or passion or some other such adventure. But not now, or maybe just not here. Nothing ever feels alive here. Especially not me.

Anyway, before I go and wash this day off, I may as well share the couple loosely-formed insights I had. After hearing some of the lush music and boisterously-spoken French from a film in a setting I don't care to elaborate on, I've decided that European culture is, for lack of a better word, "cheesy" in such a self-assured, decadent way that we don't dare touch it - to us it's loud, it's lewd, it's oversaturated, and it doesn't give a damn. Because America is just lacking in that sort of culture, it seems extravagant, but it isn't, it's just the way of the world, and in some respects I think we are way too inhibited. We are the only ones without primal dancing and drums and exotic instruments, classic dress in blasts of primary color, with sociological and societal restraints on greeting casual friends with kisses and working with our sexuality the way we see fit. And why, WHY is our drinking age 21?! It, among a frightening array of other things, only serves to make teens feel like teens and therefore act and think like teens, sometimes well out of their teens.

I could elaborate on all this much more if I had the energy, but I don't, and I have one other thing to hit on before I blow: the overuse of color words is a pretty reliable sign that your writing is a piece of crap. You should be able to color your writing without always having to use color. You should be able to achieve richness and texture and depth to a word-constructed environment without calling everything adjective red and adjective green and adjective yellow, all the damn time.

Alright, I've said my piece. In the end, I still love life as we know it, all of it, always always always.

coffee & clickin'

2010-01-02T08:46:00.003-06:00

Gonna be one of those lazy mornings when I hit "random article" on Wiki till something that isn't some obscure county in Poland pops up, go on a furious link-clicking spree from there, usually not without a complementary search with Google Images, and an hour and a half later end up with yet another useless bit of intensive knowledge to go along with gemstones, medieval armor, hormones, lexicology, etc.

Today's topics of interest include:
1. The moons of Uranus, i.e. the reason it's my favorite planet,
2. The only thing even slightly related to chemistry that doesn't make me recoil, and
3. Cat communication and body language, for future reference. I've decided that in the future I'll adopt a black cat by the name of Bryska (or Boris if I decide to go with a boy cat) to keep with the family's tradition of having black animals with "b" names. Quadruple score for me too, as I'm planning to do this during my bachelorette years (if I even have bachelorette years), and the breed I'd most prefer is called a Bombay. It's also, like my PRODUCT(RED) iPod Nano purchase, conveniently philanthropic - black cats are least likely of all cats to be adopted simply because of the superstition attached to them. Well, I just so happen to like red. And I just so happen to think black cats are sleek n' chic. The former meant money toward fighting AIDS in Africa, and the latter means someday a particularly lonely gato negro will have a home. I guess I just so happen to be innately helpful to the world.

And now I'm going to go look for a life.

Gehen, by Swod

2010-01-01T11:50:00.005-06:00

I am absolutely a sucker for the use or incorporation of piano in music, particularly in a neoclassical style, so my recent discovery is an exciting one. Combine a mist of static and electronic sound, sleepy droplets of various acoustic instruments, and a few snippets of foreign speech forming helixes around a ribbon of piano phrases, and you have Swod, the recording project of multi-capable musicians Oliver Doerell and Stephan Wohrmann from Berlin. And God knows, God help me with it too, I love me some of those muziky Germans.

Swod's first album, Gehen, which in English means "go," begins with a one minute waltz of rhythmic electronic scraping and a mildly urgent piano awakening. This soft, frantic piano surrounded by eerie static and cymbal is essentially the voice that carries through the entire album, but it never grows monotonous. The album's namesake track incorporates a bass guitar line behind fluttering chords, with the sound of Oliver's fingers sliding and moving on the strings clear and close. With Fugitif 2, they play with the wavering and decaying effect of the sustained note on the piano, fleshing it out with a bit of electronic percussion and faint speech, or some of what sounds like just ordinary background sound and ambience in the studio. Minimal as their music is, it never feels thin because of these intricacies.

Tucholskystr. 34, one of my favorite tracks on the album, begins with almost a full minute of ominous electronic shuffles before it pours into a strong, mournful, classically-inspired piano piece. Surprisingly, the two streams of sound complement each other. Hochbahn is another favorite of mine, and well-placed in the track-listing as well, as it relieves the listener of a bit of the melancholy without disrupting the pace. There are noises like chirping and buzzing that are deceptively organic, so at first listen it seems as though the environment that the music creates has finally opened up, but then you realize that it's only clever electronic engineering and you're still in the same extremely intimate space, holding your breath. The final track, Walz 57, is an effective return from the comparative lightness of Hochbahn and a fitting end. It cycles fervently through its two central sounds; as the track progresses you seem to be traveling toward and then away from the piano, with the electronic surrounding an acoustic climax.

This gets the nod. Look into it.

young mess

2009-12-31T04:06:00.009-06:00

Love is a many-splendored pain in my ass.

Some concept art that I need to keep in mind, or feel guilty about if I look back on this too much later and realize I've not yet given life to the majority of it:

big cut-outs
incorporation of Cyrillic alphabet
coitus colors, pastel, exp. w/ paint?
hand clutching sheet
orchid heart
female trunk, charcoal?
altered self-portrait
flying burst, pencil & pastel
crumpled paper bouquet

While I'm at it, my New Year's resolutions:

Experience more art
Create more art
Make things happen
Give
Break this nail/cuticle-picking nervous habit once and for all, damn it. I'm down to only two torn up fingers; so close!

romance languages

2009-12-29T18:09:00.010-06:00

The word "romance" comes from a sociolect of Latin known as Vulgar Latin, which is the colloquial version of Classical Latin, and was spoken by the illiterate and lower classes of the Roman Empire. In Vulgar Latin, the adverb romanice translates roughly to "in the Roman vernacular," and from this the noun romance originated. It came to be associated with love in modern English because while serious writing of the medieval age was done in Classical Latin, the popular stories were written romanice, and they were often about love.

All well and good and commonsensical of course; etymology almost always is. But I believe there is another sort of implicit linguistic secret to this title - that, or it ended up being more appropriate than whoever coined it imagined.

"...if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat..."

I've read the novella "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry umpteen times now, and yet every time I do I always come upon just one simple word or phrase that suddenly makes my heart feel like it's going to pop. The version I read is in English, as I can't read the original French, but somehow I feel as though the story gains from its translation rather than loses. When it comes to French, many English translations are obviously connected in a synonymous sort of way. For instance, "scathing" in Francais is "acerbe," and "lusty" becomes "vigoureux." Sometimes I wonder if the lines become blurred through translation, if grass - "herbe" becomes "herbs" or sheen - "lustre" becomes "luster" in our books, because French literature always seems to play in a slightly different key in my ears. It's a familiar song, but it seems like it's got an extra flat that raises a small ghost of a question mark but does nothing to diminish the song itself.

"I felt deeply moved, and stirred. It seemed to me that I was carrying a very fragile treasure. It seemed to me, even, that there was nothing more fragile on all Earth. In the moonlight I looked at his pale forehead, his closed eyes, his locks of hair that trembled in the wind..."

"He twined himself around the little prince's ankle, like a golden bracelet."

So maybe it's only me, but I have always felt something very pure and unabashed in French translation, and other European translations in general. It seems to walk comfortably through sentimental syntax territory, using words like "tremble" and metaphors so simple that they seem like the literary equivalent of striking one tinny, innocent note on a xylophone, but the results are so natural and sweet that rather than wince the way I would at something sugared up like a greeting card, it's more like savoring a drop of honey.

"It is such a secret place, the land of tears."

Read "The Little Prince" online here.

abeo

2009-12-28T16:27:00.002-06:00

A lot has happened since last my last entry in my old blog back in September '08 - namely that college has drained too much of my energy to write a very substantial introduction about it. Actually, I'm probably giving academia too much credit for what is largely a personal issue; I just can't sort through my thoughts and theories explicitly in writing like I used to when I was younger. Things have become too complicated. Complicated in the way that I've realized it's hardly worth talking about. No one cares to read a bunch of whiny existential nihilistic insert philosophy of the week here dramatic late adolescent baloney, and I don't care to write it.

So, audience that may or may not be there, this round will probably be less embarrassing personal record (thank god) and more hodgepodge of anything and everything else I feel like writing. Which may be just as much of a record in itself.