"If I should ever die--God forbid--let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTANCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC." -- Kurt Vonnegut

seriously... I. do. not. understand how people can listen to music and not believe in God.

What's the deal, heart? Why can't you just be happy? I swear, there is no pleasing you.



Also, what's with EVERY music major suddenly working out? How am I supposed to be skinnier than everyone else when everyone goes to the gym?


Also... Jeff Quay. Maybe life changing. I can't get him out of my head.

Early Semester Jitters

I suppose I should have finished talking about Christravagansmas, but the rest of it was quite uneventful, as far as Christravagansmases go. New Year's Eve, as we all know, is "the biggest letdown of the year," so how about we ignore that too?
Sunday I made the epic trip back to Houghton with Becky, Lis and Kat. Over lunch at Kat's house we decided to call ourselves Becky Miller and the Carnivores in the Kitchen, and somewhere in PA we realized that all of us but Becky have March birthdays.
Classes started yesterday. It's JANUARY, and the high was 63. Nice, but ridiculous. I was overwhelmed by my classes, but mostly because I kept forgetting that this semester, my tuesday-thursdays are actually harder than my monday-wednesdays, so I kept panicking, unable to imagine how I would possibly survive. Then this morning I slept in until around 9, and that made everything seem much more survivable. We played through chunks of Copland's Appalachian Spring (the chamber version) in orchestra yesterday, and despite practicing it for hours over break I was still thoroughly overwhelmed, though mostly from switching to a different copy of the music that didn't have all of my notes and scribbles, and from all the jumping around we did. Thankfully, it's the only song I'm playing for orchestra, so I'll have plenty of time to spend with it (in a perfect world, at least). And then there was jazz band.
Every instrumental ed major has to take at least one semester of jazz band, in case we have a jazz band of our own one day. I completely agree with this requirement, I think it's absolutely necessary and something that most instrumental majors don't have nearly enough exposure to. But. Most instrumental majors don't play jazz instruments. This sucks for the performers, this sucks for the director, and this sucks a lot for the poor trombonists who have to sit in front of me and listen to me play trumpet. This is an unfortunate situation for everyone involved.
Other quite serious concerns for the semester:

• a REALLY HARD concertino for my jury, and super-intense two-hours-every-other-week lessons... and needing to find the focus for yet another Vivaldi concerto
• working up the patience for 2 classes a day with Mr. Stith. He's great, but I would still like more variety in my professors. He teaches half of my classes this semester. And he's my advisor. And he's in charge of two cabinets I serve on. On Tuesday/Thursdays, I have two classes with him in a row.
• being unemployed. Seriously. I go to the only college in the world that runs out of custodial jobs. I can't work for Phonathon any more because of recitals, jazz band and orchestra. I could almost work for telecounseling if I applied, but I'm pretty sure they don't have thursday openings and I would still have to get subs every time there were recitals. So I guess I have to hunt down a cafeteria job, which I was really hoping I would never have to do. Nothing against the cafeteria... except I don't want to work there. It's hot and smelly and I don't want to, so there. But I also don't want to be poor, so I have to find something.

On the bright side, however:

• I never connected that my art teacher and "that lady at my church" are the same person. Did I mention I'm taking an art class? heck yes. I'm a junior, and this is my first elective.
• I went to the gym yesterday. Not having a job gives me time to work out (good for my body, bad for my bank account), and for now at least I have time to work out every week day without having to be up at the gym at 4 in the morning. Thank you, night classes that ruined my longstanding employment
• I have a reasonable practice schedule, if I can kick Dan out of the room every morning
• I have a recital buddy! Bekah is pretty much my favorite in every way possible. She's my favorite accompanist, she's my favorite not-actually-study-buddy, she was my favorite aural skills buddy, hopefully we'll live together next fall for student teaching, and now she's my recital buddy. Yay recital buddy!
• Herrmann is loaning me two of the (quite pricey!) books I need for this semester. He assaulted me while I was book-buying yesterday and made me put two of them back. This saved me a lot of money that, since being unemployed, I don't have.

Midwest and Christravegansmas, Part One

Midwest was exciting, though quite frustrating at times. One of the people I was staying with was... less than pleasant. Oh well. On the brighter side, I saw the Boston Brass, the Navy Band and The Blue Man Group--twice--second and fourth rows! One of their musicians, Jeff Somethingorother, held a clinic titled "From High School Band to Blue Man Group" and the Blue Men (is that the proper pluralization?) designed a routine just for Midwest. It was amazing. I spent a little less than $200 on registration, travel and a hotel room, but I could have easily paid that just to see the Blue Man Group with much worse seats, so it's all ok. I went to a lot of interesting clinics. We mostly went to the conducting ones and I know even less now what I want to do when I grow up, because I want to do everything. I guess I'll be happy no matter what, though, since I can't seem to make up my mind on what I want the most.

Day One of Christravagansmas is over. I suppose Day Two, really; yesterday was the Christmas Program at church which I have successfully not been involved with for almost ten years. It was cute, though. I managed to get myself sick while I was in Chicago, though, so I skipped out on Post-Christmas-Program lunch and took an eight-hour nap, followed by sleeping 13 hours last night. Today was Christmas with Jody's family, which included many a gag gift and inappropriate comment. Good times all around. I got Life is Beautiful, which I am thoroughly excited about owning, as well as Velvet Elvis which I'm looking forward to reading. I haven't actually read anything by Rob Bell yet, but I figure it's about time since everyone I do enjoy reading seems to be BFF with him, and the Nooma series is pretty decent. Christravagansmas continues tomorrow with Katie's family, which always promises to be entertaining.

Merry Christmas, the Internet!

I feel like in the past I've been sitting around at school, daydreaming about how great it will be to go home and lounge around and see people. This year, I think I've finally hit that point where I call college "home": "I'm getting a ride home with Becky Miller," "When I get home I'll start looking for Quintet music," "when I get home I'll start going to the gym." I barely remember what I like about Indy. I went to Qdoba and Starbucks tonight and it was great, but sitting around in Starbucks I kept waiting for someone I know to walk in, someone I could distract from a paper or woo into loving the ukulele. I wanted to talk to Diana or Matt or Aileen, to know not only the music playing but who recorded it when, and who made the art on the walls. I don't want to go to my big "Indiana" church tomorrow, with little old women disappointed I haven't yet found a husband and those same tedius questions, "how long have you been home?" "When are you going back? oh, good, so we have you for a few more weeks...." "Have you found a special someone yet?" "And I'm sure your grades are good. What are you studying, again?" Hopefully the snow will take care of that for me.
Or maybe I'll make up a boyfriend so the little old women won't be so disappointed.

F, B, D#, G#.
Why are they such a big deal? Tristan: What is the deal? Why are you so important? I understand riots about Rite of Spring. Rite of Spring is violent and intense and not what people expected to see and hear. But the Tristan Chord is so... pretty. And true, no one rioted over the Tristan chord. But historically it's so important. It ends 200 years of functional harmony. And I keep staring at it, waiting for the epiphany of how those four notes combine to make something so controversial. Other people used the same chord before Wagner; but not in the same way--it was functional, in other places. I suppose simply because I wasn't born until the 80s, because there's been 100 or so years of nonfunctional harmony in my ears since birth, it doesn't sound as important to me as it does to Wagner's audience and contemporaries.
But I look at the Tristan chord, and it gives me hope. If Tristan can be so organic, so effortless and yet so influential, then maybe I can be influential. Maybe history classes will throw my name around like a close friend.
Fingers crossed.

accomplished:

• Prism open dress rehearsal
• lessons for all the woodwind kids
• classes for the semester (!!)
• Half my El Methods binder
• Sledding, twice!
• Jury
• Voice final
• Epic Winter Adventure year 3
• Charlie Brown Christmas Twig
• Christmas in the Atrium

Yet to be done:

• Prism actual performance
• Lit of the Western World final
• MHis final (eep!)
• El Methods binder
• El Methods Lesson
• El Methods "final"
• Brass final
• Euphonium playing final
• Hist/Phil of Ed cookies with Uncle Tim
• Around 7 loads of laundry
• Packing
• Check-out
• Securing my observations for the first Monday of break
• Midwest

Oy.

There's something odd about listening to Weber opera recordings. That something is spoken dialogue. I feel like a crazy person sitting in my room, alone, listening to some German counting bullets from Hell. And it isn't even set to music! Who does that? Zamiel, apparently.... Earlier in the semester I had nightmares that the Commendatore was coming for me. It was an odd experience; I don't normally have nightmares at all, except for when I'm sick. But since I'm sick-ish now and since Kaspar is such a creeper, could easily see myself dreaming about Zamiel coming after me. I'm not sure why I keep finding myself afraid of opera characters. I think it has something to do with my deep-rooted fear of singing?