on dreaming

remember way back when i dreamed of being a real musician? when i finished my last final and immediately sat down to look at conservatories for post-graduation? when i had Plans for my life?
...yeah. more and more, those plans are looking like a waste of my time. i'm not an actress; so goodbye broadway. i'm not really a soprano; so goodbye any sort of classical performance. and i have artistic integrity, so no recording contracts for me. going to a conservatory will really end up just being a waste of time and money.
the hardest part of having dreams is waking up and realizing that they were just that: dreams, and nothing more.

next to normal (complete with spoilers!)

it's almost a month since i saw next to normal on broadway. on the surface, it's a very simple show to summarize: a family made dysfunctional due to mental illness. i suppose just from that description, it would be easy to write it off as something akin to schadenfreude, since after all, theatre is a form of entertainment and this show is centered on someone else's misfortune.
but at least to me, that's not at all what it is. perhaps this is only because it's been years since i was anything approximating normal, but i found it heartwrenchingly relatable.
the audience is taken all the way through diana's breakdown, from every character's perspective, with vivid and all too realistic descriptions of the accompanying mental states. and to sit there in the mezzanine and realize that i have been where she was...well, it was frankly terrifying. the entire show is just so. fucking. real. that by intermission i was back in that old state of wide-eyed terror over where my life could end up.
i cried the entire way through. even watching the family make its way out of that darkest place i cried. but somewhere along the way, a glimmer of hope turned up, and got brighter and brighter with every song (quite literally) til by the end things looked less bleak for both them and by extension, for me.
i don't know where i'm going with this review, so i'm going to stop here, but all in all this is a wonderful show. musically amazing, wonderfully acted, and utterly real. i'm going to see it again, and probably send my parents tickets as well.

say what?

i've gotten in the habit of watching So You Think You Can Dance. between that, and talking to Black Polos and Sweaters about my future in performance, it looks like i'm going to be auditioning for american idol. such are the bright ideas one gets in the middle of the night.
i still have no idea what i'll do if i make it onto the show. but for now i have less than a month to choose an audition song...

in limbo

another birthday is approaching, and i am reminded of why i don't want to grow up. it involves being a real adult, with an actual paying job.
thing is, i'm meant to be on the stage, whether it's on broadway or singing classically. but being a successful musician isn't just about skill; it also depends a lot on who you know. and i'm reluctant to completely commit to a career in music, simply because it takes the right circumstances to begin making money. i don't particularly want to be yet another starving artist living in a box under harvard bridge.
right now i don't really know how to handle the disconnect between the various facets of what i want from life. i'm planning to apply to conservatories & get a degree in performance after i graduate, but plans never really work out the way you expect them to. i suppose i'll just be in an interesting sort of in-between for a while; or at least, until i decide to make up my mind one way or the other.

in the pursuit of developing taste in music

i have a lot of free time this summer, so i am picking up a rather interesting project.
i've been reading Questionable Content faithfully since high school, and it's written by a guy who apparently listens to a LOT of music. my actual knowledge of music seems to have shrunk relative to my awareness of what exists; and so in an effort to remedy this i am going to listen to every band that has ever been mentioned in the strip.
this is actually pretty exciting to me, so you can expect regular updates :)

fairytales

it's the way you love me
it's a feelin' like this
it's centrifugal motion
it's that perpetual bliss
This Kiss - Faith Hill

love doesn't actually work like this. a relationship can't be all smiles and bliss. someone who actually loves you will go through so much with you: illness; money trouble; fears; and yes, fights too.
love is heartbreaking and it will make you cry. it will hurt you deep inside so badly that it makes you sick sometimes. love is not easy, no walk in the park. it's allowing one person to bring you by turns utter bliss and deep-reaching pain, because you do the same to them whether you know it or not.
there is no way for any relationship to be simple. human beings are by their very nature complicated creatures. love is being willing to work with this complexity and all the curveballs it may throw in someone other than yourself.
that is how you know you've found love.

=)

OMG noise-canceling skull candy earbuds. best shit ever.

disclosures

i think i'm beginning to understand why you should never tell people who know you that you have a blog.
i know too many people who judge, too many people who can't keep their mouths shut, too many people who are the sort to talk to me about what i write while in the company of others. and now i haven't posted properly in a while, because what's on my mind involves certain people that a good chunk of people know: and while i'd love to just vent it all out like i need to, i don't really feel like subjecting them and their lives to inordinate scrutiny. so i'm once again reduced to dumping my woes on friends while this blog languishes and, in all probability, has an emotional crisis due to an inability to fulfill its intended purpose.
once my life starts behaving normally again and i go back to having regular arguments with people, all will be well and good. until then, here's something happy and fun to amuse yourselves with.

what happens when you spend saturday night at an orchestra concert

• you fall in love with saint-saens all over again
• you rediscover an ambivalence towards violin concerti
  
• you decide the second movement of beethoven 5 would make an epic wedding recessional and it distracts you for the rest of the night
• until you listen to ravel's gaspard de la nuit, at which point you wish you actually played piano
• and you regret not having time to play in the symphony orchestra
  
• and then you text all your wind ensemble friends from high school because you miss them a lot
• but you go download recordings of your senior concert and feel a little bit better
• and then you remember that you also have super awesome musician friends up in boston and feel better still
  

insomniac

i can hear your bare feet on the kitchen floor
i don't have to have these dreams no more
i found someone just to hold me tight
hold the insomniac all night
~insomniac; billy pilgrim

i went to bed last night and lay awake with my new favorite song stuck in my head. the irony was not lost on me. the virginia gentlemen arranged it beautifully though, so no complaints. though i'm no insomniac, it feels somehow relevant to my life.

the tower

i need not to need
i've always been the tower
but now i feel like i'm a flower
trying to bloom in snow
~the tower, vienna teng

is there a way at all to keep yourself from needing to need? when you've been the one needed by others for years you need someone to lean on yourself and the longer you go without that the more you need it. and then you find it and suddenly you're stuck and you can't be without anymore. where is the happy medium?

anna molly

i have somehow fallen in love with this song. i think a cappella has somehow expanded what i listen to, because i would never have considered listening to incubus in high school. don't know why.
but the MIT Logarhythms covered anna molly on their most recent cd (Give Us Back Our Spyplane) and it's better than the original. both are good, but it's better a cappella. and i am in love.
it's intense and painful. a song for listening to in the rain.

halo

everywhere i'm looking now
i'm surrounded by your embrace
baby i can see your halo
you know you're my saving grace
halo~ beyonce

this is what it feels like to be loved in spite of your failings. to know that yeah, i may be crazy messed up, but there's at least one person out there who wouldn't want me any other way. it makes life feel better somehow.

bless the broken road

every long-lost dream
led me to where you are
others who broke my heart
they were like northern stars
pointing me on my way
into your loving arms
this much i know is true
that God blessed the broken road
that led me straight to you

i totally just fell in love with this song. it makes me feel so zen about life in general. like, it sucks sometimes, but sometimes it puts you in a really awesome place and you have to stop and wonder "would i be here now if everything had been perfect way back when?" and you know what? a lot of the time the answer is no. and i think it's much more difficult to be bitter about the past when you look at the big picture.

human existence

will i lose my dignity
will someone care?
will i wake tomorrow
from this nightmare?

i was watching rent tonight for the millionth time. and this song never fails to make me cry. and i always wondered why, until it hit me tonight. this song is the anthem of human existence. no matter what goes on in your life, the ultimate question most people seem to ask is not 'when will this crap end?' they say instead 'is there somebody, anybody, who will care enough to talk to me, to listen, enough to just be here for me?' they ask 'will this destroy who i am? will it consume me into nothingness? am i wasting my time? will anyone at all hear me?'

and quite often, nobody does. that's not the way things should be. as people we are placed on this planet not to indulge ourselves, but to make it a better place. that friend of yours with the self-esteem issues? the girl who's always alone at lunch? don't pass them by. be there when they need you. you could change a life.

national anthems, specifically american

why do performers feel the need to embellish the national anthem? there is a right way to sing it. it's called following what was written and what has been the national anthem for eternity. i am not condemning changing the key: i personally don't think you should sing it where it was written if you can't do it well.

but adding riffs and just doing things to the song that should not be done? unacceptable. follow the damn sheet music. find it on the internet if you don't know how it should go. do you stick riffs into the middle of classic hymns? no. not at all. doing it to the star-spangled banner is unacceptable. YES DAMMIT R&B ARTISTS I AM TALKING TO YOU ALL. STOP COMMITTING MUSICAL CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

vienna teng and love, in unequal amounts

sail your sea

meet your storm

all i want

is to be your harbor

~harbor- vienna teng

is this what it means to be in love?

to be always there for someone not because you want to feel needed, just to be there as though it can somehow confer stability when they need it?

to walk life's roads together because you can, because you want to?

lobby 7 > prozac =)

there is something about the combination of music and perfect architecture that is better than prozac. yesterday was an iffy sort of day (i'm really bad at spacing out my work, so i end up doing it all the night before it's due) and we had rehearsal and i really didn't want to go. to cut a long story short, though, we ended up singing in lobby 7. lobby 7 has the best acoustics ever. notes just hang in the air like clouds of golden and beautiful and honestly it made life so much better, if only briefly. music is unbelievable.

blink 182 is no big deal

ok people. blink 182 is back. so? BLINK 182 IS NOT THE MESSIAH,  just another band from circa middle school. get over yourselves people, and get real lives. especially y'all who are in college which is CLOSE TO THE REAL WORLD. and for goodness' sake, they weren't even that good. fun to listen to, yes. good musically? not so much. ten years and nobody will actually remember/care what they did. there's a reason you hear so much about dead composers. what they wrote was real music. now get your asinine status updates out of my feed. some of us are actual adults.

life = good (or, more randoms)

i have the most adorable bio TA ever. she's tiny and puerto rican. and adorable. honestly, i'm going to all her office hours just to hang out.

realized that the credit limit is actually a good thing, because if it didn't exist i would almost certainly be taking seven classes this semester instead of five. like, four humanities classes instead of two. i am officially a lunatic.

first choir rehearsal of the semester is tonight!

i have a 926-page course reader for my music analysis class. 926 pages of classical scores. the world has exploded in showers of epic and awesome.

in short, life = hella f'n sweet.