Shostakovich!

Last night, after the frisbee game, K and a friend of his and I went back to K's place and ended up listening to the entirety of the eighth quartet (one of my favorite pieces in the whole world). What an experience! Having failed to listen to any "classical" music post 1750 for the better part of a year, the dissonances and rhythms were so fresh and striking all over again. It was as if I'd never heard the piece before even though I knew what was coming. Re-experiencing the languid sorrow of the first movement, the heart-racing fear of the second, the subversion of the third, the terror of the fourth, and the resignation of the fifth, brought my heart back to places I hadn't visited in a long time. I loved every second of it. And I loved seeing K and his friend both go through their own versions of the ecstasy I was feeling. To see the expressions on their faces when the harmony crunches itself up into a place you never expected it to go, a place you didn't realize music could go. To see the shock in K's features when the lone violin note is interrupted by the banging-on-the-door/gunshot themes, the dawning comprehension when I pointed out the name-theme and when he identified it later on his own. That was pure joy for me. I love music theory, I love science, I love explanations, but I don't want to know Shostakovich's secrets. Somehow, he does things with harmony that no one else can, things I don't understand, can't replicate on my own. He moves masterfully between dissonance and consonance, milking the expressive power of both. He is one of my favorite composers and I had forgotten about him. How happy I am to be reminded!

MmmHmm

Two nights ago, I made a lemon cake for T's 25th birthday party (see facebook for amazing pictures of said party). Last night, I made a feast. What can I say, I was feeling inspired! T and his roommate and Stiney came over as well as K (to whom I will introduce you in a later paragraph). Here is what I made:

-Apple-carrot confetti salad with lemon juice and dried cranberries (check-plus and easy to make!)
-Spicy lentil-filled deep-friend pastries (check-plus on the filling, check-minus for all the hassle of rolling them up and frying them)
-Sweet potato bread (check-plus as always!)
-Bell peppers stuffed with rice, tomatoes, mint, dill and parsley with a creamy feta sauce over them (check-plus!)

Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves, and then ate more, and then ate cake! Then we cleaned up the kitchen and sipped tea and played Anagrabble (a game with the Scrabble tiles). It was fabulously fun and I'm still smiling to remember all the different spices and flavors and all the wonderful laughter with friends.

Okay, who is K, you ask? K is a new friend and a wonderful person who also happens to be an extremely attractive man who by some grace of god likes me too. He's not a musician (I never expected to date anyone other than musicians!) but listens with more emotional intelligence and passion than many musicians I know. He may not know the words I've learned to use to describe music, but he knows the feelings that are behind them. I'll tell you more about him in the future if I don't manage to scare him off! But for now, I'm happy.

Now it's time to get back to eating left-overs and writing blue-grass tunes!

Some sort of credo

I just watched "Jesus Camp." Yes, yes, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I knew it would be upsetting, confusion and anger-inducing. And yes, I watched it anyway. Much of it is what you'd expect. Much of it reminded me of the several Evangelicals I've met throughout my life. I was prepared for the intensity of belief, the anti-rationalist viewpoints, the genuineness of feeling. What I wasn't prepared for was the emotional manipulation of young children. It's one thing to teach children what you believe, what you want them to believe, but it's totally different to tell them they are inherently bad people and that everything they want is wrong. All those shots of the kids weeping during sermons just about broke my heart. I'd be interested to see where those kids end up in 20 years. Some will probably be preaching or having babies to preach to, but maybe some will find other ways to live. It's a veritable children's crusade with as many psyches damaged as lives lost in the first one.

At one point in the film, a child declares that America is sick and only Jesus can cure it. I say, we are all sick! Always, every single one of us. We all make do, we all find things with which to console ourselves. But leave me my options! Maybe Jesus will cure you, but I require Bach, and perhaps Marais too. My sickness requires fresh vegetables, and good books to read. We all have the same malady but every individual requires a different treatment!

Half of me wants to run away to Europe and never look back and the other half insists that America is not "God's nation," it's my nation. Maybe I'm too much my mother's daughter (she wrote a whole book about sense of place) but I'm attached to this land, to the fruit trees, the lakes, the crazy weather, the winding highways, even sometimes the stubborn insistence on excess. I'm not sure I'm cut out to spend my life fighting the Evangelicals (nor do I think that stooping to their mercurial metaphors is a good idea) but I can be evangelical about what I believe. It may not be written in a inconsistently-translated tome in dire need of some editing nor is it necessarily articulatible (especially without neologizing!) but I'll try. At this moment, I believe in beauty, in happiness, in the large and the minute, in individuality, in love, in the logical and the inane, in laughter and tears, in change and whimsy and in loyalty, and perhaps most importantly, in contradiction, in the gray area in between everything. I believe in "I don't know."

This instant, I believe in eating more baby carrots.

End of sermon.

One notch above miserable

The very worst part about being an adult is getting sick. When you're young, you get leave to do nothing, others will pick up the slack for you. You have a family to commiserate with, to make you tea. You get to stay home from school, eat whatever you want and watch movies all day. As an adult, there are no perks. The cats still need to be fed, the bills need paying, the only food is what you make yourself and the dishes pile up if you don't do them. Then there's all the anxiety about the things I should be getting done, the grand plans I'm not working on because I'm sitting around being sick and feeling sorry for myself! Ah, self-pity, what a trap you are! My tea, the tissue box and I are going to escape, we'll hide in the livingroom, with a book perhaps and let the day pass quietly. The only thing I got that the germs don't is time, I will patiently outlive them!

Lazy Summer Days

So, let's recap the last week or so. Went to Florida to ostensibly visit my grandfather and his wife but really to see my dad and sister who visited at the same time. We luxuriated on the beach, got sunburned, laughed. We fought too, but not much and it was good to see them both.

I also just found out that the trip to Taiwan is canceled. Apparently, the economy there is very bad and the company that was organizing the tour went bankrupt. I'm disappointed but also a little relieved. People my age are supposed to love to travel, and I do love seeing new places but the traveling itself wears me out. I need time to recover from the trip before I can really enjoy a place and usually there isn't enough time for that. So I was nervous about being on the other side of the world, jet-lagged, with three days to fix a harpsichord and prepare for a professional concert series. I would have loved to see Taiwan, to walk through the natural gorge carved out of marble, to eat exciting food, to teach Baroque cello. But there is a lot more of my life coming up in which I will do those things. For now, I'm happy to enjoy what I have in Boston: great friends, decent weather, my lovely house, free time.

I cooked for the first time in a long time last night and it made me feel like me again. I can still bake bread without a recipe. I can still create something delicious out a pile of beautiful vegetables.

So here I am, sitting around the house, not really doing anything but enjoying the mundanity of it all and scheming up adventures and dinners.

Who'd have thought?

I feel strong! This is in large part thanks to Kayle and the rest of the kwifflebee-ers. I've been playing frisbee with them for the last few weeks on Tuesdays and rock-climbing on Wednesdays. I've always had a tortured relationship to exercise. I love playing games and running around with people but I get way too bored trying to do it by myself. Attempting to jog, I quit when I get tired; playing frisbee, I will keep going despite blisters on my feet and cramps in my legs. And I love it! Last night, climbing, I flashed a route that at first I thought would be too hard for me (it was rated 5.8+). Even Kayle (with all his extra height and wingspan) had some trouble with it. I felt like I could do anything! I don't know what will happen once the school year starts and I'm busy again, but for the summer, I'm going to keep running around as much as I can.

Sidenote: Lest you all think I was joking about being a bluegrass rockstar, I'm still writing, still composing, still making up songs in my head on the way home from the bus-stop!

Inspiration - Insomnia

You never realize exactly what is inside you until you allow it to find its way out into the light.

Sometimes thoughts creep along on growing fingernails, sometimes ideas exit in your breath, hitchhiking on a sigh or an exclamation. Sometimes a realization oozes its way out through your pores, mixing with your sweat. Sometimes poetry dribbles past your watchful lips, staining the paper translucent. Sometimes, music falls from your eyes, cocooned in teardrops, making its way towards the sea.