Take a Long Drive With Me

It's amazing to me how sometimes the simplest music can evoke the most sublime emotional responses. For all of my years of classical training, of listening to complex harmonies, abstract textures, and sprawling musical forms, it's hysterical that the music that most deeply affects me is not classical. It's either ironic or depressing that I hardly ever listen to classical music, except for studying purposes, and I must wonder if I am the apt musician I was four years ago, when classical music was the norm, and anything else an exotic reverie. I have this persistent dream that I move to Portland to teach Colin Meloy and Ben Gibbard classical music history and then I bake for him, instantly becoming hired. I realize that this is somewhat impossible, and that fantasies are fantastical for a reason- their sheer impossibility makes them so desirable. Whether it is to love an actor in a film, or to dream of making it big as a baker (another dream), Dumbledore once said "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." Sometimes I worry that I am living, waiting for something to descend from the sky, (not unlike Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure). Oh well. It also does not do well to be so pragmatic that you have no dreams or hopes, for then you never develop the infinite imaginative potential that lies within.
In high school, I was so eager to leave the people, the school, the city, the life that tormented me so. I don't necessarily believe that everyone in high school was terrible, it's just that the social realm of young'uns is irrational and often deliberately harmful for a select few outcastes, one of which was yours truly. But now, as I leave college, and see people depart for home, only to return to city which I will no longer call home, all of a sudden I miss everyone (not referring to the band). I miss the people that are here now, the people that have been here, the people whom I may never see again. I miss the youth that has long passed, the innocence of simplicity and ignorance, the days of just doing homework and watching television, without the bigger existential questions of future and time. I miss hearing the Beatles for the first time, hearing "A Day in the Life" and knowing that it was as potent as all of the classical music I was absorbed in. I miss my parents, and the fact that one day they will die, and I won't be prepared for it. Knowing that I will be truly alone then, I fear for the accidental solitude that will ensue. I miss the small conversations I had with people that might've been better friends, had I stayed in Boston longer. All of the acquaintances that come in and out of life, the friendships that are most poignant for a few months and then slowly wane. Everything changes, nothing is permanent. I suppose the best gift is to enjoy the evanescence as it lasts, and not pine for things that can never be the same again. Nothing is forever.

(CD's bought this week: Chris Walla, Talkdemonic (awesome), M83, the Dresden Dolls, Once, Tarkio)

Summer Has Arrived

Summer always takes me by surprise, as each passing of time does-the seasons, the change of years, birthdays. Most of the time, I try to make a serious attempt to fix the "errors of my ways" and absorb myself in vicious self-scrutiny, usually resulting in the conclusion that I've been lacking in character and quality. But, I'd like to think that perhaps this is the time to actually accept whatever it is I am, whomever I am. I'm getting old, and the stereotypical female models of daily self-analysis are wearing down the skin of my soul. Each day, to wake up and be dissatisfied with my appearance, my face, my pores, the way fat disperses on my body-it's such a waste! Nothing changes from being looked at in the mirror-it's still going to be there, even if you never look. For years, I've been hesitant to look in bathroom mirrors in public places, dressing rooms, or in markets-as though looking in a mirror will make me die like a vampire searching for his nonexistent soul. I've loathed and detested the face that looks back at me for years, constantly hoping that if I just don't look in the mirror-the flaws I can't avoid won't exist. Frankly, it's all fucked up. It's time to get a life, a persona where I can look in the glass and see a face that I might befriend in another life, not one that I would criticize and pity for its asymmetry or disproportions. Getting back to this whole summertime business and analysis, now is the time to resolve to accept and move on. So, summer is here and my resolution is to get a life, to stop hating what it is I have become and always been.