i want to sincerely apologize for how shitty my blog is and has been for basically all of this year. i don't mean the lack of posts or devastation of download links, just the complete failure on my part to make this an actual blog anymore. the reasons? reasons. i beat myself up unnecessarily over lots of things, but in this case it is pretty necessary. i don't know what to do, but it won't really ever go back to how it used to be here. i've lost all motivation for that, which isn't to say i've lost motivation to be happy or enjoy life. yet.
today has sucked majorly but i'm getting to talk to an old friend so that makes it all worthwhile. it has been months and i feel like i did back in the good old days and it's pretty wonderful.
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i am home and school is the last thing on my mind. i don't belong here of course, but i believe that you can belong anywhere you want to belong. for the time being, i belong in my bed, hibernating like the spring bear that i am.
playing my old piano is difficult for me. the feeling is entirely off, i have grown a tiny bit so it's kind of like riding a kid's bicycle. not quite such a large difference, but similar. and i didn't bring too much of my music home with me so it's all up to my memory to find my way through the old paths. through the unraveling of chopin, ravel, rachmaninoff, etc etc i find myself deep in thought and lost. what is the fucking point offffffff anythinggggggggggg
depression definitely looms over me, more noticeably than in at least the past few years, and i'm slightly concerned. i consider something to be either a pervasive problem or a fully cured problem after about a week of consistency, and it's been more than that of straight whatever it is. i don't like to label too clearly my feelings, i get stuck on words and their associations. basically, inspiration is a quality in my life long obsolete. i don't read too much anymore, what it is i read i feel so lost in my own head i can't give myself up to the world of another. music is a lost cause. i'm all over the place and nowhere. i download 1 or less albums a week. yay for me.
i used to be really inspired by the people i communicated with . i used to have daily conversations with those closest to me about my deepest thoughts, and getting them out there really mattered. it was also really important to me, for whatever reason, to let the world know what i was up to. i would text this and that person with what i was currently reading, the location in which i was reading that, the music i had chosen to listen to while reading. an infinite number of combinations here, all of which i felt inordinately unique for having come up with. the grammar in that sentence just blew your mind. but this past semester, from the end of august until now, the end of the first week in december, i have cut off all contact with nearly everyone. i literally talk to almost no one throughout each day. i am not one to have many friends, and the ones i do have, i do not see very often. it is not a high priority of mine to socialize, but i do find that on the spontaneous moments when i'm caught with another human being, just chatting and keeping it real, i am quite a happy person, inside and out. well, maybe not always. it depends on the person... i will share ONE story.
i was attending a concert at the music building, it was some guy playing piano and i remember wanting to write about it here - he was not very good. he was a famous person, french canadian, but i will not share his name. he played the whole second book of debussy's preludes (mind-numbingly dull played by anyone) and liszt's "Après une Lecture de Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata," or more simply, the "Dante Sonata." it is a fantastic, fantastic work with the most beautiful climax bordering on the heavenly or orgasmic, when played right, i suppose, but hearing it in real life was an experience altogether saddening. i guess it was just too difficult for him, for his strategy was to flatten the sound, as i've seen lots of graduate students do actually, make it softer or slow it down or something at the most soul-crushing parts just to be able to play it without any noticeable mistakes... well, to someone acquainted with the piece, it was heartbreaking. imagine someone snatching a lifetime's worth of dreams that you worked so hard for from your arms and threw them over a cliff, something like that. i wasn't visibly shaken but a part of me died that day.
anyway, the point. after the concert i was walking back home, i was talking to some girl i knew about what i did and didn't like, i don't think she spoke much english, but she disagreed with me about the guy and that's that. this other guy overheard us talking, and after she said goodbye he came up to me and started to ask me what i thought about the performance. i told him my thoughts, and he wasn't a musical person at all, so he said something like, "the works he played were really dramatic." so general, but i could tell he was really impressed with it all, so i told him a bit about romantic music, impressionism, performance style, etc. we eventually just stopped in the middle of this road and were talking for a long time, which seems like it would have been a really cool experience, but it really wasn't. i really got my hopes up about this person when they told me how they were an english major and stuff, but they hadn't even read the great gatsby (just, best book) and never heard of kafka. um, what? then they ask me if i like videogames. time to get the fuck out of there. so much for an educational experience with someone like me. i was really sad and discouraged about finding anyone in the real waking world who i could talk to about anything.
the one good thing about all of this seeming despair, i wrote a short story recently, and it was therapeutic or something in a way that writing very rarely is. it was a very mathematical, logistical process for me. i had a clear narrative in my mind that came to me one night as i walked back to my dorm from the music building. it took me a week or so to finally sit down and write it, but as soon as i started i realized just how methodical it was to write. the english language is truly an amazing thing, and i'm really fortunate to know how it works in such a way that i can successfully manipulate it to mean just about anything i want, in any combination or fashion, or to evoke certain things from certain readers, all with simple syntax and a little artistic decision. i don't mean to say that english is a clearly better language than all others, i just find it to be a natural resource that isn't being used enough, it's infinite potentiality remaining an energy virtually unused in some alternate dimension. the story was a success, and although could be reworked in some parts (one is never fully done with one's work), i think it is an effective body of words depicting a fictional event. i called it, "NIGHT." vagueness is an entirely beautiful thing to me.
right now i cannot stop listening to this Rachmaninoff piano piece. Étude-tableau in C minor, No. 3, Op. 33. i have been listening to it for like the past 3 hours... on repeat. it is quite nice to do that every once in a while. take a piece of music that completely mesmerizes you and keep it looping endlessly in your ears. you will end up in fantastic places. here is lugansky playing it (the very recording i'm so obsessed with). i hear church bells ringing in a forlorn and frostbitten russian countryside.
so, music.
i've been going through phases. lots of them. i will attempt to chronicle them all here, just with my favorite songs~
BOSSA NOVA
Sérgio Mendes & Brasil '66 - Constant Rain (Chove Chuva)
Os Mutantes - Dia 36
SACRED CHORAL MUSIC
Otto Olsson - Te Deum for chorus, strings, harp & organ, Op 25, Part 4
Gesualdo de Venosa - Tenebrae factae sunt
90s JUNGLE
4hero - Parallel Universe
Phantom 45 - Think Twice
Photek - Modus Operandi
Cloud 9 - Snow
so yeah. these are just some songs that i've really really been loving (along with their respective albums) lately, from specific genres and stuff. it is a bit random, but i feel like it's all so perfect for me. i highly recommend the entire "te deum" by olsson. it is honestly the most beautiful thing i've ever heard in my life, i cannot get enough of it in any form or fashion.
this is the end, i am truly sorry for the loss of quality in the blog and for my endless ramblings.
they really are endless and will continue to be that way, thank you.
i know that in every possible crack in activity there waits bottomless pits, but today i am managing to walk without stepping into the cracks.
why?
