petals

…it really is the simple things in this world that are the most amazing.

…that I very much like Rene Magritte.

1. Got a Junior Achievement Scholarship (I find out how much on the 29th)
2. More JA stuff– I’m in the running for Entrepreneur of the Year, Officer of the Year for Production and Marketing (if I get it in both, I’ll be the first!), and our Company is up for Company of the Year
3. I got to usher Joe Lovano’s concert with his nonet– an amazing concert, and all I paid was the 5 bucks for parking
4. My piece (see previous entry) got chosen to be read at the Menil Collection on Tuesday, May 4th, 7:00pm

Let’s hope this good streak keeps up- today the weather is awful and I’m about to head out on the dredded band trip to Galveston to do nothing and more nothing to waste a perfectly good Saturday.

Best pancakes I’ve had in a while.

My father is 29 today (again?!), or so he claims. 😉

Dad, Jason, Carrie, Carrie’s Boyfriend Christian, Aunt Bebe, Great Aunt Peggy, and I were all at Papa’s house for Dad’s birthday… mmm, let me tell you, if my family does one thing right, it’s barbequed chicken.

Scared us to death today, we were all sitting around, and my father blacked out and fell to the floor. He was alright soon after, or so he claims. Let’s hope… I’m glad Carrie and Christian followed him back out to Tomball to make sure he got there alright.

My grandpa (who is now mostly blind) I noticed has a different kind of radio in his house… it’s from the Taping for the Blind organization. I think I’m going to volunteer there. They read magazines and newspapers over the radio for the visually impraired… kind of cool, eh?

Mmm.. okay, so much for this entry. I’ve got to go nap off this incoherency left after a settled stomach full of barbeque chicken.

Here goes.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence on your blog along with these instructions.

Okay, so the nearest book is a poetry anthology…

My 5th line (no sentences, see above) is

(In Arkansas,

…though the whole phrase is

(In Arkansas,
Poor half-naked fools, tagged with identification numbers,
Worn out upon the levees,
Are carted back to the serfdom
They had never left before
And may never leave again)

So I bet you’re wondering what kind of books I’m reading now.. haha. Maybe I should try keeping a novel or something of the sort around my desk.

(by the way, this entry is my first trackback. woo!)

As meaning is slowly being drained out of my life.

Principal Types of Advanced Technology Used in the
“Toyota Partner Robot”
1. To play musical instruments
Toyota developed artificial lips that move with the same finesse as human lips, which, together with robots` hands, enables the robots to play trumpets like humans do…

So, apparently, Toyota is developing robots to become personal assistants to human beings- not a bad idea, I guess…. UNTIL they decide that in this they are making a robot that is just as capable as any human of playing the trumpet. Personally, and quite frankly, as an artist, I am insulted. A musician emotes, a musician artistically interprets and creates communicative music to express oneself through. When you teach a robot to do something like this, it cheapens everything, turning the creative process into a mechanical and logical series of patterns and combinations. Art is about humanity, about expressing and manipulating every stretch of human feeling and emotion. I’m utterly appalled that anyone would even think to program something like this into a robot… As if musicians already aren’t having enough trouble trying to make a living playing their instruments.

Toyota wants its partner robots to have human characteristics, such as being agile, warm and kind and also intelligent enough to skillfully operate a variety of devices in the areas of personal assistance, care for the elderly, manufacturing, and mobility.

…Scary, eh? Not only are they artistically expressing themselves, but they’re warm and fuzzy and taking care of your grandparents, too!

You can read about their release here.

Meanwhile, back at the lab…. (ha)

So, as a sidenote, more to come later about my recital. I’m still kind of irked about this mechanical madness.

…surprisingly enough, I am.

I feel really good.

I’m so excited about tomorrow! So many people I haven’t seen in so long will all be there tomorrow. My great aunt peggy, friends from middle school, my best friend (who moved some time ago), and her mother. The list goes on.

I think I’ve got a really nice program, and I’ve got some amazing musicians performing with me.

I. Can’t. Wait.

You better get there early and get a good seat 😉

This is one example something that I will work on forever, and never be completely satisfied with. My metaphor isn’t developed… My diction is funny… I can’t keep the rhythm I’m going for… etc etc etc. Too bad I actually needed it for a program at school, and the deadline has long since passed.

Unfortunately, I have decided that I am most certainly not a writer. I simply am physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of producing a piece of work I find even the mildest satisfaction in. Being a musician is unsettling enough as it is, and I don’t know that I could handle that kind of frustration on both ends of the spectrum. Besides, I can’t find the writing journal I kept for so long.

So now, instead of a masterpiece, a piece d’resitance, you are left with something half baked, *cheesy*, unfinished, undeveloped, open-ended.

Enjoy. 🙂

* * *

She straightens out her plain cotton skirt as she sits down quietly at her piano. “No, mama, leave the light off,” she says. Though the sun is getting low, there is something in the way the slanted soft beams of light fall onto her music that soothes and energizes her all at once. “So here I am again,” she thinks, running her fingers along the keyboard, gently caressing the ivory, afraid it were to break as she quietly meditates on the piece she is about to play. She raises her hands, hovering above the keyboard like seagulls along a beach, and… Now. Her hands dive toward the shore, to the keys, to dance wildly up and down the coast; the softness of ivory and the smoothness of wet sand the same to her touch. She closes her eyes, the soft colors and slanted sunbeams surrounding her are carefully replaced by a heavy and bold brightness, a hard blackness beneath her feet, a magnificent instrument before her, empowering her every whim. A grand stage melds with dark sand as it makes itself known to her mind’s eye. Even if she had taken the moment to recognize the vast audience attentive to her every move, all with sequined and pressed clothes sparkling, indistinguishable from moonbeams on a rippling ocean, she wouldn’t have been able to make them out past the glaring lights that said it was still daytime on stage. She plays, and she plays, never letting up from what she has a hold on. Through the daylight of the stage lights rains on her a downpour of unerring emotion and intensity filling her to her top- a glass of lemonade bursting at the brim, threatening to overflow; but she laughs as she spills onto the beach, pours into the ocean, and lets loose of all things known into her music. “No one goes home thirsty tonight,” she whispers to herself. “Not a single one,” she says as she carefully opens her eyes. And all at once, as sweetly as it once resonated, the room fell silent again. The black stage washed away underfoot and gave way to a brown carpet, the stage lights transformed into the soft light of dusk, the admiration of an audience fading to sounds of an ocean from an open window. “Oh, sweet as my daughter,” her mother remarks lightly from a chair in the corner of the room as she sips on a glass of lemonade, but the girl does not hear her. Instead, she sighs a sigh of deliverance and leans back into her chair. She straightens her plain cotton skirt, now wrinkled.

(After “Interior with Girl at Clavier”,Vilhelm Hammershoi)

Finally!

No more opendiary, no more messy journals and cramping hands….
I’ve got a blog! (Thank you Matt.) 🙂

My senior recital is this upcoming Wednesday… and surprisingly enough, I’m not nervous anymore. I’ve been pulling my hair out for the past two weeks, but then I just sat down and thought that I know my music, and I can’t play any better than my best… and the only way I wouldn’t do my best is if I got nervous. (Who thinks too much into things? I would believe that’s me.)

As a side note, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotles Mind is an absolutely gorgeous movie- the best I’ve seen in a long while.

(dang I gotta get used to having a blog)