I’m A Musical Hermit!

My March deadline for the next album is sprinting towards me, and I’m scrambling to meet it. The LP is entitled A Wild Little Hope, and has twelve songs. I’ve only got three left to finish editing, but it’s still a lot to do.

Songwriting is sometimes a tedious process. Melodies and chords come first, and then it’s the search to find the words to fit the tone. Almost all of my songs undergo anywhere from three to six rewrites in pursuit of their lyrics. The prize for the most crumpled up rough drafts belongs to the song O Love, Don’t Leave, at the lovely number of seven (and it’s still not done). And when I’ve found the right lyrics, they never seem to come from exactly the same place. Sometimes the right words have been staring me in the face from poetry I wrote days before, or perhaps lyrics from another song that fit better, and sometimes it just slips out when I sit down with my guitar and iPhone. (Thank you Apple for the Voice Memo app!)

I never want to waste a melody. I want an honest expression of life or myself in a song, and therefore I turn in to a bit of a perfectionist. I used to play the piano to express all of the thoughts and emotions I couldn’t put into words, and the hardest challenge of learning to be a singer-songwriter is trying to catch those words out of thin air and string them on top of a handful of notes.

One song doesn’t even have a name yet, the other two are A Thousand Birds, and O Love, Don’t Leave. They are the last ones left, before I can say nearly done. (When I’ve brushed up a little more on my violin and have a little less squeaking, then I think I’ll call myself done.)

I’ve got one week, and a wild little hope that I’ll finish it all.

Beginning Again, Already

When I released In The Dust, I thought I would take a week or two off before starting my next album. I ended up starting it three days later. Even though I still doubt my abilities at times, I cannot doubt the fact that I need music. If I don’t have it, it feels like I’m starting to hollow out, and the stresses and uncertainties of my day leave me feeling brittle. I need a ukulele, a guitar, and a lovely seventy-year-old, slightly out of tune piano.

It’s exciting to begin again, editing lyrics and writing new songs. I’ve already been dreaming of harmonies, of which songs I’ll ask my family and friends to sing in, what I’ll write for my violin and piano, and the mad dash I’ll have to finish this by the end of March. Already I’ve been set writing by strange dreams, particularly lovely, cold days, and the things going on in my small, beautiful world, south of Seattle.

The next few months are going to be a little crazy—late nights and early mornings, with ink stains down my left arm, callouses on my fingers, and shaking hands as I start performing in coffee shops and bookstores. (I can’t tell you how nervous I got just playing for all my family.) But despite that it’ll take a lot of pushing and shoving myself to continue to put myself out there (not just on the internet), I’m going to do it. Beginning a work of creation invigorates me, and makes my days better.

In case this is your first stumbling on my website, here is the little EP I released – In The Dust:

An Album? I Must Be Crazy.

I’ve written and edited a small EP, which is currently up on Bandcamp. It’s flawed, imperfect, and a very humble beginning for me.

I began teaching myself the ukulele last March, the guitar this last September, and only grew into my voice a year ago. I’ve played around with composing on the piano for years, but it’s only been recently that I started writing songs. It used to be that my music would only express those thoughts and feelings that were wordless—translating them into lyrics was and is a hard process, but also a wonderful one.

Every song has started out as a poem, usually jumping off from one single line, slowly growing into something of its own. The EP is called In The Dust, and the songs are: David, As It Seems, My Poor Foolish Heart, The Snow, and Good December.

It’s terribly exciting and frightening that they’re out there for anyone to listen to, when only my family and close friends have heard me play! I am so conscious of all the mistakes I can hear, the off-key notes and places of awkward playing. But the point of my putting this online is not for me panic over what I did wrong, it’s to share what I feel honestly and begin something.

This is part one of my anthology.

Hello, Good December

December! A wonderful, beautiful month–the Christmas season is one of my favorite times of year. Filled with so many family traditions, secretive gift-planning, noisy joy and plenty of laughter, this month is both happy and exhaustive.

And some of the best moments of December are those that come with snow falling. I couldn’t tell you how much I love watching it fall, how it can change my dreary day in an instant. I never seem to think of snow as something harsh and freezing, but always as forgiving and graceful. A welcome, forgetful sleep for a weary world.

“Dust of Snow”

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

ROBERT FROST

Cold November

It’s finally becoming cold enough to freeze the ground, and leave a good frost. I think tonight I’ll continue with this fall theme, set up so kindly by Mr. Yeats last evening.

I love the last lines of this poem, simply because it’s what I do when autumn drifts in, after a few months of indecision. Every evening I seem to be staying up late, reading, writing long letters, and wishing to be out wandering. (Though I won’t go out wandering the roads past sunset, because of the coyotes.)

“Autumn Day”

Lord: it is time. The summer was so immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials,
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full,
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

RAINER MARIE RILKE

Autumnal Neglect.

I have left this little blog so unattended, I should be charged for neglect. However, whatever charges I may bring against myself still won’t give me anything to write about in this moment.

So for a start, I suppose it’s best to begin with the good words of others. Authors I have never read (and should have), and authors I have read every year, books that are old and new, and spring-board words that’ll bring me back.

“The Falling of the Leaves”

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

W.B. YEATS

The Scattering of Light

I’ve been inspired in the past day by two things: Sarah Samudre’s post (http://ow.ly/12ROH) on the Black Rock (the late nineteenth century ship in Lost) and my physics teacher Engelbert Schucking. This will be a short post, full of scattered thoughts on light in Lost.

When Daniel Faraday firsts arrives at the island, he notices that light scatters differently with different properties. You remember-Jack and Kate are the captives of Miles and Daniel (right before Sayid and Juliet bust out with their guns), and Daniel can’t even focus on the hostage situation. He’s got his journal in hand, waving his arm at the forest canopy and the reflections of light on the surrounding undergrowth.

Engelbert Schucking is a noted cosmologist and theoretical physicist. You can google him. So far, we’ve mainly been addressing the different properties of light: reflection, refraction, interference, polarization, dispersion, and diffraction. The ones we most commonly think of are: reflection (think mirrors), refraction (the bending of light when going from one medium to another), interference (light waves interfering with each other), and dispersion (different refractions of light according to color).

Professor Schucking lectured on how all of these different properties of light work, and then began to describe how light meets our eyes. This is what he said: “Light chooses a specific path, almost as if it knew where it was supposed to be.” He means that light, from whatever source it comes from, will always choose the shortest path of reflection to our eyes. There are an infinite number of paths light could take, yet it always knows the quickest route. This isn’t a trick of the human eye, but a mathematical concept. In the course of the past few lectures, we’ve returned to this concept several times-the intelligence of light. Today he told us about an artificial medium scientists have created to slow down the speed of light, so that you can actually walk alongside a lightwave.

And this brings us back to Lost and our lovable resident physicist, Daniel Faraday. For light to scatter differently on the island, the properties of reflection, refraction, and interference of light waves would have to be radically different than what we’re normally accustomed to. The scientists who were able to slow down a light wave created that environment. What type of natural occurence would have to be present on the island to make light scatter differently? Daniel Faraday’s namesake is discussed because of his work with electromagnetic, something we know the island carries in a abundance-but is that the only thing that makes the island different? To change the functioning properties of light, it seems to me (a lone physics student) that the island would need to have more oddities at work to be such a radical medium for light.

Light is barely discussed in a scientific term other than when Daniel points it out in that certain scene. If you were smart, you clicked on the link to Sarah Samudre’s article at the top of this post, which talks in part about the epic battle going on in Lost between light and dark. The idea that light chooses its path with such specificity, always knowing where to go, reminds me of that. It will ignore every other path except for the ones that will reach the end the fastest.

Now, this could not relate at all and be a very forced connection. I am terribly sick with a cold, hence one of the tags in this post is “don’t blame me if I screwed this up.” I just thought it was interesting.

Happy Lost-watching tonight everyone!

Spring Semester!

I feel like my last couple of blog posts have started off with apologies – who am I to break the pattern? Once again, it’s been a month since my last post. I’m finally done with school and on winter holiday until the 19th, and I fly back to New York on the 15th. Perhaps I’ll get some more blogging done this month, and upload some of the 492 photos sitting in my phone! I’m looking forward to catching up on my sleep, and getting ready for Spring Semester.

I’m excited for the classes coming up – I might die from the workload, but at least it will be a death from classes I like. There’s Intro to Creative Writing, Elementary Russian II, World Cultures: Russia (from 1917 to present), and Einstein’s Universe. I’m trying my best to keep up my involvement in Russian outside of the actual language class, so I signed up for Russian Cultures and got a Russian Bible for Christmas so I could practice sight-reading. Language classes are fascinating, but they’re also some of the most challenging for me. I want to be proficient in five or six languages, and this is the way to start. Russian is a complex language (sometimes the grammar makes my head hurt) but its complexity is what makes it fun to study. (If that makes any sense.)

Einstein’s Universe is the class I will most likely regret. Physics is cool (to me), but physics is not always a friendly subject with me. I’m probably looking the most-forward to Creative Writing – I feel like my writing needs a jump start.

I’ve got a little over two weeks left, with plenty of friends to see and family to be with.

Late Updates…As Usual! Happy Thanksgiving All!

So somehow I managed it again: I haven’t blogged since Oct. 27., in which I declared that I had ended my pattern of not blogging for a month. Hmm. Well, at least this time my defense is better than blogger’s block-midterms. So I apologize for the lack of updating and commenting-but be prepared now, for I’m about to update to the umpteenth degree!

What’s happened since Halloween weekend? Quite a lot, as you could imagine. Let’s see how much I can catch you all up on.

I didn’t actually go out on Halloween (I had been planning on being Audrey Hepburn)-I stayed in and worked on a 1500 essay due Monday for my honors seminar. But I had quite a lot of fun listening to the drunk people on the street below, and getting frozen yogurt with different groups of people wandering in and out of the dorm. It ended up being a pretty nice weekend, even though I was writing a paper. (More proof that being sober can be just as hilarious as being drunk. And cleaner.)

…Since I started this draft It’s actually been quite a while. So, now my memory only stretches back to a few weeks. This is an abridged update. Goodness, I’ve gotten horrible at this!

I went ice-skating for the first time a few weeks ago, while baby-sitting two girls, 11 and 8. I did a few laps around the rink, holding onto the edge very firmly, and almost fell several different times. Those times I almost fell were a bit epic—I’d lose control of my skates, fall backward and forward, and then collapse on the wall, and laugh at myself as I kept going. Near the end I could manage to get around better, but I was done after 7 to 8 laps. The girls themselves were pretty sweet, and utterly fascinated with my iPhone. I’m not quite sure which they liked better-me or my phone.

Midterms have come and gone, and I’ve gotten almost all of them back. I didn’t do as well as I would’ve liked, but am happy with my grades.

I love the area around Madison Square Park. (Not the same thing as Madison Square Gardens.) My chiropractor is located a few blocks from the park, and that’s where the subway station comes out. The buildings are just so beautiful, and the park is so relaxing. I’m also lucky in my choice of chiropractor (Dr. Tammy Bohne), who was a great find, and the first person I went to see.

This last weekend we (meaning eight people from my floor) also took my roommate Traci out for her 18th birthday to the Carlyle Café, located in the Carlyle Hotel. Very, very fancy. Very expensive. We laughed at our own awkwardness quite a bit-there was a general confusion between salad forks, dinner forks, and which spoon to use. I think we hid it from the waiters walking around as best we could. The food was really excellent-I even split some steak tartar with my friend Kelly. The only disappointing thing was the crème brulee. When Traci, who had never eaten it before, went to crack the top, it was soft. No crack, or crunch (and half the reason I would order a creme brulee is just for that)! However as Frasier and Niles would say, the only thing better than an exquisite meal, is an exquisite meal with one flaw you can pick at all evening long.

We walked around uptown for a while after that, wandering down from 76th St to 59th. It is so beautiful up there, so clean, and so grand. I love Greenwich Village and all its nooks and crannies, but the Upper West and East sides are simply gorgeous. We looked into all the little (and incredibly expensive) boutiques lining the streets. Eventually we reached Bergdorf’s, where we wandered through ALL SEVEN FLOORS. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t like high end clothes-go for the designs, the architecture, and how pretty that store is. The floor that’s entirely for evening gowns is just plain disorientating. There are mirrors and hallways everywhere leading in loops-you could get lost! It was, however, one of the prettiest floors I saw (excepting the Christmas area). And one of the craziest things is, this building is entirely for women’s clothing. The men’s building is across the street.

This week so far has just been a huge effort on my part not to mentally check out of my classes before Thanksgiving break. This is the first break we’ve had since we started school on the 8th, and everyone around me can only think about Thanksgiving. And I have a test tomorrow in Russian!

So, I’ll end this blog post with good wishes for those of you reading this. I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving, and enjoy your holiday. Send me good thoughts in New York, since I can’t go back to Seattle for the weekend. However, it just makes me even more excited to come home for Christmas break!

Blogger’s Block?

It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. Fashion’s Night Out was well over a month ago, and in the meantime, I’ve had what I’m choosing to call “blogger’s block.” I know it’s cheesy, but it fits the description. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to write; there’s always something to write about, however mundane you might think it is. I remember my older sister Sarah once quoting a famous writer who said that having writer’s block was having a psychological problem with what you were trying to write about, or something like that. I think my problem was that I had an unspoken standard for what I had to write here: either something fabulous and historical, or some fantastic happening around me. Silly, isn’t it?

I don’t think I’d ever consciously thought about that that’s what I was trying to write, and why I stopped writing here. I tried drafting out a few posts, on “thieving” fruit from dining halls, or the ramifications of reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I’ll get around to writing them, but this is the post I need to make first, and it’s almost entirely for myself.

The mundane is nothing to be ashamed of writing. We all have our moments of brilliance, even in the smallest of situations. By not blogging, I’ve been tripping myself up simply by removing one of the ways I de-stress. See? Absolute silliness on my part. No more of that now-be prepared readers; you’re going to hear about my lunch and the bizarre structure of the Russian grammatical system, the fact that my floor has a running joke about my being British or an accent, folk songs and the church bells across the street. Who knows what there will be? Posts on American history inspired by Democracy in America, essays on Orwell and Goulish? Random celebrity sightings (James Franco apparently studies at a nearby Starbucks every night)? New songs I’ve been writing? Lost? (When it comes back.)

Most importantly, it will simply be random.

So, for my first post back after my self-imposed hiatus, these are the most important sentences. I miss everyone at home. I know you’ve said you’re proud of me already, but I still strive to make you proud again. I love you all. That is the clearest I can make my thoughts and my writing, in tribute to “Politics and the English Language.”

Such a fantastic essay.