Well, I finally have a spare moment to blog–sort of. I’m giving myself until this CD ends, which will be in about twelve minutes. It’s a 3-CD collection of Ravel’s orchestral works, by the way, and I’m on the last song of the last disc. It’s called “La Valse,” and is quite interesting so far. I never used to care for Impressionism, but my Music Theory class has definitely broadened my horizons. I still don’t like Debussy, but Ravel is wonderful. I officially feel like a snob though. Or a music nerd. Perhaps a bit of both?
My weeks as of late have been absolutely crammed full. I feel like I’ve been living in a sort of dream; my actions are becoming more and more mechanical. I’m keeping up with my classes at least. Someday I’ll have time to sleep. I just have to survive until May, and then we begin the boring summer. I’ll complain about that for awhile, then school will start again in the fall and we’ll see how that goes. For now though, I just try to make sense of the parade of facts and figures going through my mind. There are these facts about the history of American cities that bounce off the quadratic formula and threaten to merge into a Dominant seventh chord. I have to know that mankind is rapidly using up the Earth, that it’s impolite to swear in public, and that sixteenth notes are difficult to articulate when played at a quarter note equals 80. Then, there’s the endless cycle of logarithms, names, dates, pasts, graphs, scales, notes, Library of Congress call numbers, places I have to be, places I can’t be, friends who will be offended, friends who want to visit, older men with hipster beards, reminders of what I can’t afford, faces without names, and the endless strains of music. I used to think that music kept me sane, but now I see that it’s writing. Essays, poetry, prose, duets for trumpet and piano, emails… it all works the same. It’s an outlet, albeit one that I can never seem to find time for. I keep checking out books from the library, hoping that I’ll find the time and energy to read them. At least I can listen to music while I work (usually), but books require more of my sense of sight. If my blue eyes could talk, I wonder if they’d tell me to get a life.
I used up my twelve minutes far before I was finished, and decided to re-visited “Daphnis et Chloe” on disc two. If you’ve never heard this particular piece before, I highly recommend it. It’s beautiful. Simply beautiful. It begins with a flute solo, then the horn takes the melody with the strings trilling gently in the background. The flute reiterates to a backdrop of trumpets who shift the tonality, and the song eventually swells into a combination of orchestra and choir that makes me want to weep. The harmonies are strange, but you just have to close your eyes and relax. What do you see?
I once wrote a poem about my voice being stolen, and though I deleted it, I now remember why I wrote it. It was silly. My backpack had been stolen, and it had my creative writing journal in it. Being a writer and a musician, I consider my voice best articulated through means other than vocal chords. Ergo, I felt my voice had been stolen. Also, I had just finished a short story, one that a friend commissioned quite some time before. The imagery of this story was so vivid that it almost frightened me. I had never written anything so gory with such a clear picture in my mind of something I had never seen before. But, alas, it was spirited away and I will likely never see it again. I hope whoever stole my backpack at least took the time to read the journals. Then again, the incoherence of my unedited writing should’ve been enough to induce them to return my backpack straightaway. Ah well. C’est la vie.
My song is over, and it’s time to return to life, the campus, and everything.
I love this phrase: “facts about the history of American cities that bounce off the quadratic formula and threaten to merge into a Dominant seventh chord.” Delicious.
Why thank you