Cute photos

Just befriended a teacher of mine on Facebook and had the absolute pleasure of glancing through some of his photos. Him and his partner (whom I know and adore) are the cutest, most fantastically adorable couple I have ever, ever seen. I feel a little like I've been smothered in joy just looking at photos of them together. Love!

Social anxiety like no other

We're studying T.S. Eliot in English class and have recently been looking at Eliot's poem titled "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." There are a few lines in the poem speak so well to me; 'the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon a table' is so still, so heavy. The entire stanza about the yellow fog-cat is fantastic (and reminds me a lot of this poem by Carl Sandburg.) The similarities to "Seasons of Love" from Rent excites me as well. Love it!

Here is the poem. If you don't feel bad for poor socially anxious J. Alfred Prufrock, you might want to consider going on a nice search for your heart.

The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .                               10
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

  In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

  And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60
  And how should I presume?

  And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?
        .     .     .     .     .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
        .     .     .     .     .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,                                             90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
  That is not it, at all."

  And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,                                           100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  "That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all."                                          110
        .     .     .     .     .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

  I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think they will sing to me.

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


                                                              [1915]

Narcissus and Echo

Shall the water not remember     Ember
my hand’s slow gesture, tracing above   of
its mirror my half-imaginary      airy
portrait? My only belonging      longing;
is my beauty, which I take       ache
away and then return, as love       of
teasing playfully the one being     unbeing.
whose gratitude I treasure        Is your
moves me. I live apart         heart
from myself, yet cannot         not
live apart. In the water’s tone,      stone?
that brilliant silence, a flower      Hour,
whispers my name with such slight      light:
moment, it seems filament of air,       fare 
the world becomes cloudswell.     well.

- Fred Chappell (b. 1936)

Fred Chappell's beautiful poem, Narcissus and Echo, is a combination of two poems into a third. Based on the Greek mythology surrounding Narcissus, a vain young man who falls in love with his reflection, and the beautiful nymph Echo, who lives under the curse of only being able to repeat the words of others.

I've always found the story a striking one. There is something very sad about not being able to express what you as an individual think. Chappell's Echo, however, is capable of self-expression; even though she does only repeat the sounds that leave Narcissus' mouth, she forms her own ideas, her own expressions. She speaks.

If you want to read more about the Greek myth behind Chappell's poem, there is a brief summary at this website: http://thanasis.com/echo.htm

There's no such thing as a setting sun.

Canadian hip hop musician Shad is the man behind Keep Shining, a beautiful video with beautiful music. As someone who listens mostly to Classical and contemporary music, smooth jazz, indie pop, alternative rock, and pieces that can only be categorized as easy-listening, I was surprised to find myself so enraptured by Shad's hip hop piece. The music and video is centred around eliminating prejudice and empowering women to speak out and speak up; having only men in the rap industry means that only half the truth is being spoken.

My favourite part of his lyrics are posted below.

Well, you can’t be everything to everyone,
so let me be anything to anyone.
The world turns, and there’s clouds sometimes,
but there’s no such thing as a setting sun.
It always keeps shining.

Listen to his work on YouTube at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nbTB2KHuM

Recall

I'm trying to recall your face,
I haven't managed yet.
Why are half-remembered things
The hardest to forget?

- by JonArno Lawson

"Recall" is one of many of Lawson's short but thought-provoking poems in Think Again, illustrated by Julie Morstad. In only four lines, Lawson evokes the very particular feeling of struggling to remember something, be it a person's face, someone's words, a thought that you planned to write down but never got around to finding your pen, the name of someone important to you, the time you were supposed to meet him or her, or perhaps the name of the song whose melody haunts your mind.

Thought as a Form of Music

Today was our last day of classes at school, and yet it didn't really feel that way. We had one of my favourite classes for last period; it's a very thought provoking course, so once we it had finished, my friends and I were all a little sad about it being over. I suppose it might've been just a way of extending the course and avoiding saying goodbye, or perhaps it was just an attempt to procrastinate and avoid actually doing work and studying for exam finals, but we ended up going to the music room at school and just hanging out, thinking, and talking about identity, life, and emotions.

We were in a music room, and we weren't exactly singing or jamming on the instruments. There were no guitar cases open, no violin bows in our hands, no clarinet reeds between our lips... And yet, there is some sort of music-like feel in the thinking that we did today. Thinking has a rhythm and a flow, much like the way music does. And when you finally pull yourself from your seat, from the conversations, from the spoken thoughts to go home and get back to your studying and day-to-day life, you carry with you the feeling of thinking, the feeling of music, the feeling of I-thought-today and I-feel-good-about-it.

There's a sort of beauty in this 'music.' It's not exactly the same as instrumental, vocal, choral, orchestral, and all the other sorts of music... It's not Classical, it's not Pop, or Hip Hop... but it's beautiful all the same, and I'm very glad that we got to experience this beautiful music this afternoon. I may have not studied for my science exam, but in all truth, this was so much worth it.

Musical Practice and Meditation

The act of practising music is a very odd sort of thing. Musical practice is meditation-- it's a time when you can just sit, breathe, and listen. It's a dance, too. Your arms moving away from your centre, towards you again, forward, back... And then your own body swaying with your violin, hunched over your double bass, caressing against your guitar. You're enveloped in sound, but still, I find that when I practice, it is more about a quiet peace than constant reverberating sound waves that echo back and forth and back and forth.

Music practice is what gives me quiet in my day. I read once that one of the most important parts of a day-to-day routine should be to always find time for quiet. Quiet gives you space, it gives you time, it gives you thought, and it gives you energy. To find the time to practice, even just 1/2 and hour of just open strings on my cello, or a C-major scale on the piano, that is my time for quiet, for peace, for thought.

And the results --in both my mental well being and my technique on my musical instrument-- are tremendous.

There'll be no Mozart tonight at Carnegie Hall! (You're so London)

To all you Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett fans out there:

You MUST watch this! It is hilarious and adorable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyTBYlRR3H0&feature=related

Happy viewing!

5 cm per second

Akari Shinohara: Hey... They say it's five centimeters per second.
Takaki Toono: What do you mean?
Akari Shinohara: The speed at which the sakura blossom petals fall... Five centimeters per second.

Those are the first lines of the amazing animated film "Five Centimeters per Second" directed by Makoto Shinkai. It's a heart warming story with incredible animation and beautiful music, too!

I strongly suggest that you watch the film.

Here's the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxKn5AwOTis
Here's the YouTube link to Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPCaAJ3BogE
And here's the sound track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XGpB3iPckg&feature=PlayList&p=A2F72A602FD52834&playnext_from=PL&playnext=12

Enjoy! :)

"Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk

Earlier today, a couple of my friends came over. We sat down in my living room and sang while I played my guitar. The piece that we were singing is called "Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk. It's absolutely ethereal. One of my friends thought the lyrics were a bit too cheesy. What do you think?

Here's the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5H3iVjAlw

"Boats and Birds" by Gregory and the Hawk
If you'll be my star, I'll be your sky.
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black, and you show off your light.

I live to let you shine.
I live to let you shine.

You can sky rocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here, with more room to fly.
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by.

If you'll be my boat, I'll be your sea --
A depth of pure blue to probe curiosity.
Ebbing and flowing, and pushed by a breeze,

I live to make you free.
I live to make you free.

And you can set sail to the west if you want to --
Past the horizon 'til I can't even see you,
Far from here, where the beaches are wide.
Just leave me your wake to remember you by.

If you'll be my star, I'll be your sky.
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black, and you show off your light.

I live to let you shine.
I live to let you shine.

You can sky rocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here, with more room to fly.
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by.

Stardust to remember you by...