stairway to paradise

i roared with laughter and kicked my feet with pleasure when i heard: they're going to have a concert up in L.A. in tribute to John Williams. the philharmonic orchestra is going to play some of his famous pieces from star wars and indiana jones and schindler's list.

i heard about this on kmozart, and while i don't listen to this station unless my father has control of the radio dial, i didn't feel like listening to anything overly energetic this evening as i drove home from work. i was rewarded with Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" which they played scarcely minutes after my fingers had left the console.

it was the piece i listened to one warm summer's night in july six years ago that altered my desire to learn piano into determination. everything i endured afterwards at the piano bench was endured in order to be able to one day play that piece. the desire lay dormant within while i learned finger exercises, scales, and easier pieces. then i procured a 5 page rendition of "Rhapsody in Blue" and learned it.

which brings me to my problem. i am neither deficient nor proficient...in anything. i can play the piano rather well, but not well enough to play substantial piano pieces. i recall latin vocabulary words and took four years of it in high school, but i can neither read nor write it. and its frustrating to be stuck in the middle because i know i could do so much better if i had just learned it properly. but what i end up with are bits and pieces of skill that are sometimes useless. i never progress. after two years of piano lessons every other weekend, my piano teacher asked if she could stop teaching me because i lived out of the way and it was such a hassle to drive to our house on the weekends. i was left with a half-formed piano talent. i took four years of latin in high school but my teacher had no discipline and virtually no direction. i was left with a cursory knowledge of the language. and yes, i am to blame too since i only did as much as i needed to to be able to play the piece or to be able to get the A.

that is why i can only play the 5 page rendition of "Rhapsody in Blue". i do have the sheet music for the unjabridged version but it is nearly as thick as some of the workbooks i used in elementary school (exagerrating, of course). after all, if you listen to it, its about twenty minutes long. if you ever able to find an unabridged, purely piano rendition i highly recommend it.

and if you're smart, you won't shortcut your dreams. don't do what i did--work hard and you'll be duly rewarded.

Elinor

i woke up this morning and the first word that popped into my head was: "uracil!" then i sat up and remembered that uracil replaces the nitrogenous base adenine in an RNA strand and then the whole process of protein synthesis came crashing down as i trudged to the bath. its that dratted biological anthropology midterm.

yep. its about that time again.

i surprised myself by being productive last thursday and typing up the beginnings of an anthro studyguide. i'm a big fan of studyguides since as you type them up, you review, and then you review again when you look over it. it requires time, though, especially if you're typing up a studyguide with five weeks accumulated concepts on it.

i'm very grateful that i had an excellent bio teacher in highschool.

lately i have been wary of myself. most people assume that they have a good deal of control over themselves, but its not like that at all, not really. a self is so much more than the body, a self is the mind too, and the tongue and how can you control those? a lot of people say that i'm a quiet person, reserved, i keep things to myself--and while this is true, it doesn't mean that i have control over my tongue. sometimes my eyes are drawn to things or persons they shouldn't be watching. sometimes my face shows more of what i'm thinking than i want it to. when does discretion become suppression? what is polite and what is necessary? how does one keep a secret when so many things are vying for its release? sheer will. its amazing what will is capable of. as for the previous questions, i am content not to be given an answer, but i wish others were as conscientious as i.

solid

i believed him when he said, "we get the government we deserve". jay leno, that is. more people watched american idol than the state of the union address.

i'm so excited for the winter olympics! i can't believe its been four years since i saw it last. after this year, when it comes again i'll have graduated college. what a thought.

we heard on the news lastnight about the woman who shot four of her coworkers at the post office and then shot herself. they're saying that she was psychologically unsound. while this doesn't excuse the crime, my mother believes that she had a reason for doing it. i'm not so sure. sometimes people don't need a reason and though i was taught, when solving a mystery, to account for people's motives, not everyone has one. this woman was just crazy. she didn't have a reason to enter a gas station foodmart half-naked, but she did--or so it was reported. its the same with science: scientists don't bother with reasons or the why, they focus on the how because utility governs science and not truth--or so i have been brainwashed to believe (besides, i like this idea). when i think about the things i do, i must admit that a lot of my actions have a reason behind it, but people can answer "no reason" so lightly. "why did you move seats?" "no reason." or perhaps they just don't want to say why. i don't think reason is everything its said to be.

there is a pulitzer prize winning piece of music by Leslie Bassett, i think, that we are performing for choir. its about the moon.

Forecast
Night invests the sea, and wished morn delays, while overhead the Moon sits arbitress, and nearer to earth wheels her pale course. The Moon is a ghostly galleion tossed upon cloudy seas, Governess of Floods, a sweeping scimitar dipped in the stormy straits, a lodestone of awesome power. The innocent Moon, that nothing does but shine, moves all the laboring surges of the world!

With how sad steps, O Moon, you climb the skies! How silently and with how wan a face!

Art thou pale for weariness of climbing heaven and gazing on earth wandering companionless among the stars that have a diff'rent birth, and ever changing like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?

Conclusion
Luna.
Orbed maiden with white fire laden; wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame, ever transforming, yet still remains the same, and warms not but illumines.
Luna.
The bent and broken moon, all battered black as from a thousand battles, a ruined world, a globe burnt out, a corpse upon the road of night.
Luna.
Violated by man.
What is there in thee, Moon, that thou shouldst move my heart so potently?

i am told it was written in response to the missions to the moon during the great Space Race. the text itself is aptly applied through the score--which is to say that the sheet music is unconventional and the sound is contrary to...renaissance church music. we sing in clusters, groups of notes that do not harmonize but are in approximately the same range. its called extended vocal technique.

but i'm not a music major, and i suppose you guessed i left the text here to analyze the words, not the sound and the technicalities of the composition.

the poet/writer assumes that the audience underestimates the moon and its power. "The innocent Moon, that nothing does but shine, moves all the laboring surges of the world!" i never thought the moon was insignificant. it has been witness to some of the worst crimes and reigns over a time that a lot of people consider haunted. it also fools you, gilding the world in its blue-gray light so that everything base and rough is turned to ivory and alabaster. oh, i never thought it did nothing but shine. some people say they see the face of the Virgin Mary on the moon. other people believed that it seduced the insane, the lunatics. "the Moon sits arbitress" the poet says, but it is no such master. it takes its light from the rays of the sun and is forced to spend some of its time in shadow, displaying only a thin crescent of light at times, and at other times, showing nothing of itself at all. i think our poet intended to praise the underdog, give credit to something that was just being discovered at the time. but i don't believe that the moon was ever neglected before man set foot on her.

some myths say that the moon was created to keep mother earth company, but her light was too inconstant for mother earth since she was only present some of the time, so mother earth turned to father sky. but the poet portrays the moon as the lonely one "pale for weariness" and "wandering companionless among the stars". if you were to take the "wandering" literally, the moon does not wander, it orbits around the earth. as for companionless--there is the sun and there is the earth, but perhaps our poet does not like to consider the earth since it is inhabited by man and man has violated the moon. the last description struck me the most: "like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy". i'm not sure what to make of this, but i'm slightly offended. i agree that the moon is somewhat aloof, but i never thought of her as haughty as vainglorious. or sunk so much in self-misery that she refuses to rouse herself to shine constantly for us. no, that is Dryden's Cleopatra--a mixture of selfish pride and haughtiness, convinced of her own misery, but determined to be victorious--the ultimate tragic heroine. the moon is above human perceptions of its behavior.

and then the moon is simultaneously "white fire laden" and "a globe burnt out". if one takes into account how time elapses, we can assume that it becomes a globe burnt out once man lands on it.

suffice it to say that i think some of the text is beautiful, but some of it i think is overdone. but perhaps i'm unfeeling and i should be more open to this poet allowing himself to express how the moon moves him so deeply. after all, it won the pulitzer prize. and what have i won? a spelling bee.