54 - Woodshed

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness, of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappoint and never-satisfied love."

~Benjamin Britten

My affirmation:

"I am going to perform brilliantly with accuracy, passion and clear dynamic contrast."

55 - The Stories We Tell Ourselves...

"Submerged" was the word I was hunting for last night, with 10 minutes to go until I had to post. "Submerged" because it so perfectly captures how I feel right now.

It's been a long time since I've had to memorize anything for anything (vocab and KStudy excluded) and while I'm in the process of trying to learn this Sonata by heart, I find myself asking myself how exactly I go about doing that. I find that it's helpful to break it down into chunks and for me, I create a story that goes with each chunk.

The Sonata opens with an invitation to come on a journey, we've saved up money, and the women wear hoop skirts and turn on pointe. Then it links to a section with the family patriarch and his lady getting onto the ship, next come the two brothers rough and tumbling, then the men and women are courting on said ship, and then, the final victory as the ship pulls into port. And that's the first half of the Sonata in my brain.

Great blog on overcoming performance anxiety, which I hope to do this Sunday...

Ship Ahoy!

56 - Summer is for... music.

I'm currently subsumed with trying to learn this bad boy for Sunday.

In between teaching summer session and doing my regular job, I'm holed up in my apartment, sitting straight-backed in a vinyl cushioned chair and practicing for hours on end. Living the dream, I tell you. Living the dream.

57 - Just Splashing Around...

Much to my own amazement, I've managed to keep up with a post a day for coming up on close to 50 days. Miracles abound!

Now that I've proven to myself that I can actually be consistent like this, I'm aiming to put more content into my posts and actually say something rather than just blurting out whatever happens to be on my mind at the minute. I suppose through this blog project I've proven that I can get in the water and paddle around; now the great task is to actually point myself somewhere and swim. Intensive classes finish at the end of next week so I hope to have more time after that. Of course, what time I do have will be more occupied with getting ready to go, but I ought to be able to start to make something worthwhile. Onward ho!

58 - Good Eats

I was late with the post for today, but with good cause, as I went out for dinner with some cool colleagues. We went to a gamjatang and it were delicious. All you can see from the pics is the uncooked sesame leaves, but the soup was really quite lovely. The restaurant we went to is open 24 hours so if you're ever in the area and need a place to stay, order a huge bowl of soup and break out a pillow.

59 - Summer Storm!

There is currently a summer storm rocking it's way through our neck of the woods. Lightning just blinked outside my window and I heard what I thought might have been my neighbor moving furniture, but what actually turned out to be thunder. As a co-worker summed up her weekend activities, she said that she and her boyfriend went for a bike ride and they just went "away from the rain". That's very much the weather that we have around these parts in this season. One side of the street can be getting drenched, while the other side is sunny. The trick is to know which side of the street you want to be on.

60 - Another One Bites the Dust

Just bid farewell to another friend. This one is leaving for law school at the University of Ottawa. I'm sad, but incredibly joyful because it means that my homecoming is getting closer. One day at a time...