well, i don't envy you at all.

it is very difficult to explain to someone why you would choose a school whose tuition is $45,000 with no scholarship than one who gave you 90% of your expected tuition. it's even harder to hear it come out of your own mouth and make the justification. but i did it and as much as i sometimes agonize over my decisions, i know that they are the right ones. i have the support of my parents (which means more to me than just about anything else), my teacher and all of my friends.

i gave up a teaching position, relative financial stability and a virtually easy degree program to take a risk. so many people have told me that it's only the risk takers that truly achieve great success. i am willing to lose everything to gain everything. but god damn, if that's not the scariest thing in the world. some people may think that this is not really a risk but the smartest decision i could make. well, that might be true but the thing is, i don't know what's going to come on the other side of this. and giving up your stability and letting go of your comfort zone. that's a fucking big risk.

but hey, i'm a fighter.

oh come now, so much modesty.

this morning while i was eating breakfast, i watched a very interesting episode of babar.

yes, babar, the show about the elephants.

anyway, babar was telling his son a story about when he was a young king and how the great leopold, "the greatest pianist of our generation" was coming to celesteville. well babar was going to give a speech but was so transfixed by a piece that the old lady was playing and decided that, not only did he want to learn how to play the piano and that song, but that he was going to welcome the great leopold with a concert. (and yes, they get around the fact that he's an elephant and doesn't have fingers) now he has four weeks to do this and he gives up all of his spare time to practice. of course, that plan goes awry (and one who was a kid and had to practice will attest to that) and at the end of the four weeks and after countless nightmares, is not able to perform the piece. but with the old lady's help, he plays the only piece he knows how, "baa baa black sheep", which just happens to be a similar theme in haydn's surprise symphony, one of the great leopold's favorite pieces.

now the theme of this story is to take on tasks you are prepared to handle, but of course i saw it as an ode to practicing, or lack thereof. i mean, how do you teach a child (or anyone for that matter) to practice? it's hard. it took me a very long time to understand really how to practice and now i love to do it because i've seen the results. but i remember being 12 and not really having the best experience. there was a moment in the show where all of the notes blurred together and babar sort of had sheet music tunnel vision. i laughed cause that still happens to me. you practice for more than two hours and its 2:05 in the morning and you sort of lose your grip on reality and your own sanity.

but it made me laugh and i need laughs nowadays. babar was always a great show.

let golden sleep charm your star-brighter eyes.

ignore the time. i have an absolutely valid reason for being awake at this time. i'm about to get on a plane leaving for home (about meaning an hour and a half) and this is usual fare for me so it's all good. moving on.

completing a task is amazing. everything with queens college is finally squared away and i feel like i can leave with no worries or concerns. of course, there's always my paranoia that i didn't cross some t or dot some i but that's not happening. there's too much at stake. but it's nice to feel like you've accomplished something. on a distant yet related topic, i kind of feel bad when people in new york say, "well you'll be back to visit." they haven't known me for very long. i have no reason to come back so why would i? people say family. i pretty much have no desire to visit my family now or at any time in the future. and i rarely go out of the way to visit friends. didn't people see me tying up loose ends? (like take the fact that i asked my ex to lunch, he wasn't in town but he told me to call him when i came back to visit. i laughed for the sole reason that me coming back was not happening) i can count on one hand hand the people i have gone to visit while in college and two of those people live in north carolina. it's nothing personal, i just know how i am. and i love the people here greatly and i will be back...eventually. but it's nothing personal. and why does no one ever visit me? (well that's not true. those same people who i went to visit have all stayed with me in new york) if they want to see me so bad, they can get on the train for three hours and see me in baltimore. their call.

is it bad to love the line "hath eased you and pleased you"? it's more like eeeeeeased you and pleeeeeeeased you. it makes me think terrible thoughts. thanks, peter warlock. and i've said it once, but i'll say it again. ian bostridge's the english songbook is one of the best albums i own. it's a "listen all the way through" album. it'll go on my list with stevie nicks' bella donna and a whole bunch of albums to which i can listen to every track. brilliant.

and on an even more distant topic, i just heard a cover of pink's get this party started by shirley bassey. and i dare say, it might just be the most genius thing i've ever heard.

north carolina yields to south carolina?

happy fourth of july, mes amis américains! it's been a pretty low-key holiday for me considering my history but it was rainy here in new york so i wasn't really inspired to go out. so instead, i stayed in watching all thirteen episodes of the revolution on the history channel and the inevitable law and order marathon. 'twas a beautiful thing. but it hasn't been all fun and games. a lot of thinking being done. in a state of half-consciousness, listening to the history channel, i dreamt up my subconscious thoughts about america and this war and all of this nonsense. it went back to the beginning of the declaration of independence, of course. this work in progress that we call america is such a grand and valued experiment, necessary. it is not our place to toy with the power we've accrued over the past centuries. we are to grow and to never think that we've achieved some sort of invincibility. we are rebels, independent thinkers, brave and full of reason. let that continue to be our legacy. not...not this.

i'm sitting here watching one of my favorite musicals ever, 1776 and i had failed to realize till now just how relevant a piece of art it is. just listen to cool, considerate men and you can see just how eerie it is. at times this was always a hard musical for me to watch, especially when rutledge sings his aria about slavery. but nonetheless, it is compelling and moving. go watch it, everyone.

but that's enough of that for one day.

i hope you all had your fill of barbecue, fireworks and other flammable goodies, good music and whatever it is that you drink on these holidays. i'll save my standard forms of celebration for another day when i have the opportunity. did i mention that this is my favorite holiday? oh yeah.

zueignung

i realized something the other day as i was watching the english national ballet perform at wembeley stadium in the concert for diana: i could imagine people in the audience being annoyed at the fact that they had to watch ballet (maybe emasculating?) and as i was watching it, i was like, "boring. i've seen swan lake a BILLION times, you've got to be kidding me." me, the ballet enthusiast/lover/participant. then it came to me. everyone who thinks the arts are girly/pansy/boring/hoity-toity have never been to a rehearsal. if everyone could see the way we as artists rehearse, they would see things differently. they'd see things the way i see them.

rehearsals are rough.

there is a lot of sweating, cursing, pencil-erasing, yelling, laughing, etc. i think every dance rehearsal i've come back from, i've lost my nerve and hurt something/bled. every choral rehearsal i've ever had i've come back with some sort of hope for the future or utter disdain (depending on the choir) and every chamber music rehearsal, well, a lot of yelling takes place. and that's just the shit i do. go to an english national ballet rehearsal and see how hard they work. realize that every woman in there is made of lean muscle and could kick your ass if need be. do you think you could handle the gaggle of tyrannical conductors and their non-stop abuse? (and oh yeah, playing music is very physical. that's a whole different story) we rehearse for hours, late into the night with very little stopping. and there are not tuxes or fancy costumes. it's sweats, beat up jazz and pointe shoes and reading glasses. music in hand, pencils in hair, standing next to the barre, it's on.

maybe if that's what we as a whole saw, the intensity, emotion, work and sheer force, opinions would change. whether that matters or not is another story.

and msnbc has just announced that beverly sills has passed away. it was just the other day that i found out that she was sick. not only was she an amazing talent, she was a powerhouse on the new york arts scene. she will be missed. and fuck you msnbc for butchering her name. check your shit.

there's a red moon out tonight low on the horizon. sad night here in the city.

our anxieties about life and the passing of time and our emotional life … love lost.

so just an update on the adapter situation from yesterday...so my adapter shorted out for like five minutes. so now i have an adapter that works and another on the way. i couldn't be more furious. but we have to look at the upsides, right? and the upside is, this adapter is on the way out and as soon as this one comes, i'm going to stop using this flimsy apple adapter. my god, you'd think they'd know better.

my teacher called me today from her new house upstate. she had been meaning to call me all week to say thank you for the card i wrote her. she told me how incredibly sweet it was and that it moved her. and she read it out loud to her husband who was also moved. of course, i got choked up, as is my way. i'm ridiculously sentimental and i have a tendency to make adults cry (which only leads to me crying and it's a whole vicious cycle) so this is par for the course for me. apparently, people don't thank her --- at all. that surprised me. everyone i talk to loves her. but whatever to them, i definitely let her know how much of an impact she's had on me over the past four years. so of course after we talked and she talked about keeping in touch, i let out this faux cry/whine to which she laughed. she sounded a little sad, though. but she doesn't have time to be sad, she's too busy.

so yes, i changed the layout, color-wise. it was getting a little too dark for me and i usually end up gravitating towards white for my blogs. greater color palette, i suppose. i really should change the song (not that i don't love v/e's recording of the saint-saens), to what i don't know. and the screenshot isn't even right. yikes.

the floor lay paved with broken hearts

you know, apple, i'm really not happy with you right now. yes, the iPhone came out today, we are all aware. but playing the commercials every 30 seconds does not make me any more able to buy it than before. but that's not even why i'm angry. i'm angry because my notebook adapter just shorted out and the replacement costs $80! i'm tired of giving you my money on replacement stuff. thank god there are non apple brands for this sort of thing so i'm buying one that's more than half of yours. if stuff like this keeps adding up...

oh yeah, another thing. itunes store? don't offer only some of the tracks from an album and not all. i went to buy the tracks i was missing from britten's the turn of the screw and i was missing the last track from disc one, the one i had been LONGING to get (oh ian bostridge, even the reviews talk about how seductive you are --- even if in this case it's a thinly veiled description of someone's homosexual overtures towards boys wrapped up in james' guise of evil from beyond the grave) and i have to buy the whole album to get that track. are you kidding me? i'm on the fence about all of this.

moving away from the corporate, i've been talking a lot to people about (them) moving out of new york. too many blackouts. not enough trees. it does me good, partly because i think i'm ready to go. i think as you become an adult, the more stability you crave. i refuse to believe that new york can ever be stable. and that's not a bad thing, just my opinion. good thing north carolina is always waiting for me.

and yes, there are other reasons to leave new york. i'm reminded of this every single day. i went out to the island last night and had an encounter with a beautiful man. of course that did not come to fruition in any way imaginable. it just wasn't possible. i was in bay shore and i wasn't white, blonde and wearing a skirt. i wasn't meant to be.

okay, i should shut off my computer before it completely dies on me.