as i have recently made the error of placing my blog address on my shipment of business cards, i will take this opportunity to pull in the reins a bit, as it were.
projects that will soon be implemented at purchase:
- flute+guitar with marc wolf, one of the geniuses behind the record label furious artisans;
- a renaissance vocal group, unnamed and unpersonelled as of this moment;
- hand drumming class, wednesday mornings, externalizing beats that will better me as a dancer and a human being.
i am a grad student at
suny-purchase and dream of scandalizing the masses with cutting edge new music and rarely heard (in these parts) old music. education, for me, is a means by which one may open doors - cliché, but absolutely and utterly true. at some point early on i decided that, whatever the consequence, i would endeavor with a mind thirsting for knowledge. those who regret going back to school should have never been there in the first place. auditing classes is a genius idea: it enables one to learn, stress-free, with none of the stigmas or bad karma associations that come with assignments, grades, expectations, all those tethering things. maybe it is a little haze of mania talking, but i think that heading out to new york alone, knowing no one at the school, moving in with a stranger, was a way of creating newness - even now it seems a little raw - and breaking the invisible cords of what expectations oberlin had for me. premed, biochem, cum bioethics major - these labels, these
things, so utterly irrelevant to the shaping of one's soul.
recent flute-related events:
- first lesson with the very clever and effervescent tara helen o'connor;
- first (not half-bad) rehearsal of messiaen's "oiseaux exotiques" - which, though cluttered, makes for very entertaining listening, if you can pick out the birdcalls and distinguish the groups of instruments through the contrapuntal muck;
- ordering of new music - new études (altès and damase, on the recommendation of tara) and a few romantesque french grande solos, which i hope won't break my bank, from carolyn nussbaum.
an aside: it is very rainy in new york at the moment, and the fog shows no signs of lifting. very "secret garden", england, moor-esque. i am reading a very nice book called
blue shoe by anne lamott, taken from the popular collection at the purchase library.
the reason that i inject my reading here (for those of you that read the occasional blather) is that i find that literature - poetry, prose, plays, however you take it - is incredibly important for anyone's character. when i was in high school and was required to read a certain amount of heavy-handed stuff -
to the lighthouse,
black boy,
1984,
lord of the flies - i lost sight of that. not that i went straight to faulkner (whom my mother worships, or did, at one stage), proust (whom darcy recently bravely tackled), or joyce (someone i know owns
ulysses in several languages), but rather i have taken the opportunity to step back and consider style and form. i didn't love
on beauty, for example, but i absolutely adored
the center of everything. j.d. salinger turned a little sour, while
f. scott fitzgerald climbed my rankings.
conclusion? i am a passionate person with a lust for music that extends to literature and dancing and traveling. the list will probably lengthen with time. i hope this has been an improvement. stay tuned.
in a small tribute to a place i called home for an hour on early friday mornings a year ago...
Pablo Picasso
