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Before you read on, if you would so prefer,
this blog is available as a podcast from the special box in the sidebar.
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I had been waiting for these comments with bated breath, I find that I am relying on them more and more as time goes on. As we all know I like my blogs to be lengthy and if I don’t have enough material to fill about 2 A4 pages in Word, then I simply wait. But Tunnel Vision came out in the process, a blog I feel strangely disconnected with. There is going to be a huge gap between blogs because this one, I think, is going to be the first with an accompanying podcast. Which means since I want to upload them as a pair they are going to have to wait until I have access to an internet connection that will let me upload large files. Speaking of which – the internet has been going crazy on me lately. My music player here, recently lost all my files. And it’s not that they just wouldn’t show up, the host itself had no record of them ever existing. So I uploaded them again, on a better connection (at the computer party I mentioned) which allowed me to put up much better quality files, so maybe the sound balance has improved as well…? I just hope they are still there, for the time being anyway. Also, my photo host, which technically isn’t a photo host, but an online storage facility; has lost my photos. They’re still at the host, but Blogger won’t display them. That’s why my new background is nonexistent and my profile photo has gone AWOL. And don’t get me started on the fact that Blogger only lets you use 2000 characters to express the entire breadth of your musical tastes! Which I painstakingly revised and economised. And that random question bullshit! I revisited the profile of Timeandalittleblackcloud hoping to get in touch with him (Musings, do you remember him from Amanda’s blog, the time you and I first met?) and I saw his random question, which was something refreshingly original about faking being a bard, and he had made a really good quip about it. So I thought, this random question stuff sounds like some good quirky fun. And one night when I was bored I logged onto Blogger and sifted through some of those random questions. The best, and I stress this, the best of which were some very messed up ones about soap, goats and whittling wood. Who thinks up these things? And are they on acid? It was just… too strange.
But what got me started on all of that was a far more sensible, but alas no more productive pursuit. Looking for Timeandalittleblackcloud. Some time after he and I had met, along with Musings, on Amanda’s blog, oh and Angela (I must she what she’s up to these days), and I had started up this blog, I searched for Timeandalittleblackcloud hoping that he may find some value in my ramblings as I did his. But Google yielded no results, even when I searched for Timeandalittleblackcload as I think it was once accidentally misspelled. It seems he only used that particular internet pseudonym for Blogger. I went back some time later and read over his blog, weighing up my strange persistence to find him, with the fact that I had quite possibly been fortunate enough to find another kindred spirit, and I should have realised through my obsessive Amanda haze that these were the people I should be writing to connect with instead. Which gets back to the first comments between Idril and I (doesn’t that seem like such a long time ago now?). Hoping to find someone else like Amanda but less affected by their position in society, and it being so easy to see that I didn’t have many friends because of the value I placed on the ones that I did have. Do keep an eye out for him all the same.
In similar news I wrote a letter to the girl I don’t talk about on here, the connected friend long since lost. It was simple, right and quick. But I am yet to write it out of my phone and present it to her on paper. I am doubtful that I will even be able to approach. But I did something, and that felt good. She can make of it what she will because it came with only honesty and good intentions; and it feels good to be able to say that considering all that we went through.
Anyway, I wanted talk about podcasts (there is a good and a bad side to going off on smooth tangents like that). This is where it gets into parallel worlds. I may be talking about something that I am actually doing, or you may be reading this exactly how I am writing it now. I’m a bit torn between two things about this, for the first blog at least, because it invites you to say things about podcasting, that can only be expressed with the voice, which have no place in the written form. God my English Language teacher would be loving this. Podcasting is really cool and sort of new media, and gives you all the permanency of writing, the intimacy of radio, and with the invention of mp3 players, the mobility of a book – even more so, as a podcast can be enjoyed in the dark.
I think for the sake of not having one medium lack anything as a result of the other, I shall try to keep the two as lively and as uniform as possible. And resist the urge to go “Ha this sooo cool! You can hear me! Listen to that, that, is the sound of the packet of biscuits I am eating. And this noise here…”
Podcasting really is like radio, which is very ironically the thing that I started off thinking I wanted to do for a job. I think I’m really going to enjoy this actually. It fits perfectly with the making the personal connection stuff, and with words, writing, talking and blogging, all of which I love. Maybe it’s just a matter of finding the right medium. I can make my music, my art, and my connection this other way. And maybe some time in the future there will be a place for this strange art form. I mean people listened to and loved Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s records, what was that in essence? A recording of two men discussing life and their thoughts which happened to be funny.
But the podcasting bit will not be done straight after I write the blog, since I tested how I was sounding on this day and came out sounding like a slightly British, slightly drunk, Claire Hooper.
My friends, who are very curious and sometimes jealous of what I get out of blogging and what I must not be telling them; asked me why on earth I do it and how I could possibly have that much to talk about. Even my mother is perplexed by the fact that I tell her that I have to blog. But I love it. From a practical academic standpoint, blogging is keeping my typing in practice, as well as developing and maintaining my writing; and as any of my teachers would say, it is the student who practices the subject in their own time who does the best. It is also helping me solve my problems, in a vicarious way through the simple act of having to think it through in order to write it down, and also in a direct way through feedback from comments.
I should be writing Blogger’s promotional material shouldn’t I?
And it is a great thing to have done, to be able to look through after years and years, and it means that I am finally keeping a diary. And it’s a great way to meet people, not on a large scale, but to share yourself and develop a close connection with the people who read it.
Ah, this leads nicely onto my next point about revisiting the tremolo/vibrato thing. I didn’t think that anyone would or should have been offended by what my teacher said, I simply thought it interesting that the way that she said it had that edge to it, and how I reacted to it. There is no grudge or awkwardness between us whatsoever, if she did notice it was only on account of my expression and she would have forgotten all about it by the time we finished the first scale. It means nothing to her, simply a word, simply another student out of a dozen, just another week. I haven’t heard her music, but by the look and gist of the band page I think it may be World music, or Jazz, or maybe both. She is a good singer, but I mean that technically, not in my subjective personal opinion. I’m not sure if I would like her songs if I heard them on the radio without knowing who it was.
Idril, you said of me that I seem to have a lot of unfinished projects which I gave up. I can’t really think of any of those, generally or any that I have mentioned here. But somehow it does strike home. That, and especially about me being more of an intellectual, planning, secondary person, who uses words more than music. I meant to talk about this in the last blog, how ages ago I said “I know I will let go of my dreams. I am at peace with the idea that my dreams will die somewhat subconsciously. If that day comes I will welcome the time when I accept something that I am better at as my true calling. I wish I could now.” I think that I am doing that a bit now, I was on the verge of that sad surrendering acceptance when I talked about my real passion being words. But then those little things like hallucinating music keep pulling me back to my unlikely dreams. I can pretty much dance too, does that count? But my offhand attitude towards my dreams is increasing, and increasingly sad. Maybe that’s what you meant about giving up.
You’re exactly right about how good music is mostly produced by people who feel rhythm and melodies through their skin instinctively and passionately; and great music is only produced that way. I do not have such a feel for music. And appreciation, an imagination, but not a feeling. And having no musical feeling or melody does not hinder my lyric writing. It is cruel but true. Some of them are more poems, but some have that half imagined music, and these great rises and falls and patterns and pauses; they scream to be sung, and on the rare occasion that I can get it half right they are a whole heap of fun to perform.
I made a collection of recordings of the first verse and chorus of 20 songs of mine, just to see what it would sound like. I was really happily surprised to hear how different each one was from the next, considering my musical handicap. I quite enjoyed singing them, and could see the results of my training reflected in some of them.
But mostly the situation is frustrating. The throat, the fingers, and the other music producing parts of the body don’t seem to connect. Including the part of the brain with the musical ‘feeling’ in it. The rest of me has developed this highly sophisticated roundabout way of imagining music and melodies; but because nothing connects, I can’t get it out. Maybe I’m mad, maybe it gives me a great and unique perspective that I am yet to harness, maybe I have expressed the frustrations of repressed musicians everywhere, and maybe there is a solution or maybe there was never meant to be one. I don’t know.
I have had another singing lesson. She told me that I can actually get about four notes higher than my at-home-all-warmed-up-in-my-bedroom-with-my-microphone best. Which means that I have a perfectly adequate range, even if I do think that I sound like shit getting anything above middle C. Well, actually it would mean that I have a range of two and a half octaves, which is very good, I don’t believe the other half, but I’m quite proud of that. But of course, merely being able to do it is only half the battle.
I must mention, since this is the reason I sound like a drunken British Claire Hooper, that I am terribly sick. I could go on and on into long horrendous descriptions of the torture, most of which includes not being able to breathe, talk, swallow, eat or sleep. And I mean all of those in complete seriousness. But by far the worst of it has to do with when it happened. There is this thing called the GAT, I don’t know whether they have this in other countries, but it stands for General Achievement Test. It’s something they make you take together with your exams for your last year of school, and it is used to create a derived exam score if you are ill or traumatised during your exams. But I fell ill the day before it, and half way through my otherwise pleasant day off school, my mother reminds me that I have the 3 and a quarter hour GAT the following day. So in my weakened state, with hardly a voice to speak with, I call up the school and ask them what I can do about it. Predictably they tell me that I need a medical certificate, and that I can’t resit the test.
And so I had to go to the doctor, for the first time in 16 years. The reason I can’t remember the last time I went to the doctor is partly because of outstanding health, and partly family beliefs. So we arrive at the doctor on the GAT day, while it would actually be going on and wait for a whole hour, just to see the doctor for 2 minutes, so he could take my temperature, look at my tonsils and print out a sheet.
But it was really only a 72 hour bug. It struck me down in 6 hours. 6 hours, from “Yay, life is great I’m practicing my singing and giving myself a manicure.” to “Life is shit, I can’t go to school and I’ve been up 4 times in the night.” And since it was so sudden it made me wonder what the lesson was here, or what I should try and take away from the experience. And I think it was either some nasty subconscious anxiety about my last year of school, which isn’t really possible because it’s been a breeze so far; or something to do with control. With things beyond my control, like the exhaustion you feel at the end of a race, I always think that I could have done more, I could have gone faster or done better, when it wasn’t possible. And with this sickness, I thought I could have taken the test, pushed just a little bit harder and done it. But I realised this wasn’t the case when at
But the good news is have got some of my old vigour back, last night I was up looking at random words stuck in my head and becoming frustrated with my dictionary. I came across affix, which I know from high school English and glanced over it, reading that I was the name for prefixes and suffixes, which I knew, but also infixes, which I didn’t know the exact meaning of. So I looked up infixes, and lo and behold the dictionary which suggested the concept of the infix to me, doesn’t have it. I did find it in a larger dictionary, but how stupid is that?
Oh and before I forget… Idril, do you see the man with the light coloured hair on your far left? I am afraid my dear, that he must be eliminated…
☆Anika☆
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