okay, nevermind

As per the usual for me, I was into this blog for awhile, then I got bored and stopped posting. So instead I think I'm going to just post whenever I feels like it.

Right now I'm working on the new album, the song I'm writing that I'm singing for the senior recital, and waiting for school show to be finally over. And also waiting for Rachel to be home from school.

This April is going to just fly by, I can tell. We're already in the first full week, which is spring break, then next week, then the following week is the show already, then not long after that is Florida.

Then May. Then school's done. Hooray!

Okay.

Bye.

_Dr. M

Changes Coming

Obviously I've fallen out of the habit of updating this blog every other day. It's not really that necessary, so I've decided to switch to once a week instead. I'll go back to updating more often if I ever feel motivated too, but I haven't had as much time or motivation lately, so instead I'll stick with every Sunday.

Last Wednesday my parents called all my teachers about my interim report, and boy were they mad. I don't think this quarter's grades will be all that bad, but my teachers told them about assignments I've missed and how much I've been falling asleep in class. Of course my parents made everything into a much bigger deal than it has to be, so now they're really on my back about completing assignments. Things like this never last more than a week, usually not that long, and they're not really mad at me anymore, as long as I cooperate for awhile.

Still, it's true that I have fallen into a very bad habit, and that is the habit of wasting time. I've been staying up too late, sleeping in too late, and spending my afternoons and evenings sleeping or reading random things online or just being inactive. I've got things to do! I have to work on things for Khai, I have music of my own to write and record, I've got classes to not fail, and most importantly I have sleep to be gotten.

It's gotten dramatically warmer these last couples days (we had a snow day and bitterly cold temperatures just last Monday, if you'll recall), today I wore a regular long-sleeve shirt and almost felt too warm. So in honor of that, I'm turning over a new leaf. The plan is very simple: go to bed on time, use my free time to do things that I want to do. Guitar, Chestnut Juno, One Knight Stand, school. And sleep. It's really bad how little sleep I've been getting.

LAST WEEK:
Today we saw a traditional Irish concert. The first half was amazing, solo violinist and guitarist, the second half was okay, Irish vocal music (but they talked too much and were really full of themselves). Yesterday was work. Chamber choir had a performance which I did not attend, because we are embarrassingly unprepared and I didn't want to show my face with the group, but luckily I had to work so that will be my excuse. Prior to that was school, time wasting, parental lecturing, etc.

THIS WEEK:
Rachel is coming on Tuesday for spring break! I'll be spending as much time with her as possible until Saturday when she leaves. Also, I'll be enacting the "new deal" as described above.

See you next week.

_Dr. M

Back in again!

Man, one whole week! I really need to start posting again. Every other day, at least.

What's happened since last Tuesday? Well, last week was a very tired week where not much happened. Then a four-day weekend since I was out on Friday and we had a crazy snow day on Monday. Now, hopefully, I'm back into the swing of things.

I'm feeling a little more perky now then I was last week. I got my hair cut at the mall today, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Hair is such an odd thing. I'm trying to grow it out, go for the later John Lennon look. We'll see if that plan survives the summer.

I'm swiftly beating Majora's Mask, which has got me started on my latest project. Ever since I was in grade school, I wanted to design a video game. Just in theory, come up with all the characters, levels, and story lines. Now I've finally come up with a concept and a method that will allow me to do that, assuming I stick with it. Just another creative outlet, and who knows what opportunities life will hand me in the future. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get the chance to propose this idea to someone in the industry some day. You never know.

I totally let the guitar slide last week, so today I bought a poster with guitar tabs to put on my wall, and I'm going to try picking it up again. I need some sort of goal to work towards. And a little self discipline.

College situation: Temple accepted me to the university but not to the music program (ha ha go figure, but I did have a bad audition), I'm not going to audition for Westchester, and we're getting ready to send the deposit into UArts so none of that matters. Hopefully it will all be squared away soon.

Every highschool senior in PA has to complete a "senior project" before they can graduate, which is a volunteer, career-awareness, or academic/creative project (which basically means, do something and write about it). I'm making mine my new album, which is good because now I have a deadline of the last day in April that it has to be done by.

We staged my big number in school show today, and it's going to be a lot of fun. It almost makes the whole mess worthwhile.

I miss Rachel. But she's coming back for spring break next week! So I'm okay.

Only one more real month of school to go, because April and May hardly count, with trips and finals and all. This spring is actually shaping up quite nicely, I haven't been too busy at all.

However, I've decided that instead of just waiting for this school year to end, I should be making the most of the time, since none of us really have that much in the grand scheme of things. So it's time to start a new album, get things going with A One Knight Stand (yes, that's officially the name of my band now), and learn the guitar.

And maybe write a video game.

_Dr. M

Some Assemblance of a Routine

Sorry I haven't been posting as much lately, loyal blog followers. Or, you're welcome. Whichever.

I feel like, even if not a single solitary soul ever reads this blog, I'm writing to my future self. I plan to have this as a reference when I'm in my thirties and looking back. Hello, me! And whoever else is reading, if anyone is. Rachel? Rosebud? ...Aunt Sue? Hi. Anyway I'd like to write more often, but even when I don't, it's all good.

I'm feeling more upbeat. I don't know why! Maybe I've just lost my mind. Last weekend was alright, I worked Saturday, then Sunday I went to an organ concert with my father. It was pretty good, it was a church organist downtown, it felt a lot like a church function. He played a lot of modern pieces with a lot of sustained notes and complex chords and gradual diminuendos and crescendos. The first piece was my favorite, it made all the hair on my back stand on end. I think I was reading the program notes too much and would have enjoyed it more if I'd just listened to the music.

That made me think about organs and churches and music for awhile. Then Dan started playing a new video game (Kingdom Hearts, which is old, but new to him) and that made me want to play Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask, which I'm doing. It's a great game. Very unique. You relive the same three days in this kingdom, the three final days before the world ends, over and over again. It's gloomy, you're helping all these people in so many great ways, but every three days you start over and everything is erased, nobody knows you or remembers what you did. As a concept it really speaks to me, and also the world is full of life and good stories and really draws you in. It may be, in theory, my favorite Zelda game. As you play it though, you realize the dungeons are very lacking and some game play is just too tedious. I think somebody should re-do this concept, using the newer systems' power, with a longer time span and a bigger world. It would be neat. Too bad I don't know enough about video games to ever be a game designer.

Certain things inspire me. Video games, certain ones, have this way of inspiring me, which is weird since I'm no good at them and I've watched my brothers play a lot more than actually play myself.

Obama spoke tonight. I think it's funny how both sides want to work together and be all bi-partisan, so long as the other side is willing to abandon their principles and go along with whatever they want. "We should work together to do what I say". Neither side will ever reach much of a compromise, we can only hope that doesn't stand in the way of progress.

Not that I care much about politics. As I stood looking at this man, who is now technically our president, I had a hard time connecting that in my brain. I slowly realized that it was because it didn't matter. It makes no difference to me who is president, who is running this country. It has no effect on my life. You may think that's awfully naive of me to say, or simple untrue. But really, my parents have jobs, they would have jobs no matter who was in charge. If they didn't work where they did, they would work somewhere else. We would get by no matter what. Does anything the president do or say really ever effect us? Does the state of the economy effect us? Not so long as we're still working and paying the bills, prices haven't changed much (except in gas, but that has little to do with the economy), and we have no major investments. It doesn't matter to my family who's president, nothing he does or says will have any direct effect on us, nothing that happens in California effects us, or in Florida, in fact, as far as we're concerned the whole world outside of Pennsylvania doesn't exist. People's connection that they feel to the rest of the world, especially with the advent of computers and improved communication, is largely imagined. We have no real connection to the outside world. That's the way it is, that's the nature of reality. We're all these little single-celled organisms, stimulus-response, stimulus-response, we lose our jobs we'll find another, someone we know dies we grieve and we move on, opportunities come and go, and you know what, what happens across the world makes no difference to me, what happens in Washington makes no difference to me, my only responsibility is to myself, my family, and my immediate community, which is the city of Reading and the state of Pennsylvania. The U.S. is nothing but a bunch of people who all happen to be living near each other. Barack is a man in a suit talking at me through the TV screen. He might as well be going on about sewing buttons.

Okay, that's enough ranting for one post. Anyway, as the title of this post suggests, I'm hoping to settle into a routine again. Last week I was only in school two days, and I feel really out of whack. I need to settle back into a system of doing things, and make sure I go to school every day.

This week, I'm meeting with Khai tomorrow (feeling a little more excited about that now than I was just a little while ago), and I've acquired a double-role in school show because of one of the kids who dropped out. It's a small role, but still, more stag-time=win.

Women are interesting. Mmm. Women.

I leave you with that thought.

_Dr. M

Here I Sit, No More!

Good lord... what a non-week.

I missed a post on Wednesday, not sure how that happened. Anyway, I pretty much have nothing to write. I feel like I should write. I need to write.

I should be at some stranger's house right now, but I ended up staying home from Regionals. The reasons for not going started mounting so I didn't go. Wednesday I completely lost my voice, I mean it dug a tunnel beneath the walls with a spoon and wasn't heard from again until yesterday evening. That was combined with an overall feeling of illness. Lesser reasons for staying home included not knowing the music, not really liking the director we were going to have, simply not wanting to go through the housing ordeal and spend so much time rehearsing again, and having to miss my guitar lesson as well as show up late to work on Saturday. So today and yesterday I simply slept in and goofed off. I'm not really feeling sick anymore, but I was going to be out of school today anyway and honestly... I just couldn't see the point in going in.

But this week has been overall pretty lame. I mean like I said, Sunday was amazing, but other than that, I made no new revelations, learned nothing, and spent most of my time doing diddly. Everyone has weeks like that, I think.

Tomorrow is guitar lesson and work. Sunday I meet with Khai.

The guitar is coming along, sort of. I haven't made as much progress as I wanted to this week. I can play three, maybe four chords automatically, the problem is it still takes me too long to find them, so I can't really play in time. The movements still feel awkward and unsure. Maybe this is all to be expected in your first week of playing, but I wanted to have the chords and changing between them down cold by tomorrow. I imagine the space between the progress I feel I should be making and the progress I actually am making is going to grow wider and wider as time goes on, probably because I simply expect too much out of myself, and also I have no standard to judge myself against. Is the rate I'm learning at normal?

My only real advantage in learning the guitar is the same with any instrument I might try to learn, which is that I have a pretty good idea of music, arranging, register, range, rhythm and sight-reading going in. I can focus solely on technique and getting the movements down, since basic musicianship is already innate. For instance, given the starting notes each string plays when open, I can pretty much figure out the fingering to any chord on my own. With just a little guitar theory and technique it won't be long until I'm making my own arrangements of songs (and my own songs, which I already do of course). The problem is always you don't know what you don't know, and I may be looking at a much steeper mountain to climb than I realize.

This next lesson will be very important. It's going to tell me a lot about myself as a guitar student and my teacher as a guitar teacher. Here's the progress I've made, now what's next? What can I do to help me improve beyond this point? I want to leave each week with a clear idea of how far I've come and what I'm supposed to be practicing. I have who knows how much to learn and only six months to learn it, I don't want there to be a single stagnant week where nothing is really accomplished.

I feel really stupid for not having started this whole process two years ago. It's not like I'd never wanted to learn the guitar until now. It's just now that I'm feeling motivated enough to do it.

Anyways, it's quite thankfully almost the last week in February, which means only March, then April, then May, and I'm out! of! here! Isn't it funny how regular and unchanging the passage of time is, yet certain periods of our life seem to stretch and shrink depending on how we spend them? The best times always pass the quickest, the worst stretch on for eternity. Not always, sometimes our best or most vivid memories make certain months seem a lot longer than others. But time is a very steady rhythm, a steady snare drum beat marching us towards our final destination. But the more time you spend thinking about that, the less time on earth you ultimately have for all the better, happier things.

I wanted to write about how all this week I felt like a big, unmoving blob in this chair, futilely picking away at those same damn chords every day, not going anywhere any which way. How I want to spend my time more wisely, spend less time doing nothing, make more music, feel less blah inside. This skipping of Regionals feels like a culmination of all of that. But I'm not going to write about it, I'm not going to dwell on it, because the more time I allot it, the longer it will take to move past it. This next week is going to bring new challenges and new opportunities and new songs, I'm going to grab them, hang on and not let go until I'm somewhere else besides right here.

So there.

I love Rachel. Oh, how I wish she were here. I can't be the only one who feels like he was born to be alone.

_Dr. M

Greatest. Weekend. EVER

I'll have to keep this post short, as I only have like an hour to write it. My computer's internet turns off at twelve, which used to be fine since before I'd just go downstairs and finish on my parent's computer. Only now they've placed the same restrictions on their computer, for some reason they're hell-bent on keeping me off the internet after 12:00 on weekdays.

Other than that, I've had a really really good weekend, as the title implies. Saturday I unexpectedly had my first guitar lesson. There were two other students and both his kids (at least one was, maybe the other was just a friend) in the room at the time, so it didn't feel much like a "private" lesson, and he didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know... but still, my first lesson! I get the impression he's not as "hands on" as some other teachers, there will still be a good amount of self-studying to be done, but I imagine he'll give me repertoire and technique to work on, and answer any questions I have. That's what music teachers do, isn't it? lol

I can't have a lesson this week, because I leave for Regionals on Thursday and won't be back until Saturday afternoon. So in two weeks I'd like to have mastered the basic chords he gave me and changing between them, maybe set them to a song or two. The guitar neck on my mom's guitar is a lot thicker than normal, which is part of why it feels so awkward to play, so I'll be looking to get my own sometime soon hopefully.

Later that day was work, then me and my brother saw Coraline. Great movie. In 3-D which was really a little unnecessary, but it didn't detract much from it. The artistry was amazing, I would love to see it again just for that. I mean, the story and characters were okay, but it was really a treat to look at and experience.

Sunday I went up and saw Rachel. We had an amazing day. Went to see the Rodin museum which was great, ate pizza, etc. It was seriously the best time I've had in a long time, and I can't wait to see her again, probably sometime next month for spring break.

Today I slept until four since the night prior I'd only had 2.5 hours of sleep, then the rest of the day I spent with the guitar.

So I'm feeling pretty great, though definitely not looking forward to returning to school and show and everythingUUUGG.

I've dropped my album. I'm not in the right frame of mind to make an album right now, I just don't have any good ideas, and I knew the rest of the songs were going to turn out like the first one, and I didn't want to waste my time.

Rachel was talking to me yesterday about how she feels like she's wasting her time in college. Her mother said, and she agrees, that some people think you go to college to grow up, but really all you're doing is prolonging your youth as long as you can. You go there to delay growing up. All she wants to do, the only thought she has for her future, is to raise a family. And college is keeping her from doing that. So I said why don't, maybe in another year, we get married. I mean, why not? People get married when they're eighteen. I don't know how we'd raise kids when we can barely support ourselves (if that turns out to be the case, which with us both in college seems pretty likely), but we wouldn't have to worry about that right away. She said let's see how this next year goes.

All this school year I've been thinking about how eager I am to get out of highschool and out on the road, being in a different city every month, playing shows in backwoods bars and getting into fights with drunk old people. It's a very appealing lifestyle to me. But in the end, it's probably not worth very much. The person I care about most wants to settle down and raise a family, and create more little persons I care about most. How much more fulfilling would that be than traveling and playing music for strangers? Damned if I know, the good thing is life will in all likelihood decide that for me. The way things usually go, I won't have any say in it at all.

Fortunately, all I have to worry about right at this moment is not flunking out of high school, not flunking out of college, and learning to play this guitar. It's kind of comforting in a way.

_Dr. M

Friday the Thirteenth

Today wasn't a particularly unlucky day. I finally banged out what will be the opening track to the new album. The whole thing is going to be very unambitious. Just a few simple songs that repeat a bit and then end. I kind of figured it might be this way, since I'm so strapped for time and energy. I've been kind of out of it lately, and this week has been kind of frustrating since today was my only night off, and I had to say "no" to CVS in order to get it (they asked if I'd come in).

I hate having things to do. Why can't school just end already and why can't I not have to work in order to earn money. Why can't I just do what I want to do. Why can't life work that way. We all spend eighty percent of our lives doing what we'd rather not, and twenty percent dreading it. It's nice to have Heaven to look forward to. I guess.

I wish it were Sunday already. I'm kind of annoyed by how stagnant everything is. I can't seem to make any head way... but it's all my fault, really. I'm the one not doing anything.

This isn't a very happy post. Appropriate for the day, I guess. On a lighter note, I get to see my Rachel two days from now. She's about all I could think about all day.

I love her.

_Dr. M