Hello world!

I should be studying for music theory right now, but I need to cleanse myself a little bit first. I love Sundays. I know that I have already discussed said topic in here before, but Sundays are just so lovely. It was 66 degrees outside! In December! It's been cold and rainy and depressing for as long as I can remember... well, I don't have a very good memory, so maybe it was sunny last week and I just had completely forgotten such an event occurred.

Lunch was great today. We ended up discussing religion: is a community essential for faith? Let's think about it.

I'm having a hard time trying to present both sides. I'll just share my own opinion then because that's the only thing I can actually put to words without tainting it with my own bias, but it already is entirely biased. Also, I wrote a little bit of my final on this. So, Aristotle says that it is impossible to reach eudaimonia without true friends, correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe I should cite it just in case. Oh no! I didn't annotate the 8th book. It's in there, trust me. And I know that Aristotle isn't always right, especially with his physics, but that's so true. What's the point in beauty if there's no one you can share it with? What's the purpose in enjoying food if you can't eat it with someone sitting across from you? And how can you check yourself if you're growing without any friends to keep you on the right track? (listening to Priscilla Ahn right now. I love happy music) Oh! Right! Symphonies, quartets, collaborations are so much fun to watch. And how can a musician become great if he never has a teacher? Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. People make the word work and there's no way we could enjoy our lives without have companionship or love or friendship. I can't imagine a faith without community. It's not just for the rituals or the communion with tasty bread or for the golden stars on your sunday school chart, but a community/church/family seems essential to knowing God. After all, how is possible to search for the entire truth when you only have one dismally limited perspective? Even if you read everything, you still read it with your own vision of the text, but being able to argue or listen with another live human being is so much more enlightening. You can't ignore a friend who's telling you that you've been an idiot, but it's very easy to ignore a book sitting on a shelf. Don't get me wrong, books are awesome. I love reading. But with only reading or some possibly inexistent relationship with some "God," how can you grow as a human being? How can you help others without ever being helped or seeing love in action? How can you grasp or refute ideas without hearing them argued at your face?

Okay, so maybe everyone's journey is different. But I don't feel that Christianity is something as simple as "it's just you and God." Maybe that could be the very core, but I feel like that's not what it truly is. I mean, that could be one vision of it. But there is so much more. There are interconnected relationships everywhere, and you can't discount the power of relationships that form the core of one person's idea. Tradition kept the Hebrews waiting for God.

Hmm, I don't really know anything about this. Plus, I got distracted and spent ten minutes popping some bubble wrap with some fellow hall mates. Why is bubble wrap so satisfying? I shall never know. I hope it isn't something Freudian. Well, he didn't have bubble wrap, so he can never psychoanalyze my sick pleasure with bubble wrap. I used to overuse the word fettish all the time without knowing the sexual connotation of it. Someone eventually told me.

I used to think all SUVs were Suburbans.

I used to think the alphabet was a progression from lower case a, capital B, then a strange 3 humped character, then a 4 humped character... and so on and so forth.

I used to think that kissing was sex.

I guess everyone has his or her misunderstandings. I was just a particularly naive child. I've always jumped to conclusions that make sense to me before I know they're true. Hmm, I wonder what strange misconceptions that I have now that I will look back on in ten years and think how naive and stupid I was.

But I guess scientific theories can be like that in general. We have to come up with some model of understanding some concept, even if the metaphor doesn't completely describe the concept in its entirety. We learn through lies. Atoms don't actually look like Lewis models, but the models help us wrap our heads around the concept. (I'm listening to Sufjan Steven's Black Hawk War, and I really like writing to this.) Because we can't completely understand in atom in its infinitesimal beauty. We just have to try and understand our own view of it, and combine it with a couple of quantum models, some van der waal action, and perhaps we can grab a small piece of what it truly is. Maybe that's what art does. It grabs something beyond the surface value. And music tries to model feelings into sound. How cool is that? It's still hard to wrap my mind around how music manages to depict emotions so nakedly and beautifully clothed at the same time. It can physically move your soul as well as your body. Who knows from whence music came, but it feels like it's the soul speaking. Maybe writing with words does a little bit of that. Ooh, Dear Mr. Supercomputer steals a little bit from Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. Well, I guess it isn't really stealing since it's just counting numbers. You can't copyright counting. I personally enjoy Sufjan Stevens more. I know Philip Glass is awesome, but he's not quite as accessible, and Sufjan Stevens likes to play with rhythm more. I love duples on triples and syncopation and all that jazz. Well, I know I'm going to hate it in Musicianship three when I'm going to have to clap it out, but I'll remind myself to try and keep the joy in it. I'll think of Gobbledigook by Sigur Ros.

Maybe I should start listening to the words of songs more. I listen to songs at least hundreds of times before I even hear the words sometimes, especially if I like the music. It's just so easy to get lost in the music, and then the next time you listen to pay attention to the bass, and then some random percussion you had never realized was there before.

I'm not trying to be like "ooh, i like music, therefore i'm cool, and i have better taste than most people on the internet." I just am appreciating music with my words for a little bit.

I love clair de lune. I think my mom used to play it when she was pregnant with me, because it makes me want to curl up into fetal position.

On and Eric Whitacre. Mmmmm. The concert choir sang water night, which was awesome, and then the a cappella choir sang lux aurumque, which was freaking amazing. I was so excited. It just fills up your soul at some points.

Oh! I got to lend out some books today. It was so nice. But my friends saw my twilight books hiding on an upper shelf... I guess I should donate them or something. I don't know what to do with them. I don't really want any little tweenager to read them and have false hopes like I did. But there's also the very core of me that would cringe if I saw a book burn or be ripped to shreds in a trash can. I mean, they're still words on paper. I love fire, but I can't imagine seeing the edges of a book shrivel up, their words to lose their value forever. Fahrenheit 451 made me cry. So sad. Maybe it's because I've read Fahrenheit 451 that I'm so biased. Or because the book burnings made me want to read Harry Potter even more. In general, burning books, censorship, and suppression of free speech isn't a good idea. It just is like using antibacterial soap every day instead of just scrubbing normally to keep the hands healthy. Because somebody and some words will slip through the cracks, and the harder you try to crack it down, the stronger it will grow, like a giant mutant germ that will take over everyone. Anywho, oppression isn't good. As someone in my euro class in high school once stated "Rape is bad... most of the time." This is in an understatement.

I wore a hat again today. It was so nice. I hadn't worn a hat or a cute dress in the past week. Studying had completely absorbed my life. It took away my personality and everything.

Oh! Band practice is starting up again this Wednesday. It turns out that we were all just a bit busy during the school year.

I am looking forward to this break that starts in 14 hours. mmmmm. I'll get to write, practice, read, play with the band, and work in a flower shop! It's like my own personal heaven. I mean, I'll miss everyone here. And I love college. I get to do many of those things, but it hasn't been of my own accord for a while. I get to make my own impetus now. I can write for as long as I would like to, I finally get to read whole novels in one sitting, and I'll be able to just sit down and smell flowers if I would like to.

But tying the whole blog together, I guess it's more about the people than the actions. Because no matter how much I will enjoy the stuff I'm doing over Christmas, I will enjoy it much more because of the people. And I will miss everyone hear, but the distance will make me realize how valuable my friends are.

So, I'll enjoy practicing with my band, making centerpieces with people for people, and writing in some sort of communication with the outside world, even if no one is reading. I still would be very impressed if anyone managed to hack through all this unorganized mess of writing. Maybe I should try writing to some sort of form or theme.

Anywho, good night!