May 2012
18 posts
“I, too, overflow; my desires have invented new desires, my body knows unheard-of...”
– Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (via wine-loving-vagabond)
I'm so over you, Columbia
Commencement was today - very beautiful ceremony. Got very sunburned, though. Saw my favorite profs, hung out with both of my parents, got a degree. And my mom and Adrian got me flowers! :D Saw the roomie, which was lovely - I really missed her. Went to see Mara’s brilliant and beautiful senior recital, had a great catch-up session with Natasha, and bought myself a sandwich, brownie, and a...
“hear her sing of sun-kissed,
heavy-lidded tragedies that roll
off her tongue...”
– Jessie Mitra (via beryl-azure)
“We’re here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming...”
– Jeanette Winterson, from Lighthousekeeping (via growing-orbits)
“Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.”
– Jeanette Winterson, from The Stone Gods (thanks, ikalawangboses)
good things
-done with college. graduating next wednesday.
-interviewing for an awesome job today. and I think that they like me already. (i can haz rent monies?)
-I’m graduating with departmental honors
-i’m conducting a concert tonight with pros. and it’s all new music. and i’m getting paid for it.
-i get to live with A for the month of june.
-i am getting along with both of my...
“I know that I am alive
between two parentheses.”
– Octavio Paz, from “Certainty”, in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987, edited by Eliot Weinberger (via apoetreflects)
home-ish
In rockland. Here for a day and a half, babysitting my dog while my mom is away.
Being here is really weird.
[[MORE]]
-I come back here and immediately become the person I used to be in a couple of annoying ways. My anxiety gets much worse. I become much more of a child - reliant on my parents (parent, singular, now).
-It feels unfamiliar in a weird way. It hasn’t changed. I feel like...
Let the tumbl-record show
That it is my roomie’s birthday today, and I love her very much. She’s a wonderful human being and I’m really glad to know her. Happy birthday, Leah love.
Here’s a baby kraken I found on Youtube:
(Yes, you will always be my Kraken-baby, no matter how old you are.)
<3
Does it ever happen to you
that you have lines of poetry stuck in your head as though they were lines of music? I’ve had this Hart Crane poem in my head for the past hour:
Though now but marble are the marble urns,
Though fountains droop in waning light and pain
Glitters on the edges of wet ferns,
I should not dare to let you in again.
Mine is a world foregone though not yet ended,-
An imagined garden grey...
Also
Also, I wanted to share this with y’all - one of my favorite things, and it’s been a tradition of mine for the past few years that I re-read it/re-listen to it on the first day of May. You’ll understand why if you read it . :)
It’s a radio play by Samuel Beckett, called “Cascando”.
[[MORE]]Opener: (cold) It is the month of May…for me. (pause) Correct....
Personal Post No. 1
(meaning “first post after Orpheus”)
If you’ve followed me thus far, you’re probably either a) a personal friend, or b) a stranger who’s interested in what I’m doing. so, I thought that I should probably introduce myself a little more.
In other news, I have a professional conducting gig (!!!!!!) for the first time, and they’re PAYING me MONEY!, but they...
April 2012
16 posts
Done!
Last concert happened! It went really well! The unfortunate thing is that it wasn’t recorded (mix-up with the recording device), but I still have my lecture notes, and the music, well…we didn’t perform much, anyway.
I’ll make the paper available on here soon, for those of you who’d like to read it. And the first concert will be up here eventually (I promise! the...
Last Orpheus Concert - Tonight!
Dear Tumblrverse,
I apologize for the short notice, but tonight, April 27th, I will present the last of three concert-lectures I am giving as a part of my thesis project. Each concert focuses on a different aspect of the Orpheus myth, oft-represented by composers of music and music-drama. This concert deals with the death of Orpheus.
The concert will take place at 7:30PM on Columbia...
1 tag
orph-rehearsal
today! it went well! very relieved. :) small victories…
this is for my last concert; after next friday, this whole project will be over…weird.
also, now there’s beer. :-D
“I am never all of me
unto myself
and sometimes I go slowly
knowing that a...”
– W.S. Merwin, “Words From a Totem Animal” (via seashades)
“To guide someone
through the halls of hell
is not the same as love.”
– Gregory Orr, from “When Eurydice Saw Him” (via the-final-sentence)
jkirkc:
“The shore curves with the being
I found in you, sensuous and expansive,
a...”
– Paul Hetherington, from “Signs” (via the-final-sentence)
not orphean, just read this and really loved it.
aenorlemusae:
O Mnemosyne
Memory
Begetter of Inspiration
Mother of Muses
Lover of Losers
Help us to remember, to gather the Lost pieces
For when our limbs are sundered
Our body dismembered
Our head disembodied
Our ego maimed
Then may we remember
Our missing member
And the embers be blown back to flame
1 tag
there is something so satisfying
about seeing the whole of it - all 73 pages, plus the cd - nice and neat, printed out, lying on your desk.
in fact, here! have a picture!
it even feels heavy when I hold it. it’s so fresh and warm from the printer and thick and I feel like I’ve DONE something.
(i’ll post it here for y’all to read soon, if you’d like.)
editing
my thesis (!!!!!!!). almost done! need to format the citations and bibliography and images of musical examples and make the cds, but then I am DONE with the paper (and can focus on the concert…urngh, no rest for the orph-weary).
In the meantime, I am listening to a recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, and it makes me very happy. Also in the meantime, I am suffering from allergies for the...
March 2012
18 posts
I am imposing a severe censorship on myself.
My thesis paper is due in ten days. I’m blocking time-wasting sites in an effort to make myself write. Sorry, tumblr. See you all on April 9th.
“A god can do it. But will you tell me how
a man can follow him through the...”
– Rilke, third sonnet to orpheus. translation stephen mitchell/md herter norton/me.
(I like attempting to translate things. In the act of translating a poem, I articulate to myself what I think it means. It’s a nice way to get to know poetry, and to better understand the little idiosyncrasies...
2 tags
le naos : devotion & divination of the muse: “The... →
aenorlemusae:
“The shift of Maenad to Muse is like the change of Bacchic rites to Orphic; it is the informing of savage rites with the spirit of music, order and peace….Orpheus, it has been established in the mouth of many witnesses, modified, ordered, ‘rearranged’ Bacchic rites….Did this man…in whose saintly…
“Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times? As...”
– Cornelia Funke (via literaryglamour)
1082. no explanation required.
(via portraitofasmile)
reblogged because this is beautiful and so true.
1 tag
not about Orpheus.
click for feelings.[[MORE]]
This is turning into one of those nights during which all I want to do is have a hot cup of tea and read rilke in a comfy chair, in a room with a red oriental carpet and dark green walls, thick curtains, soft yellow light, and the smell of old books.
(the room I’m describing is the library of the apt that dd and jimmy shared - jimmy lived there and dd used it as...
orph-anxiety. help?
I’m very stuck on what music to perform on my last concert. so far I have (in order from most sure to least sure):
Apotheosis scene from Monteverdi
Birtwistle Orpheus Elegies or Nenia (problem with both of these is finding players)
Stravinsky Apotheosis scene
Gluck Final Chorus (for contrast?)
Maybe play a recording and mention Grisey’s Quatre Chants?
Maybe discuss the...
2 tags
Conducting Victories!
It went really well last night! Not only that, but I videotaped it, so now I have a good video of a contemporary piece for summer festival/grad school auditions! I NEVER get good videos of me conducting.
Anyway, woohoo! Deliriously happy. Now, back to Orpheus.
3 tags
ANXIETY
(conducting on a concert tonight and famous people will be there)
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
(so of course it was time for me to distract myself by changing the theme)
finding moments of happy in times of stress.
thesis-writing, bach keyboard music (the only stuff I can listen to while I work), some delicious tea (white tea that DD just brought me back from my favorite tea shop), hanging with A.
the writing process is not so much “type type type” as it is “think think think think think think brainxplode think think think type think think think think think beer think think think type...