Sometimes a person will remind me of something I said to them
(You told me the universe does not punish
You called me out on my obsessive tendencies instantly
You said there is no reason to listen to nice music)
and sometimes they'll say it a long time later and I think god damn, I hope the people I go to for advice are not also full of shit

A curious thing about the birthday greetings I got yesterday is that more than a few people shared condolences about how I all at once an entire year older.  Another is "oh. I didn't realize you were older than me."  This is common at school, where roughly half of my peers are 23+ and the other are right on track for regular college age.
I am treated like I am 20, and I don't mind some extra years of wisdom while being underestimated.  But what I can't understand is why anyone would mourn time passing-
(Although I vividly remember lying in my bed in Hillsborough when I was 19/20 feeling very, very old.   Grabbing my stomach thinking, it would be ok, I could learn to love you if you would just never change.  People I love hate bob dylan but his songs are still my walking home very late at night drunk or sober anthems.)
 - since passing time is inevitable and standardized only by human contraptions and is actually fairly interesting - all of those things.

Why mourn things you can't get out of, that happen to everyone?  Growing old is a given, but it isn't as if time has a predictable trajectory.  People talk about growing up and maturity like it is something that happens.  I believe it is a more manual process: Sitting through a very lame recital when your legs are falling asleep because courtesy is contagious; listening to your crazy sister talk about tv series because you love her; eating birthday cake for breakfast but making sure you eat something nutritious for lunch.  That insecurities, and excuses, guilt, panic, and fear of missing out is imaginary or as real as I let it become.  (This is almost exactly what I felt when I was 21 and 20 according to things I wrote too dumb to put on the internet, which is why I should be writing fiction instead of talking about myself for decades)

          We have admiration for people who are really good at something.  But someone who imagines a musician has always been great, did not scrape it by force, is a fool.  I feel especially optimistic at this time in my life, although I am an old lady at 24, because I'm in the middle of things blossoming.  I spend time every day doing things that change with time and me, which I've picked because they have potential for indefinitely unfolding mysteries.  And interesting plateaus.

The far-flung birthday greetings on my facebook wall, which wrenched me around thinking of how I knew these people and where and who I was, has forced me to conclude that life is rich and long.  Fifteen more different selves, even if I only live 24 years again.  The trend is that I deactivate my facebook when I am either the most content or the loneliest or trying to memorize a fugue.

happy bird-day

I had a dream my brown eyes turned blue.  It used to be they were very dark port-holes - when I smile you can't even see the whites - in which one could look and see innumerable interesting things.  What you saw you couldn't describe in words or recreate visually or remember, except as an experience.  What drives you to look in them is something inside you that you don't understand, questions maybe that everyone else has decided to stop asking.  In the dream you were looking and like a sheet of glass sliding over my irises, one turned steel blue and then the other, so that all you saw was your reflection.  I woke up and realized "weird," I am on a nasty couch at school and then weird it is still and actually my birthday

Image credit: Steven Vander Meer

A dream about hoarding my prana, I'm sure

Angry Bird Suite

I can't write music but I do have big ideas.  This is a suite for a small ensemble - Drums, Bass, Guitar, Piano, Alto Sax/ Clarinet, Bari Sax or Euphonium, and Violin.  It is a moody bunch of feeling crumbs I have based on being a woman rolled up into a warm ball in my palms.


ANGRY BIRD SUITE for small combo

Morning Amnesia (Lacrimoso et Fugato)- Oh my god those precious moments before you remember who you are and then it sets in through the depths of sadness that you are ultimately and forever you and alone and another day older AND you have to go to work.  This one really moves into profound sadness/melodrama but becomes ploddingly organized counterpoint by the end.  As far as instrumentation, this is probably mostly piano and in the middle some hard bop maybe, with the piano really working it out out loud how it feels with some help from rhythm

Someone teach the creepers some social skills? (Punk Shuffle) - But seriously does staring like a creeper at a girl at the gym ever work or does being a homeless guy saying "you look beautiful tonight" ever work and dude you are with your girlfriend why you tryin to make eye contact with every woman on the street.  Brassy hits, guitar takes the show, please make some room to throw down.

Night Fight (Allegro con Fuoco) - for all those fights the couples in my house have on our porch.  Horrible invectives, tears, you can't really mean that! Starts with a lonely wandering saxophone (violin?) cadenza.  A second, lower and complementary voice joins (slower, says less) with some imitation but clearly they are both talking and not really hearing each other.  In the middle it gets ridiculously appassionato and furious and one voice basically says fuck it and drops out.  The winding-down cadenza is, naturally, bluesy, subdued, and solo.

the Walk of Shame -  When I was imagining this in my mind, I realized I was just hearing Charles Mingus' Adagio ma Non Troppo because it's a genius bit of composition and I've been listening to it a lot.  And I could easily stick in a character (a young woman) who is reflecting on an act that's supposed to be shameful (walking home after a hook-up) but the morning is so bright and she's searching around inside of herself and realizing what she actually feels is triumphant.  Lots of building orchestration, with ruminative soli interludes, toward a liberated jazzy peak (5:25) - Let my children hear Mingus!!

then there's supposed to be a fifth movement but I lost the sheet that I was daydreaming on in Logic so I have to get back to you.  Collins Symphony no. 1 opus 1.

my list of irrational fears:
1. I'll eventually forget how to talk
2. that I'll depreciate in value every year
3. that there is really nihil novi sub sole
4.
5. someone I love (a specific person) will die alone
6. 
7. myself uncensored

as many lists as are filling my brain

egoic art:
-memoirs (including 'my experience of alcoholism/anorexia/raising a child with adhd and gayness' for your commiseration) and books of personal philosophy
-guys and their guitars and their solo careers
-front men, often
-personal professional websites, blogs
-facebook timeline (well maintained)
-poetry about feelings, especially ex-boyfriends
-journalism without specialty
-maestros, virtuosos, castratos, sopranos
-social climbing 

non-egoic art
-dance, usually
-blogs with no readers (joke)
-performances with an ensemble, especially collaborative or of another's vision
-musical accompaniment
-fiction
-biographical sketches
-satire
-art unadvertised or dispersed or fleeting and unrecorded
-dinner party

indirect memory triggers:
-playing a sequence on the 2nd page of Chaminade Op. 61 reminds me of a walk on fickle hill with a boyfriend when a high school girl honks at him and I get into a minor jealous meltdown 
-breaking apart dried cranberries at my baking job makes me think of the time my boss was being spied on by a guy through her window.  She knew for certain because she snuck to his house immediately after and his truck was warm but he said he'd been home all evening.
-playing a sequence in a little handel piano piece makes me think of my grandpa heine, and when my old roommate nick texted me to tell me our property manager had died, and also of the $10,000 steeple she had crane-lifted on a barn
-a particular pair of tennis shoes makes me think of jumping on dave's rabbit (car) in front of japhys and him pulling me down and throwing me in the car, all in very great fun, and a confused friend recently returned from Europe walking by


what I know about people based on the instruments they play
Violin - guarded and aloof, from another era perhaps
Drummers - hedonistic spiritualists
Piano - exclusive and sensitive, attached to smart phones.  then there's a divergence between assholes and religious zealots.  (I am part asshole and part drummer.)
Most brass- dabble also in science or politics or advocacy for women
Bass - dependable and grinning
Guitarists - dream real big
Saxophone - hipsters, usually horny
Cellists - each the center of the universe.  Can you imagine several in one room?
Oboe - effortlessly the best at most things academic; lack emotional complexity
Sopranos - at first I thought there were too many sopranos in the world and my life to categorize, but my coworker Emma said "chatty"

where I got my manic grin?

Postcard poems from Spring Break San Francisco

n

 

no one gets free jazz, and it's actually really expensive, plus one item minimum

I'm sorry I cannot date you because:

who would my platonic male friends hang out with?
my woman's intuition perceives you as a threat.
I have to memorize a 300 year old fugue.
I only date elitist asshole musicians
   who are highly sensitive
   who need less than 10% of my attention per week
boyfriends make you fat and lazy
my independence is a more marketable asset
I say stupid things which sound stupider when someone else hears them