blogspot

little truths of life

CIRCLE OF LIFE:

At age 4...success is...not peeing in your pants.
At age 12...success is...having friends.
At age 16...success is...having a driver's license.
At age 25...success is...having sex (when married).
At age 35...success is...having money.
At age 50...success is...having money.
At age 60...success is...having sex (when married).
At age 70...success is...having a driver's license.
At age 75...success is...having friends.
At age 80...success is...not peeing in your pants.

WORDS WOMEN USE:

Fine- used to end an argument when we are right, and you need to shut up.
Five minutes- If we're getting dressed, this is half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given 5 more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.
Nothing- the calm before the storm. This means "something," and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with "Nothing" usually end in "Fine."
Go ahead- a dare, not permission. Don't do it.
That's okay- one of the most dangerous statements we can make to a man. It means we want to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
Thanks- A woman is thanking you. Do not question it or faint. Just say you're welcome.

PERSISTENCE:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men and women with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -Calvin Coolidge

(courtesy of Hyman's Seafood business cards  )

portrait of home

Happiness is...

waking up in my purple bed surrounded by stuffed animals, turning over onto my other side (which, incidentally, is how I imagine a piece of toast feels when you flip it over in the oven), and going back to sleep;
running up the stairs two at a time and sliding as far/fast across the hardwood-floored hallway as possible in thick woolly socks, pretending to be an Olympic figure-skater;
doing/attempting the morning crossword, which my parents leave on the kitchen table, while munching on scrambled eggs and sitting cross-legged on the chair (and if the crossword is too hard, trying Sudoku or Asimov's quiz...or the Word Scramble, if my brain is having an off-day);
having a successful drive, aka. not getting beeped at or running red lights or making turn signals where there is no place to turn;
lying on the couch to read a good book by the sunlight streaming through the windows...actually having a couch to lie on, in general (if I tried to put a couch in next year's apartment, it would fill up my whole room);
taking walks outside, or even going for a run, smelling truly fresh air and saying "good morning" to friendly strangers and aiming for wherever the sky is bluest;
playing piano--more and more fun ever since I quit lessons--making up arrangements of Disney tunes or Beatles songs or Christmas carols, to exercise my (diminishing) ear-training skills;
barging into Mei's room in the morning, rummaging through her appallingly messy closet (actually, not anymore, since I organized it for her today, out of sheer desperation), and having her exasperatedly push me aside and say, "Gosh Jennifer, you hopelessly fashion-impaired girl, let me just choose something for you to wear" ;
playing foosball;
going for a whole week without turning on my laptop (okay, okay, I borrowed my dad's to go online and stuff once in a while...but still, it's an achievement);
flopping down on the sofa to watch some good old-fashioned TV, with commercials and everything;
actually having space in the shower to sing and dance/prance about, without crashing into a wall;
baking banana bread with my mommy;
family dinner when everyone is there, super hyper and talking all at once--I'll be babbling away, Mei will be babbling away, Mom will be trying to keep up with everything and asking ridiculous questions, Dad will be talking but everyone will be ignoring him or bursting out laughing at what he says;
plus, eating meals with actual courses, and at a proper table;
going out to the backyard with sleeping bags and pillows to watch for shooting stars;
going outside to get the mail, and looking up to see two rainbows in the sky.

I LOVE BEING HOME! This is where I belong, seriously. And until/unless I someday create a place with my own family, there is nowhere else that I can justifiably call "home." I keep thinking about that quote that goes, things happen and may change, but it all begins and ends with family. To me, it's true--no matter what happens with school, violin, friends, love life, or anything...it always begins and ends with Mom, Dad, and Mei.


PS. Holy macaroni, I haven't made a public entry for almost a year. I'm planning to write more often though, despite Xanga being heavily outdated. Well, for the precious few patient/bored people who may still wander across my page and wonder to themselves, "What oh what is Jennifer doing this summer?", here it is:
5/23-6/14 Spoleto, Charleston SC


7/5-8/10 PMF and Taiwan

 

And the rest of the time--happy days at home. 

smfA: jsh...imttyia. ihycsrt.

hello, summer!

So here are my final summer plans:

Sarasota Music Festival, Florida
5/31-6/20

Pacific Music Festival, Japan
6/29-7/30

Taiwan
8/1-8/4

But best/most of all,
HOME

music part 2

All too often, I think, we confuse art with entertainment. We see something that should be art--something that maybe tries to come off as art--we interpret and judge it as entertainment, and we deem it worthy. Or else we see something that is merely supposed to be entertainment, something to make you chuckle, shake your head with a grin...and, with the rush of desire to create meaning in the near meaningless, we attempt to mold it into some great work of art steeped with passion. Because what more can we want than maximum meaning in our lives?
Let's face it--these days, the majority view music as entertainment. Why wouldn't they? If you flip through the radio looking for a song of depth to alter your life, you'll probably be sadly disappointed. Even classical music stations...it's all filler music, a tune to hum along to while driving home from an exhausting day of whatever. The radio serves to please the masses, and the masses no longer long to be riveted, stunned, or moved by music. Taking a look at popular music of the day, I don't mean to be mean, but there is not much worth here. The artists (funny how we still call them "artists") are trying to sell themselves. Forget about image--if you just listen to the music and lyrics, it's not difficult to realize that when creating these songs, the artists are thinking, "What will the public like? What does the public want?"
There is nothing wrong with using music as entertainment, using it to unwind, to get crazy at a dance club, to earn money. Similarily, there is nothing wrong with using music to serve the masses... Just as the government exists to serve its citizens, entertainers exist to serve their fans. What an appealing and even generous notion.
Yet...
It's when one begins redefining music as purely entertainment that true lovers of music become frustrated to tears. It's when people who honestly don't know any better cannot even fathom using music as any means other than entertainment that this false notion becomes a shameful crime. Because EVERYONE deserves to know music the way the most dedicated music-lover knows music...the way Beethoven knew music, the way Messiaen (who wrote his Quartet for the End of Time at a German concentration camp during WWII) knew music, the way children who plead with their parents to let them become a professional pianist or tuba-player (tubist?) or timpanist know music... The old woman at the hospital in a wheelchair who grips your arm after a recital and tells you that NOW she sees God's reason for keeping her alive--the way she has come to know music. Everyone deserves this knowledge, this unnecessarily and unfortunately well-kept secret.
I was forwarded a speech last night which got me thinking...here are my favorite parts. Even though the thing in its entirety is a gem, I won't put it all because it's really long, and I already forwarded it to some people I thought would appreciate it. Nevertheless, it's online somewhere, under "Karl Paulnack welcome speech." (I know because I looked it up.)

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. The Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.
Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”
Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds. It has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during WWII and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. We decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation. Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert, and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?”

If you were a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at 2 AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

I think this is how everyone deserves to know music.
Again, there is nothing wrong with music that serves to entertain...I love music that simply makes you feel goooood. That is awesome. But I just want to say, that's not all music can do.
It's so important to differentiate between music that is art, and music that is entertainment. Sometimes I admit it's interchangeable, depending on the type of listener or person you are. But, it's such a shame when people misinterpret entertainment as art, or (even worse) art as entertainment. I don't know much/anything about jazz, but for the most part, it's music that you wouldn't call "serious." It's music that makes you feel good. But I will never forget that time in class when our teacher played Bill Evans' "Alice in Wonderland," and I had to pretend I was going to the bathroom because I started crying. Who knows if Bill Evans intended/felt this...who knows if he meant for a confused, nostalgic girl to be transported back to a breezy night under a blanket of stars when he played his music. Music is such a mystery, but then again, so are all the best things in life.

If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do.