If life were a bowl of cherries...

Apparently spending 20-30 minutes lying in boiling water scented with cinnamon and something else (couldn't work it out), listening to good music and reading a good book is something ideal for wearing me out. ... I am also impressed that I managed to type most of that whilst yawning, with my EYES SHUT! (no mistakes  :P) 

Done

Cycled
Eaten too much chocolate
Finished and Equal Music - :D :D :D :D :D amazing book! EVERYONE must read it
Made dough for bread for lunch.
Listened to A LOT of Mary McLaughlin
Cooked - even if I misjudged quantities, it worked ok as well
Sorted out some of my Itunes
Started a new book that is very good
Went to the gym
Tidied and swept the kitchen - left the dishes for tomorrow
90 minutes of worthwhile organ practise
Bought a dress - well technically Mummy paid but hey :P
Tidied room a littl, emphasis on the little
Started copying recepis

Should have Done

Knit a tension square on the firefly yarn
Oboe!!!!
Some notes for Chemistry Unit One

Want to Do

Sketch pattern for top I want to make and paint the silk
Finish the voluntary I am meant to be writing
Draw / paint
Write up the thoughts / notes from Good Friday

Not too bad really.

The dress is a beautiful dance dress officially.... layered and a velvet pattern pulled through the main material of the dress  - any sewing person will understand that concept, but I don't know the right word for it. It needs a lot of work. Most of the bead/sequin detail has come off, but it is not essentail to replace that. However, it also needs adjusting along the seems across the hips, fortunately I just need to take it in a little... it would also be good to oversew a few seems where the material has pulled against a too coarse thread.... Sorry that the pictures are rotated around.

 Going to have fun finding a bra that fits the back of the dress...

 Example of the detail on the train... velvet against almost transparent somethingorother... blue black - photo does no colour justice

 Please excuse the rediculous face... caught at just a bad moment

 Still no justice done to the colour

Going to have fun with this one, particularly when it is taylored properly. :D

xXx 

I seem to be perpetally sitting down to something, applying myself for a few minutes and then losing interest and wondering off to find some other occuaption. I need to find some thing to distract me enough to let me be still, if only for 30 minutes. Even piano didn't really do it - just reminded me how much organ I desperately need to do... and the fact that I am not going to be prepared for my recital... then I started thinking about next term generally and the work I still need to do, the concerts, costume making for Kentwell, the parties I am obligated to go to... and the parties I want to go to.

I want to knit my jumper because it is pretty. I have a painting in my eyes that I was to create. I have lines of poems and motifs of songs and phrases to open stanza of philisophical prose clammouring for attention in my head. I want to go for a run but I don't have to the time... so instead I am sitting doing nothing and thinking about all the things I should be doing - useful.

So let us consider what I shall do today - and then I'll let you know what I actually achieve.

Already Done

Cycled
Eaten too much chocolate
Finished and Equal Music - :D :D :D :D :D amazing book! EVERYONE must read it
Made dough for bread for lunch.
Listened to A LOT of Mary McLaughlin

To Do

Tidy room a little
Copy up recepis from book lent by Yvonne
Knit a tension square on the firefly yarn
Organ
Oboe
Cook lunch / dinner
Go dress shopping with Mum
Go to the gym
Some notes for Chemistry Unit One
Listen to music recently put on computer - thank you agan darling

Want to Do

Sketch pattern for top I want to make and paint the silk
Finish the voluntary I am meant to be writing
Draw / paint
Write up the thoughts / notes from Good Friday

 Best get started...

xXx 

I love it when it is so cold that it hurts my face, but everything feels so clear and so alive.

I love wearing warm jumpers and long socks and curling up with a good book.

I love going running in the rain and dancing in all the puddles.

I love knowing that I've done something well

I love finding out what is on the other side of the mountain.

I love the smell of my hands after a few hours working in the garden. 

I love telling the stories of the people depicted in paintings.

I love to watching the fire burn; or glowing embers.

I love feeling the wind against my skin.

I love waltzing around the kitchen.

I love sitting and tuning at a piano for hours and hours.

I love going out at night when the rest of the world is fast asleep. 

I love dressing up fancy for no good reason. 

I love making my friends laugh. 

I love finding pictures in the clouds.

I love kicking up the leaves.

I love...

Well I'm back. And whilst I got used to the cold up North (took a few hours!), my room is still freezing - it is 04:43 and my heating has been off for 4 days now with no people in the room! Consequently, I am now curled up in my duvet and very warm and snuggly dressing gown (one of my few PINK items of clothing, so to speak) wearing my favourite jumper (red with teddy bears on) and for some reason (unknown) writing a blog post instead of sleeping.

Hey ho - it is what I do.

Went on Uni visits... I'm sure I will talk about this more either here or with people in person.

I LOVED the city of Durham. I am GOING to live there at some point in my life - if only for a year or two. In fact I Love the north generally and would really like to move up there... Cambridge is beautiful... but it is so ... clean-cut? ... compared to Durham. Although I did find the two surprisingly similar in style and aura. 

I did not like the course... or rather, I didn't like the fact that they were ashamed of being academic about music.

Edinburgh City grew on me over the course of the day. At first it was just another city... (despite living in suburbs all my life I am most definitely *not* a city girl.) But over the course of the day I wondered around areas, found green, found little quirky shops that I loved, found a very good pizza place and most important of all found LOTS and LOTS of jazz, folk, salsa, shows, concerts, gigs, ceilidhs and music in general. It wasn't until the end of the day that I saw the sea... and that sealed it for me. I also love Edinburgh... Maybe not so much as Durham (It is still very much a city)... but I could easily love living there!  I will go back and visit again in the summer :D

The course is also fantastic. Academic but with some performing. And the university has a really very impressive collection of concert halls, organs and MANY MANY MANY early instruments :D :D :D :D :D :D :D lol.... I also liked the lecturer and the way the student showing us around was holding a cope of "Music and the Reformation in England" - a brilliant period to study the socio-histoical context of music! 

I am now going to have fun comparing to Cambridge... wish me luck!

*************

It is strange when you give your heart to something... particularly when you've spent so long swearing violently against it. 

I seem to be doing that far too much at the moment; I'm not sure how many hearts I have left. 

I am off... hoping (though unlikely) to catch the 9:04 train... Actually, now that I can pay by card it may be a lot quicker for me - though painful on my wallet! Durhham today and tomorrow, Newcastle tomorrow evening to visit Miles (:D) and then Edinburgh on the Wednesday and home that day as well. Should be brilliant. :D Lots of exploring and lots of new places.

Though I have had a sum total of 2 hours sleep. Only finished packing about 15 mins ago. Only knew train times (or Uni visit schedules) about 25 mins ago... still havn't finished dressing, or mended my coat.... No one else is up (except Em who doens't count because she is travelling the other direction). Oh and Chi might just be up - drying her hair now. Hey ho. Why be organised.

Actually that is a completely lie... I had organised everything completely by last night - I'd just not actualy located it and put it in a bag yet and knew I had time this morning. Anyway... activity calls. I shall bid you adieu.... look forward to my enthusiasm three days hence when I shall bore you all.

{probably not much university stuff... but there are always amusingly strange people on trains! :P)

Love

xXx 

I recogise the worn grey stone
So weathered by the rain,
And push aside the great oak door
 - So much is still the same

And still they celebrate the feast
In ways I know so well
The words imptinted on my lips,


The silence for the bell

Still all are welcomed, open smiles
Still song, prayer; still laughter,
Little patter of little feet,
Guardians follow after

And still this church in faith unites
To push old trials aside
To strengthen old community
- To make a fitting bride

It is always strange going back somewhere are a few months absense - gives you a new insight/perspective. I suppose this mostly stemmed from that. The rhythm is a little clumsy maybe, and forced in places... but it is sometimes simpler and clearer to write in verse. 

Sorry... I've been watching films I shouldn't have again. This time it is the "Aviator" and "A Beautiful Mind". They always do silly things to my thinking. In fact I think last time I saw the former I swore I would never watch it again... so much for that. I held out easily when we didn't have the film, then someone received it for Christmas I believe and now here I am again. Silly really.

There is such a close tie between insanity and genius. Autism, schitzphrenia, bipolar, OCD, paranoia, ADHD... Think of all the renown thinkers, artists, mathematicians, scientists, musicians that you know of and tell me just how many of them were diagnosed with what is generally considered to be a brain defect - a mental incapacity of some form or another. 

Ok, so the brain has a limitted number of nerurones and it is very rare (quite possible impossible) to develop new neurones once the bran has matured - although this is not certain as far as I am aware. It thereby follows that genius is merely a rewiring of those neurones to observe and respons to the world differently. To be able to see a pattern in a list of numbers that no one else can identify. To be able to theorise and interpret data that everyone else will write off. To listen to a melody and immediately see before you 8 different ways to harmonise the same cadence and to know instinctively which is the best for what you want to achieve. To be able to capture raw emotion on canvas and recreate history with words. To be able to see the flaws in structural design without even caluclating the trig. To be able to imagine the unattainable, the to reach out and grasp it.

It is like seeing the world through prismatic lenses... each image is offset, just a little - no more than 4 or 5 degrees from the normal - but offset. Their vision of the world is not clouded or distorted in anyway, no rose-tinted glasses, just refracted one slight fraction around so they see what compeltely escapes anyone else. 

But with that altered perception, with that hightened awareness of life, with those rewired cerebral pathways comes a price. The more information that is processed, or lower the brains ability to filter out certain unwanted information, the greater the levels of perception - overload it you want to see it that way. The brain is forced to deal with this in one way or another, blurring the distinctions between realtity and the imagined. 

If you are accoustomed to seeing thing that no one else see's anyway (for instance someone who see's patterns that are invisible to the rest) then how do you convince your own brain that something is delusion when all the evidense (as far as your cells are aware) is to the contrary. If you have the ability to understand people and to empathise, and do not have the ability to filter emotion and restrict how it affects you, surely it would make sense to develop multiple personalities so that the overload of feeling can be manageed effectively. If you are contantly aware of everything around you; how it fits together, how colour compliment (or not), how the negative space fits with the objects in a room, how the light reflects outwards from numerous surfaces... then surely it is understandable to develop a need for perfection and order. 

Although what I've just said seems to point to distinct a "cause" and "effect" scenario... I don't think that this is the case. It is the fact that someone has a hightened or altered perception of this universe that allows them to ask the questions no body thinks of, see the answers that the world is blind to whlst simultaneously causing their brain to handle other information in a way which is completely alien to the rest of us. Delusional? Obsessive? Perfectionistic? Hyperactive? Socially inept? Insanity and genius do not so much come together... they are the two sides of one coin. 

And along side both comes complete social exile.

No one likes to feel stupid. No one likes to read as though they were a book. No one likes to hold conversation with someone who points out their failings loudly. No one likes to have missed the *obvious* answer. No one likes to be second best. No one likes to associate with the delusional. No one likes to live with the obsessive. No one likes to work with someone who has to have things *right*. No one likes to share answers with someone who will question their every word. No one likes to spend a day with someone unafraid to ask the awkward/difficult/poignant questions....

And when you're living in a world that no one else seems to see and moreover no one elsee wants to see... 

Well... I think we've all see what that leads to.

There *is* a reason why I don't watch those films... Except I know that I will always watch them. There is nothing more facinating that the human brain and social dynamics that are connected directly to how we each individually perceive the world. By what criteria do we judge insanity or genius or cruelty or ignorance or manipulation? Why do we categorise people and drug them to conform to out ways of thinking... When is this necesary? When is this wrong? What is malfunction of the brain and what is simply a way of dealing with an excess of inputs into on nervous system?

xXx 

Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her
by Christopher Brennan (1870-1932)

If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.

xXx 

Ok. I was good. I went to the gym. I did better than last time as well - 46 skips in a row as opposed to about 8 last time I tried. (Do you know how humiliating it is to have forgotten how to skip!). Then come back and here is the best part of the evening.

Long, very hot shower. Clean skin, clean hair, new pyjamas (even though I am going home tomorrow)... fairly clean sheets. My skin is now smooth and smells decidedly of hazelnut - moisturiser. I am curled up on the floor of my room in my duvet with a cup of tea chatting with people on msn and facebook and listening to Kate Rusby...

Sometime it is GREAT to be a girl!

xXx 

Most of us spend our lives telling stories. Whether these stories are worth hearing (or even telling) is a completely different and highly contentious matter. Sometimes the stories we tell are true, often elaborated and exaggerated, rarely completely fictitious but always personal on some level or other. I can never work out if we only ever tell stories that have meaning for us or that the act of telling a story makes it a part of us regardless of any previous emotional involvement. We use stories to teach, to ease social situations, to explain, to pass the time, to amuse, to frighten, to threaten and to comfort. They permeate every aspect of our lives.

But just because we live a life almost dependent on storytelling does not mean we aren't highly selective about the stories we tell. One of the first lessons a child learns at school (if not before) is the necessity to judge an audience and gauge a level of propriety before telling their story. It may take them the rest of their life to acquire this required skill if they manage it all (and most appear not to), but I would argue that the necessity is something that becomes apparent very early in life. 

I suppose that there are countless reasons for keeping a story to yourself. Many reasons which all, at some level or another, boil down to fear. Fear of hurting loved ones, fear of ridicule, fear of repercussions, fear of not being able to tell the story, fear that the story wont be appreciated. So many things can go wrong when we open our mouths. So many things *could* come out. So much damage *could* be done. Speaking is a risk. And yet we continue to tell our stories - judging the reward worth the danger. 

How much is it our need to tell stories that makes us human?

I am listening to the Matthaus-Passion at the moment. I can't decide which I prefer out of this work and the B minor mass. They are both stunning. I love listening to modern music (folk, rock, metal, jazz) that stirs up emotion: determination, anger, pride, sardonic amusement. I love listening to gargantuan romantic symphonies that pick up your soul and carry you somewhere completely other. I love listening to Floyd, Bowie (on occasion), Runrig, Show of Hands, Brahms, Rossini, Rachmaninov, Cage, Messian, Tavener, Stravinski.... I love the feeling of being completely caught up in a performance or composition - the way the audience hold their breathe through the piece whethr it is 5 minutes or 45. {Although I wish they would hold it 5 seconds longer at the end of a movement and wait for the last note to die.} 

There is something slightly different about the Baroque. It still takes you somewhere. But fo me it always seems less pushy or forceful in doing so. There is a cleaness in the part writing that is lost as soon as Beethoven and Wagner arrive. A purity in the harmony that vanishes with the turn of the 19th Century. And yet, there is none of the basic simplicity of the Classical era... none of the twee yet pretty classics that can be so easily summed up with the word "Mozart". There is something so delightful in the mathematical precision of the counterpoint - so many individual layers that tessellate so well. Dissonance that is prepared and resolved without fuss or glamour... 

This music rarely stirs up violent emotion. it does not generally move me to tears or fill me with energy. But I love to listen to it. It calms me I suppose; order and beauty complimenting each other so well. Emotional, yes, but it almost more personal in its understatement (compared to Romantic expression). Whatever has happened that day to anger or hurt me, I can (if I think of it) put on the Trio Sonatas, Pergolesi Stabat Mater, Mattheus-Passion, Allegri, a Byrd mass... and my heartbeat with regulate itself, my breathing fall in sync with the pulse of the music. And I sit and listen. Immerse myself. And after a few minutes - 3, 5, 30, 90? - I get up and continue with the day, my thoughts clearer and my emotions less clouded. 

xXx