one step forward, two steps back.

i can be a terrible person sometimes.
my momentary lapses of judgement tend to overshadow the rest of me. i also tend to be highly dramatic and over-exaggerate things out of proportion. that accounts for the majority of things.
sometimes, i do stupid things that could, at the very least of my worries, get me in a lot of trouble…
most of the time, it’s because i generally act on impulse and don’t think. i’ve lost loved ones to some of the same horrible choices i make more often than anyone should.
but before you continue to place judgement on me that i deserve… i need to share a story that’s been irking me my entire life. i’m not asking for praise or pity or ANYTHING… just a moment to hear me out.
i should point out, as a disclaimer, that things beyond this line are a bit depressing. so stop reading NOW if you don’t like that. [read more »]

september.

second day of classes…
i have a feeling that i’ll be either really into my classes, or totally bored to tears. (mostly the latter, sadly)
either way, i want a 4.0 this semester. badly. more than anything. and i think i can get it.
my hair is getting more of a reaction around here than it did in the lehigh valley, but it’s all been positive.
i’m settled into my apartment and mostly unpacked/moved in and adjusting back here has been nothing. it’s like i never left… i also got a hole punched into my eyebrow yesterday to celebrate. the parentals will undoubtedly flip, but i don’t really care. it’s nice having the jewelry back in my face. hopefully no one will dismiss me as being a waste of life for it. i doubt it’ll be the first thing people notice, as the 10mm plugs in my ears are rarely the first thing anyone notices. what can i say? i get bored of things quite easily. i needed to change my appearance some more.
[read more »]

Tags: school, useless drivel

super senior…

back in west chester to start my 5th year…
nothing to say really… other than everyone’s here but hannah. zombie donald is hanging out in my kitchen… and i’ve already cracked open a bottle of franz.
see? hannah did phail by not moving in today.

oh and things to be excited for in the next few months…
sept 25-27: KILTMAS! – seeing scythian (3x wtf! hah!), glengarry bhoys, albannach, the town pants, barleyjuice, burning bridget cleary, gaelic storm and blackwater!
oct ?: they might be giants at kutztown!!
oct 23: 22nd birthday shitshow.
nov 25-26: enter the haggis in sellersville!
jan 23: enter the haggis in philly! (aka welcome back to school! let’s go get schwasted in the schitty. !)

ps: this picture makes me giggle.

zombie donald goes to west chester!

Tags: pile of nonsense

can’t you see how i miss you so?

i have  an american elegy stuck in my head, and it’s not going away any time soon.
we (allentown marine band) played it tonight for a pretty decent-sized tuesday evening audience at west park. such a beautiful piece… and one i’ve wanted to play since the first time i heard it. i just didn’t think i’d be playing it on bassoon the first time i’d get the chance. (and messing it up that badly after my mouth turned to mush in the beginning of it…)

the first time i heard it was sometime in late 2001 or early 2002 when
i was still very much in shock and mourning over the tragic and very sudden loss of a friend… and this piece is one that i associate with him. i guess because of columbine’s influence on its composition and the gun violence it memorializes through a beautiful work. my facebook hubbie played me an mp3 of it that he’d found on napster (hahaaaa napster)… in his usual, overly-dramatic fashion, he had told me that it was the ‘most beautiful thing you’ll EVER hear’… and i vaguely remember him saying that it would get my mind off of the recent horror. it did and it didn’t…

other music that reminds me of him includes girlyman’s say goodbye (of which the title of this entry comes from) and just about anything that shostakovich composed… (because he had introduced me to shostakovich just before he was murdered.)
music is always with me, and with EVERYONE, so again… i shall take this moment to express how i think that administrators that want to get rid of something so perfect from schools for budget reasons should be given a good blow to the head to knock them out of their fantasy worlds where music is not necessary for life.
i am generally not a violent person and hate violence… but cutting music from schools is VIOLENCE. /end aside

some of you may know… on the evening of november 15 2001, a day that i will NEVER forget, i lost a friend to gun violence and homophobia in allentown.
i was out with some friends, most of us being quite underage, celebrating the barely 18 year old boy’s recent acceptance into college… our group split off into two to head home, and i never saw his beautiful smile again…
the horrible waste of life that gunned him down simply did so because they assumed that he was gay because he’d just walked out of an lgbt establishment. i won’t go into the horrifying details here, because i am honestly trying to block them out (and have been successful for a while)… but that night changed my life and perhaps stole my childhood away.

i’ve been a devout pacifist (does pacifism count as a religion?), anti-ALL forms of violence, and a huge supporter of teaching tolerance in schools since then… as well as terrified of the sight of guns, the sound of guns and everything about guns… and hamilton st. for many years, i refused to drive or BE anywhere near the spot. if i had to be in allentown for anything, or went to the stonewall or croc rock (which is on hamilton) with friends… i would add quite a bit of distance and time to avoid being on the street. i would go in circles just so i wouldn’t have to feel… and it drove me insane.

it was not until after a marine band rehearsal earlier this summer that i finally sucked it up and drove home using hamilton all the way to bethlehem. it was really hard to do, but it was the last thing that reminded me of him and i’m glad that i broke that pattern finally. i even ended up going to the spot on bike/foot a few times, just to see if i could mentally handle it… while it was quite a challenge… i did it… and it ended my long fight with myself over physically being unable to be anywhere near where it happened.
while i don’t think i’ll ever get over his death… i’ve been able to accept it as something that’s made me who i am. i moved on a few years ago. i stopped constantly thinking about him… he stopped haunting my thoughts and nightmares.
can’t change any of it… but it sometimes baffles me just how powerful music can be in making me just know that everything will turn out pretty OK…

ticheli wrote this piece as an expression of hope, after all.

the hardest part of playing that piece tonight was the memory of eric creeping its way into my mind for the first time in months.
22.october.1983 – 15.november.2001
rest in peace…

and may gun violence cease to exist.

Tags: music, why music = life

randomsity…

- listening to enter the haggis’ real life/alibis in the ghetto is probably a bad idea.
i’m serious.
i was on my way to west park tonight when the song came on my ipod. i got stuck at a light in a shady part of allentown when the ‘alibis’ half was playing, and a hispanic gent screamed at me ‘yea man! we do gots our alibis. and they be bullshit!’ and started rambling about how the ‘po-po don’t believe shit’.
i thought i was going to die. at least it would’ve been to a great song?

-  damn, did i have a better-than-decent playing day so far, despite all the instrument!phail i’ve been having the past few days! first, i could’ve sworn a pad was leaking on my piccolo (turns out i was attempting to grip my right hand like i would my fiddle bow again haha)… the whisper key on my bassoon was going haywire yesterday (humidity is GROSS!)… i have like..four leaky pads on my clarinet… two strings snapped on my guitar when i was re-stringing a few days ago… my violin’s A string popped when i was changing the string, and i thought my soundpost was going to collapse because i thought i heard it rattling (it didn’t, thankfully!)… my keyboard’s sustain pedal almost electrocuted me… and i *think* that’s all of the instrument!phail!! i’ve had this week…
despite that, today’s been a surprisingly pretty OK playing day… my stars&stripes with muni band was the most comfortable it’s been all summer… and i went in after not having touched a piccolo in two days. it took me at least two pieces to get into my piccolo embouchure though… bassoon is not very forgiving on it some days. i like comfortable.
and my bassoon playing was not that bad either… i was pretty on top of my low register. best it’s been in a while. i did crack quite a bit doubling jean’s line in god of our fathers though… *kicks self* that half-hole on an a-flat gets me every time if i don’t pay attention to it. such a pretty tune though… actually, i just enjoyed playing that concert. it was dedicated to fred, who recently passed away. i barely knew the gent, but he was definitely a great person and a fine musician.
i may be a ‘devout’ atheist, but music is music no matter the institution it may represent… and some religious music is pretty darn gorgeous.
- my body hates me for doing stupid things to it.
i need to not get intoxicated as much as i do or something. i think i can hear my liver crying right now. here’s to many good nights. let’s raise a glass to amazing people and good music!
i should probably get some sleep at some point too… but what’s the fun in that?

-  greece needs to stop being on fire all the time.
i hate hearing about it… and even better, everyone seems to hate the hellenic government, so they use natural disasters to complain about how they all hate it. i know they’re a bunch of sexists, morons, orthodox religious nuts and generally a bunch of f-ups, but come on! look who the US had to deal with for eight years! (greeks are amazing at complaining about everything, btw.)

- if you play a bunch of instruments pretty decently, don’t let the word get out if you’re not much of a ‘people’ person.
i’m off to play at least three more for a few hours. lucky you, i don’t mind people that much. (just the stupid ones) i’m just really exhausted right now… but i know i’ll have fun once i’m playing.

good night!

Tags: concerts, music, summer, useless drivel

we know a place where no ships go…

song: arcade fire – no cars go
i guess the lehigh river, like this song, reminds me of being a kid…

rope swings are awesome.

[read more »]

Tags: lehigh canal, lehigh river, pile of nonsense, rambling, rope swings!, useless drivel

a short fazed hovel.

i am convinced that yesterday did not happen.

i can’t even begin to convince myself otherwise. it was too perfect and epic a day to have been real. [read more »]

Tags: enter the haggis, music, philly folk, rambling, the decemberists, why music = life

nothing important to say…

i’m just super-excited for folk fest on saturday.
enter the haggis and the decemberists at the same festival on the same day… the world might just explode the moment brian buchanan meets colin meloy! (omg… the thought of that is nearly as epic, if not more epic!, as the recent 2/5ths of eth + STEVEN PAGE!! photo..)

today was really chill. i made music all day… my fiddling’s really gotten better the past few months… funny how having the time to play and have fun has made me a more comfy player… i’ve been playing violin for over ten years now… about time my bowing stopped sucking and i had fun with it again.
i saw a stork. no lie. by burnside plantation at ink pond. that place they keep the new police horses. i didn’t know we even had storks (or some giant-necked birds) in bethlehem.
then i played a concert at the rose garden while thouroughly drunk and phelpsed out. it was my best playing of the summer. i had fun!

oh! and new layout!! still working out the kinks on it… but yea! shiny!!

also… i hate drama. keep me out of it for my sanity, please?
i’ve not caused any for a while, so don’t drag me in by association… please? pretty please??

good night… (maybe)

Tags: folk fest, music, rambling

eh just a short blog.

song of the moment being: elliott smith – satellite

listening to some old faves that i recently ripped to ipod and enjoying my day off from work. i don’t know what to do with myself when i’m not working!! perhaps i’ll end up playing things soon.  my fiddle’s looking lonely right now. and i’m playing at west park later. wheee.
but right now, i just feel like blogging and not complaining (much) and all that happy stuff.

i saw scythian the past two nights, which is (surprise) the source of today’s hangover.
as much as i hate musikfest, i can’t turn down a free show by an awesome band. i’ve been addicted to scythian for a few years… i think they played a set before/after enter the haggis at kiltmas and/or musikfest like… five years ago… and i got hooked on them. so i blame haggis for that addiction too. haha they did, like, three encores last night, ending with the ukrainian song (hutsulka xenia). i don’t know, wasn’t as epic without 3/5 of eth. haha but the most amusing moment came when someone threw a beach ball at the stage… and mike ounallah juggled it with his drumsticks.
i ended up buying myself a new shirt too. pretty soon, my entire ‘wardrobe’ will be black shirts that advertise really awesome idie bands. on second thought, i wear entirely too much black.

but yea. i did say ’short’ blog. so i must un-tie myself from my laptop now.

short blog post.

song of the moment being: radiohead – optimistic
probably my favorite radiohead song. it haunts me.

so it’s been a drone of a couple of weeks. i’ve pretty much been going to work, then rehearsal/concert , then either bar/club or straight to bed. yea. i’m starting to not like this fling at all… except for maybe the nice paychecks and awesome people of it. (gawwwd i love the htown pool guard staff!)
my life HURTS because having a moment to make music has just not been there. sometimes, like this morning, i got a solid hour to play something… might not be much, but i’d probably go insane if i didn’t have that moment. so i picked out songs on piano. i’m getting kind of decent with using my hands on that instrument. the only real challenge is not being able to feel my way around with my lips and mouth, i guess. i’m trying to pick out the left hand of enter the haggis’s barfly, but i suck at picking out more than one hand at a time hahahaaa [read more »]

Tags: lehigh canal, life, music, rambling