So I know that I’ve been absent from here for quite a while, but let’s be honest. Being a freshman engineer sucks at times. Tons of work with virtually nothing to show for it. Really motivates me to do well…
…why does that motivate me to do well?
Anyway, finals are coming up (presentations are already upon us, oh joy) and I need constant ways to take the stress off.
And for some reason, I turned to YouTube for it.
Specifically, (and this is where out actually makes sense) I looked to YouTube’s piano community. For me, that mostly encompassed most of Yiruma’s music, but also a few individually written piano solos. They aren’t extravagant-if anything, the style is extremely “imitatable” and pattern-based.
Still, they are some of the most relaxing and pleasant piano songs I’ve ever heard.
For that reason, I’ve created a new mini goal. (Or, perhaps, a few.) First of all, I intend to create at least one of those “logically-beautiful” songs on my own. Pattern oriented, somewhat predictable, and still nice to listen to. Hopefully, that will spawn further creativity to write Yiruma-like songs. I certainly don’t have the technical know-how required for some of that stuff now, but they say immersion is the best practice. Or something like that.
Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to remind others (and myself) why I started this. Not to document every trivial aspect of life on general, but to document my early wishes and goals in my still-young life. Here’s hoping things go according to…some plan. Any plan at all, will do. I just have to start.
Whatever you call them, Drexel has them. Lots of them.
Like 3 chem MIDTERMS and 2 each of math and physics. All spread conveniently throughout a long four week span.
But it’s finally over.
Which means that I have but a few moments to divert my mind to more pleasant causes.
Before getting thrown back into the line of fire of English projects, engineering robotics competitions, and Biomed spinal cord injury treatment projects.
So while I’ll be bracing myself for the upcoming 2-3 weeks, I’m hoping to make up for the lost two weeks with a nice post tomorrow or Sunday.
And, until spring break comes and this ridiculous term is over, it’s nose to the grindstone, no letting up until then. See you all on the other side.
A few quick reasons for this abnormal post:
1. I need to record this. Just in case I forget it in the future, this seems like a nice thing to remember when I’m older.
2. I said I wanted to work on improving Mr. Right Side of my brain, right? This should do the trick.
I’ll explain more on this later. I hope you get something out of it. I don’t know what, thought. That can be up to you.
(Also recommended to listen to a Yiruma piano solo while reading. Like this!)
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It starts of with a boy. He’s still an adolescent, living in a run-down suburb. He didn’t care too much for his hometown, since not too far off was a forested area, and he loved to take long runs through it; it was his chance to catch up with his sporadic deluges of thought, whenever they happened to come up. He also knew of a nearly-abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. An old man and his dog lived there. Occasionally, he would visit and talk to them. How could they survive up here, shut away from any human interaction? The old man’s contentedness simply confused him.
The old man wasn’t crotchety, but also wasn’t one to buy a local girl scout’s cookies. Obviously, he wasn’t a fan of having company knocking on his fairly-rusted door; however, he would tell a story every once and a while to whoever was listening, whether it be human ears or canine. The boy soon learned why he lived up there: he had been banished, in a sense, to this place. There was some sort of altercation between him and local authorities and, although no legal issues were the foundation of his charges, he was still forced to leave town. The whole thing seemed juvenile even to the boy, who immediately began thinking of ways to bring his older friend to town. However, the old man didn’t seem bitter about the situation. The old man explained how he loved to think along sometimes. While the boy could appreciate this, he chalked it up to an unstable mental state.
The boy still lived in the town as he grew older, although his visits to the old man and his dog dwindled. He tried to make friends with the local boys during that time, with little success. Things seemed ordinary, at least to him. One day, though, this would change.
As he walked down the street one afternoon he saw one of his friends (at least, to him) getting into some argument with the local police. It wasn’t normal to see them in such a heated discussion, but it didn’t startle the boy in any way. That is, until, he saw him getting forced into the back seat of a cop car. Immediately, the boy rushed over to the cops, trying to get their attention. They must have the wrong guy, he thought, this kid wouldn’t hurt anybody.
As he rushed over, the boy feverishly tried to use common excuses, like “he wasn’t in the area”, or “he doesn’t have access to that kind of equipment” (whatever that equipment is, he still had no idea.) However, he sensed a problem with the situation. It seemed too easy–the cops stopped struggling with the prospective felon to listen to the boy. As he explained, more of his friends came over to see what was going on. The influx of people made it borderlined chaotic, but they all seemed to hesitate as if the boy’s words might change something. Right as he finished explaining, he breathed a sigh of relief as they uncuffed his friend.
He quickly withdrew it, however, when they transferred the handcuffs to his own wrists.
The cops and his friends tried to calmly explain the situation to the boy. Clearly, that didn’t work, so they stuffed him into the back of the car to attempt a second explanation.
As it had turned out, the discussions that occurred at the time of the old man’s youth had not been cleaned up; in fact, the issue at hand had escalated to a much larger extent. The boy was still completely clueless about this “issue”, but from what he could pick up, it was some sort of moral battle between ideals that different groups held in the town. Apparently, some values that used to be highly regarded were no longer deemed necessary, and for that, serious action had to be taken against offenders.
For his “actions” against the government, the boy had been punished to the highest extent as a minor: he was sent away to live on the outskirts of town and given an order to remain there until further notice. He always thought of his government as primitive, but being sent to live in exile? For ideals? This was ridiculous.
Upon being dropped off at the specified location, he took his few personal belongings and walked to the front door–a familiar looking door, covered in moss and rust. He carefully knocked on the door, but found that it had already been cracked open. After pushing it open, he walked in and examined what would be his new home for what could be the rest of his life. It was weird; it all seemed so familiar, yet so alien-like.
“You’d better get used to it; you’ll be here for awhile,” a memorable face scoffed.
As he reunited with his old friend he quickly pieced together the rest of the story. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time, so he unpacked his things and became reacquainted with his surroundings. It didn’t take long to see that nothing had changed, with one small exception. He inquired to the old man about his dog, which was followed with a solemn glance downward. His companion had passed away only a few months ago and he was still dealing with the loss. It hit hard for the boy, too, since he had spent many times playing with the dog, just as if it was his own.
As he reflected on those memories, the old man walked away and came back with a box. He told the boy that since he would be spending the majority of his life up here, he might as well start making some new memories to cherish as his own. He walked away, leaving the boy to examine the box in private. As the boy began to accept the interesting form of punishment, he opened the box…
…and was greeted with the pitter-patter of a small puppy.
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Ok, just some notes:
1. THIS WAS A DREAM. Again, the entire course of this was in a dream I had one night. I’ve remembered it over the course of months because how often is it that you have a dream that actually induces serious emotions besides the simple extremes of the spectrum?
2. Since it was a dream, there are clearly some details that did not translate. Come on, nobody has a perfectly clear dream; this was no exception. Almost everything here is how I remembered it that morning (which is surprisingly accurate, I must say). But those “fuzzy moments”? Yeah, that was my mind just attempting to fill in the details subconsciously. The “issue” is explained much more here than it was in my dream since I knew what my subconscious is trying to say. Remember, everything makes sense in dreams!
2.5 (Cause it’s along the same lines as 2) My dream focused a lot on running (or in the real case, hover-sliding, cause why not?) But A, the parts in the dream where I’m doing this don’t add to the story and B, are completely unrealistic. One cannot slide down a mountain on his shoes at 40 miles an hour. (I wish, though!) I wanted to keep this somewhat realistic. Somewhat…
3. Somehow, my dream portrayed all of this with minimal talking. The talking that did happen was nearly-immediately forgotten that morning (sadface) so I attempted to work around that, by making the talking scenes work without the dialogue (except for that one line). This is why I’m not a screenwriter.
Finally, I don’t know what message you should get out of this. Stick to what you believe in? You don’t need technology to experience the wonders in life? Don’t trust the government? I don’t know, I’m just mad impressed that my subconscious could make something this deep…
TL; DR — No way. Read it. Seriously. I think it’s worth it.
Honestly, it’s just what the title suggests. I don’t know if it’s freewriting per-se, or more of a Montaigne-style stream-of-thought text, but I’m continuously going over my work (and even through it sometimes), as if I’m talking conversationally. (Actually, I guess it’s pretty rare that I add snippets in my writing during the actual first stream. On second thought, that’s not at all what one does in a stream-of-conscious piece. They would add this section in during the normal writing period, just like I’m doing now…oh wait.)
This will most likely be the most random thing I’ve ever written (and kudos to you if you’re able to even finish this whole thing, much less understand what my mind is doing right now) so bear with me and maybe you’ll get to see an actual stream-of-conscious piece of writing. Except for the fact that it’s really late and I still have homework to do. And this probably won’t get posted tonight. And if I do break it up, I’ll use a dashed line. And I really want some popcorn. But that’s not relevant. Back to the topic at hand.
I thought of this when I was reading my English assignment (Writing to Convince, ooh boy. Like I never tried this before. Except every other time I tried to write something. Ever.) and there’s this “character” (whose name will be omitted ’cause I have no idea if it’s a guy’s name or girl’s. I’ll guess girl’s, but it’s really a guess.) But anyway, she’s doing a freewrite. And it’s the most random thing ever. Honestly, two lines are “I can’t think of what to write, I can’t think–hey, do they…” That doesn’t seem like freewriting, it sounds more like stream-of-consciousness. At least, that’s what I initially thought of. But then I realized that I guess they’re essentially the same thing. When someone talks to him or herself, he or she is trying to bounce ideas off of him or herself. (I hate being politically correct with him/her crap. Maybe I’ll just always use the masculine case. So much easier.) But honestly, doesn’t that make sense? When someone is free writing, he is just trying to do the same thing as springboarding ideas, except they’ll be recorded on some form of writing. Which, I suppose, is even better, since it shows the exact progress of his writing and thought process. (Holy crap, am I actually making a point out of this? GENIOUS!)
Well that’s interesting, I really wasn’t planning on learning anything out of this little rant. I don’t even remember how it started. Oh wait! Since this is technically a rant/freewrite/stream-of-conscious/whatever-the-deuce-else-this-could-be, I can just scroll up to see what I started with!
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Oh right, I started this about me, didn’t I. Welp, I had no idea.
Is now a good time to mention that it’s midterm week(s) here in collegeland? Cause it is. And my brain is really not letting me think straight. I think almost 20% of what I wrote here was misspelled the first time it was written. Lovely. I know the internet is actually full of grammar…german-based-group-of-strictness (flawless!) so I might as well keep it clean for every one of them on here.
Now let’s see…TL;DR readers should jump to this point in the post. I just ranted. Yep, that’s what you missed. What did I rant about? Well then, silly reader you! You’ll have to go back and check! Then when you get to this point, you’ll have to reread in case you missed something! You can never leave! Ha! Haha!
I think it’s bed time…Much more insightful posts to come. After midterms.
So I don’t think I can come up with interesting things to say every week. Well, I mean, I probably could. But that’s a lot of thinking. And I’m usually fine with that, but not on a blog. Instead, I took the time to clean up this blog a bit. It was sorely lacking in colors and pictures. What’s a blog without pictures? So I said to myself, “Self”… Get pictures!
So enjoy the new layout. Hopefully it’s more pleasant to look at?
What else happened this week. Oh, the blackout? Yeah, that did happen. Wikipedia, Reddit, XKCD, Google…a couple others, too–all blacked out in some form or another this past Wednesday (18th) to protest SOPA and PIPA. And then Megaupload got shut down. Huh. Pretty interesting week for the internets.
I also learned that I’ve got quite a ways to go before I can post drum videos. If you don’t know him, Cobus Potgieter is a ridiculously talented Youtube drummer who taught himself over the past half decade or so how to play the drums. And he’s ridiculous.
Cobus’ 2012 Tribute. Freaking amazing.
So yeah. I finally got a chance to record Drexel’s really “High Quality” electronic drum set that totally isn’t from 1997. And I totally have a long way to go before I can record videos.
The most wonderful and best drumset Drexel can afford. Really. In fact, that awful kick pedal was just recently replaced with a plastic one. Definition of “shake my head”.
But that’s fine, drummers aren’t made overnight, and at this point I’ve only technically been playing for 3 weeks (this is my 4th). However, I really hope to have one done by the end of this term. Of course, I doubt my demo of Reaper will last that long, so if someone can help me figure out how to get a free vst host, that’d be great. Or you could buy me Reaper. That would be perfectly fine too.
Seriously. I want to meet someone who thinks that the idea of using such a natural medium of idea conveyance is frivolous, primitive, and ineffective. Someone who can’t take a single genre of music and understand, relate to, the emotional motivation behind its creation and appreciate it for what it is.
So many times I would have just a crappy day, or might just be too stressed out to think straight.
And then I turn on some music.
It almost doesn’t depend on what kind it is, although some kinds will obviously have different effects than others (here’s looking at you, hard rock versus soothing piano solo). But every time I turn on some music, it creates a distraction from whatever I’m doing at the time, whether it be homework, exercising, or even going to class. Music listeners like me aren’t just trying to shut ourselves away from the rest of the world; we’re really just trying to create our own ambient environment that we know will follow us wherever we go, regardless of our current priorities.
Sure, people have different reasons for listening to music, but that’s what makes it all the more fascinating. The fact that creating beats and tones through basic audible patterns can cover such a wide array of emotions and situations is such a surreal thing to consider. Which is why we simply never acknowledge it and continue jamming out in our own separate world. But it simply cannot be ignored. Music has played such a vital role in our everyday lives that it has become second nature to them. Board the bus to school, turn on the iPod. Get in the car to work, turn on the radio. Go for a jog, pop in the earbuds.
For all of you who respect and appreciate the power of music, I respect you as an individual. You recognize the need for such art forms that visual creations can’t convey, and I wish you all the more fulfillment from it in the future.
(As a sidenote: schedules SUCK! I don’t think I can ever get a strict regime for posting on here. Oh well, hopefully the content will make up for it.)
For those of you who don’t, I’d love to know why. Really. A serious conversation about your un-appreciation for music is strictly in order…
Like I said, I’m a college kid. Yesterday and today were move-in days. Seems early to move back in, but that’s what you get for going to Drexel, a school well established with quarter-based schedules. But whatever, I’m pretty used to having a ridiculous courseload of work, so just messing around for the past four weeks was torture enough already.
Anyway, I’m all moved in again, which is why this is technically a day late. At least, it is now. I don’t know if I can post on Saturday nights, since it’s really not the first thing I want to remember to do. At least, not yet.
…
I mean, I ran a few errands. Cleaned a bit, relaxed cause I was on break, there’s really nothing that groundbreaking yet. At lest, that’s how it seems. Maybe that’s why I should post on Saturday nights, since there’s some things fresh on my mind.
Or maybe I just don’t post every week, and instead keep a record of the interesting things that happen, then post when the list is long enough.
Or maybe I should stop ranting and think. Of course, since I still don’t have any homework, I’ll probably just go on Youtube and look up random videos. Drum lessons are up there with the most viewed title, lately. But then again, I just found a few channels devoted to “Whose Line is it Anyway?” videos. Bless those channels…
EDIT:
I had no idea that this never actually posted. Oops. I swear I posted this this weekend…
