Across the Track Blues

In all the years I was in Jazz band, which was only 3, I only ever had one solo. It was my senior year and we played this song called "Across the Track Blues", which just tied in the year quite nicely as our marching show the fall before was 'All Aboard' (we're from Elkhart, we like trains).

When other kids were raising their hands begging for solos, I always kept my hands as close to the ground as possible. When the directors were looking through the group and choosing who they wanted to solo, their eyes never even went in my direction. I think it was just kind of this nice understanding I had with the directors, that I was no good at soloing, so they never called on me. To be completely honest, I really was no good at Jazz band. My place in the group was to serve as more of a leader, a good example, or a performer when it came to doing the stage stuff. I was a good poster face for the group, but definitely wasn't one of the better musicians on my instrument. I think everyone just agreed that I was better on the clarinet than on the saxophone, and that I was more of a concert band player than a jazz cat.

So it comes as no surprise to me that the one solo I did play, was on my clarinet. I had been dreaming of a jazz clarinet solo, and senior year I finally got one. We only ever performed the song once. Sadly I think the reason could have been that Mr. Peterson was worried my solo was just never consistent. Idk, it's whatever. It's probably better that way because I get totally freaked out when I have to solo.

We performed the song at a festival in Michigan State. I remember playing my solo the best I'd ever played it with the band, which was gratifying enough for me. I had to stand up when I played, which meant my legs were shaking, and I remember my parents were there. Afterwards our clinician was talking to us, giving us tips, blah blah....he did this sort of informally where all of our families and friends were also standing in this open foyer type thing, and then all of the sudden he asked "oh and who played that clarinet solo?" Reluctantly, I raised my hand. He was going to tell me I was out of tune the entire time, I just knew it. He was going to tell me I needed to work on it hardcore or else i would be ruining clarinet jazz solos for the entire jazz world..........but to my surprise, instead of telling me I sucked at life, the large Louis Armstrong looking man said to me with a big old smile on his face and a continual nodding of his head "That was reaaaal niiiiice, very niiiiice" And I blushed and everyone looked at me, and I remembered hoping my dad had heard it because I knew he'd be so happy.

The reason I bring all of this up is because #1, I was listening to Johnny Hodges and heard the song I had to do for my transcription project in jazz band senior year, and #2....because it's one of the only things in my life I can remember really enjoying that I wasn't that good at.

Usually I only ever do things if I'm good at them, or if in a short period of time I could be good at them. This has something to do with my very conscious desire to not want to look stupid and or to seem hopeless.

Do things because you love them, and not just because you look good doing them. I have had to figure this out the hard way, and it's biting me in the butt.

Here's the youtube link to the song, though it is not us playing it (we sounded much better)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttJjdLvQrMQ

the girl kind of fucks it up at the end of the first part
when the saxs have their section the balance is way off
...and when she plays the high f# in the 2nd part it doesn't sound great at all, nor does the 2nd part in general, haha

I Know I Want to Feel Things

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4269277209/
This is the trailer for Revolutionary Road, and I think after I watched it I fell in love with the cinema all over again.

I once heard in a movie (London) that you remember sentences that people say to you, sentences that stick out in your mind (funny because this line was also one of those lines for me). I tend to do this most often with song lyrics, or lines in books or movies. There's a line in Revolutionary Road where DiCaprio says, "I want to feel things-I mean really feel them" and I swear as soon as those words resonated through my little laptop speakers they formed little yellow talons and ripped my heart to shreds, because I've never heard such a simple slew of words pieced together in such a way that it had that big of an impact on me. It was like my whole body froze and the whole world held its breath for just a moment, and suddenly Leo and I were soul mates or something of the sense.

I've been going through this period in my life where I've been much more concerned with quantity rather than quality, some idiotic value instilled in me at a young age because I preferred having more presents to unwrap on Christmas morning than my older sister, even if the gifts were smaller and cheaper. When you're a kid toys are toys, and I never really cared that she was getting expensive painting sets and easels while I was getting multiple boxes of Crayola markers in thin, fat, bold, fluorescent, and jungle colors. I thought I was getting the better end of the deal because I had all of this variety, but when the time came to hang our pictures up on the refrigerator, hers always looked like they belonged in a museum while mine were mistaken for pieces of scrap paper used to test the various pens in the junk drawer.

I want to surround my life with quality. I would much rather endure a single moment of the most genuine, most honest, most heartbreaking sadness than live a day of anything fake or insincere, and that's where Leo comes in. I know I want to feel things, I mean really feel them, and I know that I've never been more sure of that than in this very moment, and I'm wondering if I've felt as passionately about anything thats happened to me in the past month as I do about this silly quote in a movie I saw once at the cinema. I want to feel the kinds of things that you are constantly wishing you could write fabulous poems or songs about because they are so special to you. I want to feel the kinds of things that hurt when they're bad and even more when they're good, because feeling things only half way through just isn't who I am.

I know this all sounds kind of off the wall. I just have to hold on tight to my belief that these crazy things I speak of are more than just crazy things. That these things I babble about and wish for appear genuine and possible and tangible and significant and will speak to even just one person other than me, that they will give them something to hold on to as well because we all need something to hold on to sometimes.

Or in the words of Mayday Parade, I know I'm meant for something, I just haven't found it yet, and I need it.

You don't want to read this

I don’t know what it is about summer that reminds me of you, or maybe the right way to say it is, I don’t know what it is about you that reminds me of summer…

Maybe its just that my heart isn’t in it for the other 3 seasons. There is only so much time I can spend constantly flooding myself with memories and thoughts and pain. I can’t do it all year, but one season, I can do that. I can withstand it all for 3 months, especially if its nice out. I can keep myself busy and then spend the quiet time laying flat on my back in bed with my earphones in and feeling the breeze on my sunburned freckles.

Or maybe it’s that I’m always trying to save myself from disasters. I see them coming and I run and hide for as long as possible until I know my legs won’t carry me any further, and I just give in. I think that’s what it is. It gets far too hot in Indiana to keep running away, so I sit in the shade, such an obvious hiding place and the memories always find me. They wear Nikes and stretch for long hours before they take off, and they always catch up to me. So I sit on my lawn chair, sipping my Long Island Iced Tea which makes the memories bearable, and I just take it. I just hold on to all the pain, and I make it a part of me for that short summer. And in the summer I am active, I’m more active than I am in any other part of the year. And I think that’s why its so hard to hide my feelings from myself, because they are always coming in like out-of-towners, always needing a place to stay or a bite to eat, and I’m the only one who knows the area well enough to entertain.

No matter the reasons that I do it, I always do it. I am always falling in your trap like the strongest flypaper known to man. When we’re lying next to one another, not listening, not talking, not caring about anything but us. And that’s the way it should be. I know I want to feel things, and I want to feel them with your arms wrapped around me, with your finger tips tracing them as though they were my own. Hands, arms, fingers, the pronouns become irrelevant. We become one thing, one entity, and nothing should pull us away, but it always does, it always pushes and pulls and tugs on things that should be safe and ours. And then the weather starts to get cooler, and the soccer teams start dressing for games instead of just practices, and it becomes time for me to go away again. And I forget for another 9 months that the feelings I just felt are what I actually want, and not just some summer flu that has come over me.

I forget what I want because its easier that way.

You have GOT to see this.

This is truly one of the most inspiring stories I have ever heard. You have got to watch this.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_on_running.html
This is Aimee Mullins, a double leg amputee in 1998 at the age of 19.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html
And this is her 10 years later, after she had expanded her career to not just athelete, but also model, actor, and activist.

What I'm Remembering I Want to Forget

I remember what its like to stand in the middle of an open field and reach my hands out in every direction and no one grabs on. I remember what its like to run down path after path, looking for landmarks, rivers, benches, trees, anything to lead me back to where I started, but everything seems exactly like it did at the last turn. I remember what its like to hurt so badly that it feels like my chest is slowly getting bigger and bigger and if one more thing happens, that little red keepsake will form a cavity, making its way out of my body.

I remember what its like to feel like I've already lost, no matter how many different attempts I make, no matter how long I practice, no matter how much work I put into it.

I don't ever want to feel that way again...
In fact, I want to come to forget the way this feels, so that I don't have to remember it any more.
Just something to think about.

Fate

Holy crap I am on cloud 9 right now.

I have always believed in fate. Things seem to present themselves to me in pairs. First one event happens and I say, oh that must just be coincidence, and then when it happens again, I know that it's fate. What I have noticed, is that these things always come in pairs, and after the 2nd event, it is up to me to make it happen if I want it to. I believe that fate only takes me so far, and then its in my hands.

Well today both events happened. Wow, I am on cloud 9 right now because 2 events happened today. Is that like a hyper-sign? Like this really really really must happen?

I can't believe this Monday. It will live on as the best Monday ever.

Curing the Boredom

Thursday was a crazy day for me.
I went to the library at 1 and didn't leave until 9:30. During which I only took about 4 breaks lasting no more than 5 minutes at a time.
I walked out of that library feeling incredibly accomplished, and wondering why I can't approach more of my assignments, or just life projects in general, in such a productive fashion. I think that maybe its the fact that nothing else in the world seems to hold my attention or get me as excited as creative writing does, its true. Sometimes even people can't hold my attention that long.

I am always punishing people for their imperfections, and then loving others for theirs. This is, in fact, an imperfection of mine, to see the beauty in some, and not in others, to be intrigued only to the point of real extremities, and not the little things that we see so often everyday in books and magazines. I am bothered by this everyday monotony and I am bored with it, and thus I write off those who fall below my scale of interest or punish those that I am stuck with who do the same. Either way, to be boring and to be close to me is something of an anomaly.

I am finding that more and more by the day I am becoming bored with my life and its inhabitants and realizing it needs to be drastically changed. I need to find something to really sink my teeth into, to really get excited about...to really make a difference in.

I need to find an outlet.