New poem

I wrote a new poem at 4 am since I couldn't sleep, although I eventually did.  Lately, due to lack of classes and stuff to do, my sleep schedule has been 3 am to 3 pm.  It's exam time right now and all I have left is a vocal jury.  For this exam I sing five pieces for three "judges," which is like American Idol but the songs are better and the judges know what they are talking about.  So all I've been obligated to do is practice an hour every day, if that.  I hope I can go back to normal or somewhat normal soon...

Here is my poem...


Beer:

Cat call in the distance at three am

Someone far away is hot

And someone far away is horny

Decisions made with beer goggles

As you half-sleep in a bubbly, pleasant haze

There’s more evidence for evolution

Than skeletons and theories

I think as I hear a college girl

Shriek just like a chimpanzee

Below on Spruce Street

Far away noises sound so close

They are inside my tiny flat

Invading

How frightening it would be to venture outside so late

On a saturday night

And soak up the stupidity

Violence at the slightest provocation

Passive-aggressive friendliness

Walk past a bar

Would I make it home alive?

The city lights cast a morning glow 

on the trees and the now-grey sky

It looks as if the sun is rising

But, no, I’m still here in my warm, fluffy bed

Half-asleep, half-awake like most nights

When will I escape this vampire’s schedule?

I long for the early mornings of my youth

Seven am, the darkness lingering

Birds chirping, parents yelling,

Reading on the school bus

Innocence, naïveté, thinking life was so difficult then

But it wasn’t

That was just the beginning

The jock population skyrockets after two am

Because nothing good happens then

Birds, maybe robins, singing at four am

Everything is backwards at this hour

And so much more frightening

Terrified of even leaving my room

Down the dark, empty hallway

Maybe I’m just jealous 

I wish I had some friends to be stupid and drunk with

Some men and boys too

Even just some alcohol

A cold glass of beer

To help me sleep

To taste

So bubbly and bittersweet

Pop with a punch

I must imagine my glass of water as a mug of beer

And hope...

Wallflower

I haven't posted for a while, but don't give up on me if anyone is indeed reading this.  I just wrote this poem a few minutes ago.  As you can see it is about my experiences in school as a shy person.

Wallflower:

Little wallflower at the back of the room

Sitting pretty, waiting to bloom

Watching the others in their gaiety

Dreaming of tiny steps to spontaneity 

If you have something to say, say it

But even when you do, you delay it

Sitting in the back all alone

Where have you hidden your backbone?

You wait it out until that perfect silence

The challenge, the defiance

Of delivering the right answer

When everyone else just stands there

But it seems it will never come

You’d rather they think you were dumb

Instead of watching the heads turn

And feeling your throat burn

And it has to be something meaningful

Something wise, beneficial

Because this is the leaf upturned

This is the incense finally burned

You must be wise and reveal a profound truth

Or the silent one will be seen as the dumb mute

But not too weird and different either

Or you might as well be having a seizure

As you speak there is such an unjust silence

And as you finish an applause like raw violence

For despite your careful wording

They will never pay attention to anything but asserting

Asserting, asserting is gold

Asserting yourself and being bold

Being confident, being nude

Being exposed, being rude

Even if you proved the professor wrong

Even if in three seconds you wrote a song

Even if you recited a hundred digits of Pi

All they care about is that you are speaking and that you were once shy

And that

my friends

is a spectacle

Lonely Day

Sometimes it feels like no one is reading this except me.  Being anonymous is harder because you can't promote your blog to people you know.  And I don't have facebook, the main place for promoting non-anonymous blogs.  And it doesn't seem like I'm posting stuff that is extreme or really personal yet, so why do I feel the need to be anonymous?  I need to dig deeper.  I still want to remain anonymous.  If no one reads this, it's ok.  It's just for fun.  It's like an online diary that can only be read by strangers.  An organization of my thoughts and work.  It's still helpful and enjoyable to me.

Besides, I get my attention fix from writing fanfiction.  They really seem to like my stories.  Or maybe they just generally go crazy over everything on there.  Nevertheless, I enjoy that site.  I'm thinking if I ever have any good fiction that isn't fanfiction to post, I'll get an account on Writer's Cafe.  It looks like an interesting site.  The reviews go into more detail there.

Whenever I write on here I tend to not be able to stop.  So many thoughts to express.  I'll talk about my day.  That's why I decided to blog tonight.  To rant about my crappy day.

I woke up early (for me) at 9 am, thinking I had a lesson at 10 am, when my lesson was actually at 11 am, so that was probably one of the best parts of my day, because I got extra time to do stuff, like check my email and watch Nadia: the Secret of Blue Water, which I did.

I got to my lesson five minutes early, which was unusual for me.  And when I got to my lesson my teacher was there.  I half expected her to be just as late, because I am often late, so she shows up just as late to show her disdain for my bad time-management skills.  She's passive-aggressive like that.  I admit being late is rude, but it's just so hard for me to be on time for some reason.  I've been bad at getting to things on time as long as I can remember.  It's my main bad habit.  That, and sleeping in.  So I'm early and she's actually there to appreciate that, and this is putting me in a good mood.  But she actually turns out to be kind of mad that I'm early.  She says she has to quickly check her mail, otherwise she'll be in trouble.  Tells me to warm up or relax.  And then she comes back, 10 minutes later.  So I show up five minutes early and our lesson ends up starting five minutes late.  It's rather infuriating.  But I'm too shy to speak up about these things, although they have happened before.  I could write an entire entry on the unprofessional-ism of my singing teacher this year.  Maybe I will.  Anyway, I will give you one example of how she has wasted my lessons.  This has happened twice during lessons with her and my accompanist-coach.  They send me out into the hall so they can talk about secret things I don't need to know.  The second time this happened I was waiting out in the hall for fifteen minutes!  I think they're probably talking about a girl in our studio who recently dropped out of the music faculty.  But it could be me.  Or just randomly gossiping about other teachers and students.  I don't really give a fuck.  Unless it's an emergency, I think it can wait.  I don't know why they don't arrange a coffee date outside of class.  It's just so unbelievaly rude and unprofessional.  I guess because I don't speak up they think it's okay to treat me like this.  If I were them, I would feel bad about it.  If or when I teach, I will treat my students with respect.  My previous teacher was extremely professional.  I think one lesson he left for a minute to refill a water bottle.  That's it.  I really miss that teacher.  Previous teacher, if you know who I am somehow and you are reading this, come back!!  I'm begging you!  Yes, it's that bad. 

Anyway, I have gone off on a tangent.  Back to my bad day.  After the initial suckyness, the lesson went fairly well.  But I had another lesson an hour later (with my teacher and accompanist).  I wasn't early but slightly late.  The problem was that I had just learned the Bach piece I brought in a few days ago and it was barely ready to be worked.  So I think I made a lot of unnecessary mistakes and they were losing their patience with me.  I lost some of my previous confidence in myself for a while after that lesson.  You have to work so hard to sound half decent in the classical world.  I don't know if I will be able to bring that to the table for my vocal jury.  I hope I can.  I'll just have to keep trying.  So that depressed me.  My teacher also said something in the earlier lesson that resonated with me.  She said that I need to really feel the emotion of the piece and bring it out and that I'm not yet confident in my body.  That is definitely true, but it kind of hurt to hear it from her.  Sometimes I take criticism too harshly.  I'll just have to work harder.

So I went home and had lunch.  I finished the Nadia series which was sad, but also a relief.  And I wanted to go to a masterclass, but I didn't get ready to go soon enough, so I missed it.  That depressed me.

I went to get my police check and got it back.  That was easy.

Then I decided to practise and learn music.  I learned Thank You For the Music by ABBA and a song from Kiki's Delivery Service (piano and voice), but they proved too challenging.  I don't have the accompaniment quite right, which is frustrating.  I went through the Bach piece again and with her diction suggestions it took so much effort that my abs hurt!  Is this how it feels every time you sing with a supported sound?  How can you enjoy it and endure it then?  I don't know.  Another thing she said stuck with me: "Most musicians and singers don't sing with their full voice."  It makes me wonder if that's really what I want to be known for: a supported sound?  I will need to think about this some more.

So as I continued practicing and learning music, the campus became quite empty, since it is a Friday, which always puts me in a bad mood.  And I became quite tired.  Coffee didn't help.  Then I realized my cell phone was missing, but I thought I left it at home, so I didn't go home.

Speaking of home, I made cupcakes the day before and left some out for my roomies, but none of them had been eaten yet, when usually they were eaten quite quickly.  This made me sad.  I'm being over-sensitive, but it still made me sad.

One cool thing happened.  As I walked by the cafeteria, I was really craving curly fries, but I didn't want to spend too much money since I was eating out for dinner.  So I resisted and went to get my coffee and on the way some people were giving out free chocolate ice cream!  So I had that instead.  It seemed that they packed up right after that, too.  So if I got the curly fries I would have missed it.  It was a cool coincidence.

Eventually I went to an Indian restaurant  for dinner, but the bus took me too far and I had to walk for a longer time, which sucked.

Then I went to the theatre to see a play called "An Experiment With an Air Pump."  I was there early so I got to read my Margaret Atwood book, which was nice.

The play was really good, but I won't talk about that right now.  I saw a classmate of mine there.  We talked for a while during intermission, but she didn't seem to want to talk too long, probably because she was with her boyfriend.  During the part where they are having a funeral for one of the characters, who has hung herself (sorry for the spoiler!) she and her boyfriend were laughing uncontrollably.  Like, what the hell?  And then, afterwards, they slipped away really quickly and left me to walk home alone.  And I did not know the area of that university very well.  On my way home, I must have encountered at least five groups of young guys out partying.  The worst kind of group to bump into, according to my dad.  Luckily, nothing bad happened.  But I kept wishing I had friends or a boyfriend to come with me.  But I don't have a boyfriend and I figured my roommates or classmates wouldn't be interested or they would have had other plans (in layman's terms I am too shy to ask them to come with me).

So I made it home to find out that my cell phone wasn't there.  Later that night I found out that the music faculty secretary had found it, but I was really worried before hand.  The third time I have lost something this week.  I'm so forgetful and I don't know how to fix it.

Anyway, another lonely day, and it's mine.  It's a day that I'm glad I survived.  There were some good moments, but I think the bad moments outweighed them.  It's not winning any awards, but it wasn't a great day.  I generally hate Fridays.

I might tell you about Nadia: the Secret of Blue Water later.  I'm too tired right now.  I will tell you about the cupcakes, though.  Everything turned out quite well except the tootsie roll hat rims.  I don't know how one would have the patience to stretch several Tootsie Rolls until you can mold them.  They are really firm.  Other than that, the recipe was successful!  It took so much time.  I don't think I will do it again, unless I have a lot of time and money on my hands.  The ingredients were expensive, in some cases.  They are delicious, though!  I wish my roommates liked them.  To be fair, one of them had one tonight.  So that's good.

Here's hoping tomorrow is better,  For you and for me.  For everyone.