oCtoBer, 2000

Merda, i ragazzi ...

Somehow it's all italian in origin. We don't need to get into the gender/choral politics of Ragazzi and Cantabile right now (boys and singingly--hm, somehow appropriate). That diatribe for a longer entry. But i wish i could scream and say, aa, the feet, eep, neri per caso ...

No, i really don't. Not unless they'll scream for us, too, and they won't--(a) wrong genre; (b) it's not in the persona of boygroups to scream. Too bad.

Today lovely except for the fact I thought Marié was working a library shift that actually I should have been, and George will not be happy tomorrow. He'll deal, I'm sure. Ate lunch with Alyssa, Jenny, Spiegel, otheres. Bag. I love Spiegel--he's so cool. Fuzzy head and loves to have it petted; good hugger; good giver of advice; speaks hebrew; just crazy enough; a huge dork and knows it ... such a wonderful person. That needs to be iterated more often.

Talked to Tom about moveable do and a curriculum for Music 40; he agreed and told me to look at scores with transposing parts. Clarinet in Bb = tenor clef an octave down. Weirdness but it works.. He recommended Beethoven as conducted by Franz Brüggen; of course they're all on reserve at the library for Music 6 (Beethoven, taught by him). Except for 7 & 8. So i got that and have now burned it. :-) Ginnie's buying me 100 CD-R's for $40 on Friday! Yay music. So I'll get some scores, and look at horns in F and Eb, clarinets in Bb. It'll be good for me.

I taught the round I learned with Cantatrix to a bunch of people lying around in a circle:

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Joel, Allison, Ameliea, Jenny, Eve, Adrienne, and I sang in the belltower until four. Lovely.

Practiced some before the debates. My jaw's hurting--this is not acceptable. I'm being careful, too!

I hate politics. DON'T VOTE FOR NADER! Please don't put Bush in office!

This weekend was pretty fun. Friday I went to The Point in Bryn Mawr to see Rockwell Church, this cute, pop-y, 2-boy, 2-guitar band that Nadav introduced me to last year. A belated birthday present from Allison. Much fun. Got back, stayed up too late chez Willets (la cave) and got four hours of sleep for the ridiculous day that followed.

Saturday: PYO all morning, playing Brahms 3. Goddess but I love that piece! I've had it on repeat all on Winamp since. Drive back to Swat, where I have 3 hours of flamenco. Much stomping. We learned how to swish our skirts. Mmmmm. Back into the city and out for a late lesson--Joe wasn't happy [about the hour], but then again he's never happy. Old fart. I decided I wanted some unwinding from this day, so I drove back into the city with Peter Yoo & Laurel for some Kingdom of Vegetarians (on 11th between Arch & Race, for those of you who are interested) for some $10 all-you-can-eat vegetarian dim sum action for dinner. Yum. Again, we conquered it. I love when they ask you if you want anything else--yum, hellzyeah. I got sesame noodles; Peter ordered fried bananas; Laurel craved turnip cake. We got two orders of fried bananas due to a miscommunication. Fortune cookies ("in bed"). Back to swat, painted body (my orange tights still fit! green boycut bikini bottom, flamenco shoes, pink bikini top, orange shirt, orange scarf, hair up, and body paint--jenny's watercolor pencils). SHC Paces party--pretty fun. Eve, Laurel, Jenny, Sarah Kate, Andrew Stout, and Abram ended up back at the lodge for a while. Sleeeeeeeep.

R. tried to stuff me in a music locker.

Today in Cantatrix, Xanthi taught us how to make two pitches at once, using Mongolian Buddhist chant techniques. It's sooooooooo cool! I can sing two notes at once now! And it's all the overtone series and formant harmonics, just linguistics and basic acoustics! Life rocks.

Alyson Jones and I both decided that we were going to take rep tests when we got back from break, so we went to Underhill and each checked out a billion and one CDs. She's been hanging out in my room for a few days, just burning them. I've ripped most of mine to mp3, at least the ones i don't want to create whole CDs of (copied wholesale were Debussy La Mer, Nocturnes, et Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, and Strauss Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel &c., and Tod und Verklärung (Death & Transfiguration)). She used all my labels and promises to buy me more. I fed her ramen and oreos. In return (not that I didn't enjoy having her there--it was fun to go out at 12:00 on Thursday night after pub night when Wharton CD 3rd (where Peter Yoo lives and from where he IMmed me to come over) had stolen a leftover keg, and then to come back ('lightweight' should be tattooed and flashing across my collarbone, says Laurel) and have Alyson laugh as I threw on my brightest dress and giggled as she burned CDs of Grieg's piano concerti)--i say, in return, she took me to a concert last night at the Philly Orchestra. They played Berg's Lyric Suite, Grieg's piano concerto in A minor, an Schumann's Rhenish Symphony in Eb Major. I love student vouchers! For six dollars (and she paid, so it was only $3.25 train fare in for me), we exchanged our little student tickets for box seats! Usually with those I get the Behind-A-Pillar-Nosebleed Section tickets, but they're really exchanged for the best seats left in the house. Woo-hoo! It was super funny--as we were walking out of the concert, i hear these two women talking behind us. the exchange:

Woman A: Well, there wasn't any booing or hissing, but i'm sure that's just because people are polite. I'm sure everyone hated it.
Woman B: Yes, the woman behind me was having a fit! she was saying, "I'm too busy to listen to this kind of music!"
Woman A: Yes, if you can call it music!

The concert was excellent. The conductor--Daniel Harding, guest--reminded me of Mickey Mouse conducting the waves in Fantasia. No beats, just interpretive knee-bends. I think he missed his calling--he should have been a dancer. The orchestra played wonderfully, however, being the Philadelphia Orchestra. But there were places where the conductor really could have done a better job ... Alyson (the conducting student) agreed. Much fun.

Sequitor from above: Taking the train in, R. showed up. Said he was going into the city to meet a friend for a concert. Wow, this really isn't much of a sequitor. Or of interest. On to new topics.

I set off the fire alarm with the smoke from my cooking endeavors this morning. Alyssa and Colleen came over, and i mixed up pancakes (I am such a college student!--went to Genuardi's the other day, and bought 10 packages of ramen, two of macaroni and cheese, some chocolate for laurel, pancake mix, and maple syrup! hehe :-), and we tried to cook them. We didn't have a spatula so two forks had to do ... which they mostly did ... they started smoking though, and I ended up setting off the fire alarm. Called Public Safety and I think they hate me now--"damn, we give those girls in Lodge 2 a new oven, and the first thing they do with it is use it to set the fire alarms off!" Apparently an alarm went off in the fieldhouse at the same time. Since my room was smoked up, I opened the window, and in so doing knocked off a couple spiders who were hanging out on the sill--dead, i think, but I don't care, so I RAIDed the window. Which stank. So the lilac Glade (air freshener) came out, and now my room smells like pancake smoke (associations: my dad making pancakes when I was little); RAID (associations: my mom spraying the window by the piano four or so years ago; my basment before I moved in this year); lilac glade (associations: the lilac bush outside my house). Weird combinations. Put on my weird-scented deodorant and a little lilac essence (taking to wearing it now and then) and now i smell like myself again, and my room's clearing out.

a few nights ago, dim sum at the Kingdom again. Mmm. I'm going again tonight. Do they know me by now? After, we (Ben Gazy, Sara Edelstien, Alyssa, Laurel, Jenny, Casey, and I) found an apple and hollowed out a path (coke bottle idea rejected) and went to Crumbhenge in the full moonlight. Much fun. The following morning, good PYO and lesson. Yeah.

I'm not going to Brown. I wish i could but i don't have time. Or money. I need to just sit at home and work--Anna Karenina, a few more books, two papers, lots of theory and practice to do. No time. Boo-hoo. But i'm going to enjoy having time to sit in the sun on swat's beautiful campus in this beautiful weather and just chill, work slowly. It'll be very good. I wish more of my friends would stay--they're leaving most of them tomorrow morning for Fall Break. Time to go sit on Worth lawn (in my orange skirt!--i love this! thank you, olivia!) and read Tolstoy.

Food: Laurel and Allison and I hit Genuardi's this afternoon after having driven a couple hours down the New Jersey turnpike back to beautiful Swarthmore. The leaves are finally chainging colors! Finally my brilliant, coveted orange is popping out of the foliage in full neon. Oh but i love it. I hope the "happy little trysting place" as Hollis refers to that crazy little tree on the Willets-Sharples path turns bright purple again. Maybe i'll have to re-dye my hair "Moroccan Cherry" as i did last year to match it, and again pin bright leaves into my short braids (much longer now) and barettes. I loved freshman year. Damn but I had an excellent time. I'm having a lot of fun this year, too, but not as clearly, or as newly exciting as the first year was. Making a home in Lang; bonding with frosh in a sea of already-collegiate upperclassmen; getting to know hallmates; the din of living in Willets; Alyssa; purple hair and purple leaves; SEPTA into the city as it gradually got colder; Willets 1st South bonding ... aaap. One year down. Down and gone, and three to go. Two-point-seven-five. I'm scared for it to end. I hope i continue to peak.
...but food. I went to genuardi's today and stocked up with Laurel and allison. I have a beautiful new knife. oh but those onions met a fine and brutal guillotine this evening. Laurel has a lovely new cutting board. we have been cooking up a storm (like the 4th movement of the britten; like the fourth of the Pastoral) all night. Yum. Tonight was julia child's french curry, new rice (the ratio on this kind is one-to-one rice-to-water, as i found out the hard way), rice pudding (courtesy of the too-wet and ruined first-attempt rice), and pumpkin pie. Mike Smith, all dressed up to go to Woody's, came over (i painted his nails dark blood-red and painted his eyes), as did Kellam, and Laurel and Allison and I cooked all the above plus Allison's guacamole. Poetic guacamole. We devoured it. Kellam played the Suite Hébraïque better than i have in a while on my viola. I need to practice now that i'm back. We ate the pumpkin pie with extra fat whipped fat cream fat fat fat triple fat fat yum fat.

i want to write for the phoenix--a grammar-bitching column. i'm not even kidding. I'd start with "Begging the Question" and its uses and misuses. Rarrrr, hear my syntax roar.

Anna's talking about applying to this program which is very CTD-(and TIP-)like, but where the college-age staff teaches their own little mini-courses. Oh, i'd love to! and living with Anna, too! But I want to live with Alyssa--has been in the works for a while--and go to China with PYO, and go to Aspen, and ... and ... damn. Too little time in one summer.

Allison says my source code looks like a bunch of sideways eiffel towers. I think that means we have to sleep.

This break has been so good. After we made french curry (previous entry), we followed it with red pepper pasta sauce and la reine de saba, who was a little overdone but still quasi-orgasmique. That was Thursday; Friday (last night) the campers returned from the Shenandoah mountains, so in addition to me, Laurel, Jenny (=3), Mike Smith, Paul, Heather Doyle, Dave Auerbach (=6), we had Alana, R., Morgan, and Joe (=11). Very chill evening. We set up a table we made from four cinderblocks and a 4'x4' plank (yay Home Depot! :-), lit the sconce, and turned on all my new lights, sushi candles that laurel bought me, and had a great dinner. (My new lights!: Spherical paper lantern suspended above my bed, halogen, plant light! Also: silver holed tumblerish silverware holder; pretty rug; plant; hanging 3-tiered basket for Laurel; wine glasses. Good stuff!) We made gado-gado and yummy rice, along with banana bread for dessert. Went outside and screamed and played violent derivations of Red Rover (the Malaysian "kubbity!"). Excellent fun, even though Laurel managed to get smoke throughout the entire lodge--I thought the peanut sauce was burning, and smoke started billowing off the stovetop. I transferred the sauce to another pan, but it kept smoking, and smoking, so mysteriously ... finally laurel realized it was the bread she had left to singe in the oven. By this time we're having to practically crawl on the floor due to the thick and billowing smoke. No smoke detectors going off yet--I think they were disabled with the pancakes episode sunday morning. Still, such a nice evening!

This morning PYO and Firebird. Yay.

Jenny and I were lounging on the lawn this afternoon. She started playing hacky-sack with some stoners at the other end of the yard, i delivered Claire Weiss her much-missed sugar cubes, and we began feeling restless. The sun began to set and deprive us of our warm spot on the grass. We decided to catch it from the Crum and tramped into the woods for some beautiful fall foliage and solace. Mmm. Mist on the crum meadow. Went across the creek via the huge fallen tree and sat under a small canopy of overgrown leaves for a while. Renato's for dinner, her treat, since I've been cooking so much recently. Good not to have to cook. (I do enjoy it, though, and it was cool to pull out leftover noodles, brie & crackers, and pumpkin pie from the fridge for lunch today!) Amelia and Laurel showed up soon after we got back, and we ended up doing last night's dishes and making pesto out of our leftover basil (very garlicky and parmesany, but hell, we like those ingredients, too!), drinking green tea and eating a ton of sugar cubes, all around our new table, on my CD coasters! yay.

Hey Laurel and Nori, Looks like we've found a match between the two of you! I've been making matches for a long time, and I definitely sense something special here. So why don't you two get together for coffee or a drink? Love, The Daily Jolt

I hate love monkeys! :-( I came home from PYO this morning to discover that, no longer can i laugh from above the fray, but that some idiot has either typed me into their list to find out if I typed them in, or actually resorted to this method, the likes of which we should have outgrown with fifth grade, side ponytails, snap-bracelets, and the Garbage Pail Kids. Just for the hell of it, however, I went and typed in laurel, just to piss her off and see what would happen. Resultant was the letter at left. Eh, it's cute. Wish it would actually fucking work, or that people would not be so stupid and just ask me out. Ha, perhaps i'm a hopeless romantic. ;-)

Mom has a new computer, grace à moi (who managed to break the screen of the old one--just through old age and use, not misuse!) and her warranty. She's calling it her "Baby Beastie." I think that's adorable.

Sleep so I can attack my work tomorrow. Rar. I'm going to work on really enjoying this place--not that i don't currently, it's just that there's so much that it's so easy to gets swamped in that it's also easy to get lost in the stress and not enjoy everything else Swat hast to offer. I love this place and what I'm doing here; i just need to chill and not kill myself. Yay for fall break.

I still want another week.

Where is another week of fall break when you need it. And where is Bydywojo! (I think he needs a patronymic.) He hasn't made an appearance since July 31st! Now he returns. He's been hanging around Lang a bunch, so I stop in and say hello when we're practicing (or i'm doing theory, or whatever) at the same time. Playing around with my .project file on sccs and he's getting the idea. I'm quite pleased with myself. (I'm also pleased with myself that my mother will have no idea what that last paragraph means. :-) This weekend, as I said, Alexis is here, and plus I have two gigs and a lot to do, homework and otherwise, so perhaps some .projects will have to be put off to a later [rain] date. But it can't be too late--i only have the end semester. Stupid Poles. I'll be in the country. But who knows anyhow. He could be amused--I certainly would be with me--and just toying. Ha. I think i'm going to let Rasumovsky (all these Random Russian Guys!--this one's a little older and presumably nont as hot) sing me to sleep. Rasumovsky or Bydywojo. Either will do (B. preferable) but I think I only have four strings right now, and i might need a reed for the latter. (I would play upon him; you would seem to know his stops; I would pluck out the heart of his mystery; I would sound him from his lowest note to the top of his compass: and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot I make it speak? I don't know. Tryin'. But these here are Danes and I'm only interested in the Russians, or rather their pseudonymicized people.)

Damn it, Bydywojo, the days grow short. Saturday the clock changes.

So much coming at you at once. And this on the weekend. Different styles of barrage than the typical giorni feriali, but damn, in what a disconnected, wonderfully socratic way. "here it all is--make something of it" instead of a course within a discipline. It swirls too much around my head and I can barely keep track of what is where is when is why but i love it all and this is swarthmore, this in conjunction with the discussion i had with sarah kate this afternoon about a book we're reading, this and all swatties who learn words from reading and then pronounce them wrong, this and italian morphology, this and non-diatonic secondary dominant diminshed seventh pivot chords, this and the effect of relativistic motion on electrical charges and roommates who know what that means. But "this." This is the russian five-man chorus who marched into PYO saturday morning and dropped a mind-achingly beautiful Russian Te Deum on the floor (complete with those special intervals--some kind of sixth?--that are so minor and pungently slavic), rang a bell as a token of friendship, and then left. This is acoustic viola and violin accompanying Ellipsis in a ben folds five song in a rather smoky "Rose Tattoo" café set up in paces with the stoners of Worth playing pseudoNeoMarley. This is an afternoon of flamenco, that dance full of hemiola and counting that twists your neck and your hips, leaves my brain exhausted and my body feeling inadequately competent--me learning that I'm not the immediate best at everything, and now on a non-academic or -music level, is probably good for me--and is seduction raised off a .project level to an art form (if only dot-files could wear heeled shoes and full skirts!). This is dada on the internet and in Heather Doyle; the enigmantically wonderful webjournaler Ben Galynker. This is orange velvet wings. This is a Bach cantata and brandenburg and passion and aria and organ prelude with pedals and even in Podunk PA the wash of brilliant counterpoint.

This prevents me from catching up on all my homework.

having lost my October 24th jouranl entry due to carelessness on my part, Laurel would like to be re-listed as an accessory to seduction.

eve bought me the coolest t-shirt. I described a small black thing to her and she came back with my words reified. I've been wearing it since. I'm going to continue to wear it if W wins the election--Laurel's mother says that if he does, they're not going to celebrate thanksgiving chez eux, that they're going to cover all the mirrors in the house and sit shiva for the death of the American republic. Laurel and I will join her here and make black veils and wear all black. This would be the only good thing about the goddamnèd Nader warriors kicking Al in the ass and handing W (who's now sponsoring pro-Nader ads!!) the election on a plate--that I would get to wear a cool veil, sit shiva for the first time ever, and continue to live in this beautiful black t-shirt.

i sent in my absentee ballot two days ago. Rock the vote.