music history woop woop

it's very interesting how i've become the definitive expert on all music history in my apartment. what suprises me the most is that i actually remember it all. i think i go in and take any of the exams and get a passing grade, without any review. i guess that is important since it's what i'm going to be doing for a long while. but i enjoy it and i find myself enjoying tutoring my roommates for their exam. the only that i don't enjoy is the fact that they don't know the information! i'm not even in the class and i still remember it...but they don't even have a clue what's going on. however, i don't think it is entirely their fault. well, at least for one of them. it sounds like she has a poor excuse for a teacher. oh well.

i have a cold. it's pretty miserable. i can't hear anything and my head feels like it is going to explode. i have a lot of pressure around my ears, sinus, and temples. no fun when you have to reherse. of course, rehersing is no fun when it's in wind ensemble. i think i've given up on tryin in wind ensemble. i don't really care anymore if i can play the peice of music or not. for one thing, i don't practise the music. i go in and try to learn it in rehersal. at first, this was not by choice. i have such a busy schedule that i have no time for practising. it's pretty miserable, actually. i enjoy playing my horn and practising for my lessons. luckily, dr. timm is very understanding and we mostly play duets these days. which is really great because there are no other oboeists in the school so all i have is my own sound to go off of, but when you play with another oboe, it is really amazing. i love playing duets because they always sound so good.

anyhow, wind ensemble is a load of crap. i wish that i would get kicked out of the ensemble. however, i don't want to have to play in the symphonic band, either. i want nothing to do with these ensembles. i can't stand the repretoire nor the way the ensembles are conducted. i suppose i have a poor attitude. i'm going to graduate this year in the spring, so i suppose i can feel fed up. except, i've been fed up with these ensembles for a while now.

number 9 number 9

i used to think the universe was important. but i'm not sure anymore. i saw a headline and it read, "blackholes provide breeding ground for stars." why does that even matter? the universe is unimportant, i think. i don't think we should ignore the fact that we live in a universe but we keep looking for answers but we can't find the answers out there. it's like love. we can't keep looking for love and expect to find it. you can never find it. it just happens when it happens.

maybe we aren't supposed to know this, and this has nothing to do with the universe, but our department is somewhere around 10 grand short on the comission for the craft piece the wind ensemble is supposed to premiere. i guess that is the difference between schools like ucla and cal state fullerton. some people get it done. others don't care. i think most people don't care.

i think there is real music and i think there is fake music. when i was a kid my dad would put on the classical music station in the car and i would sit in the back sit and i would close my eyes and i would imagine little stories to go along with the music. most of the time i would imagine people in peasant attire dancing around in some woodsy area. i have no idea what i was listening to. i mean, i couldn't tell who composed the piece. when i was a kid i thought that classical music was really the greatest form of music. i thought it was intellectual. i thought it made me a more intellectual person. i thought i was unique because i was a kid who had an interest in classical music when most kids my age couldn't stand to sit through a few minutes of it. it was like poison.

when i was a kid i thought a degree in music was a joke. i thought that people didn't need to go to school to learn how to play their instrument, they could do that on their own. i thought, "what could they learn at school? that's a joke degree. that's stupid." i wanted to be a computer programmer, a computer engineer/scientist. i wanted to go to mit. when i was in the sixth grade i was already checking out their schools website and requesting prospectuses.

when i was a kid i played in the middle school band with my friends and we played the same music every year. we never attended district festivals. we tested on scales and i wanted to play percussion but my teacher would never pick me. i did not get the award for best musician.

when i was a kid, i used to wander around the different sections of the music area and look at the different composer's recordings. my parents did not have a real inclination toward music and my mom always said the violins gave her a headache. but my father tried to teach me how to play the blues on the piano when i was 9 and our piano was out of tune. it's an old upright piano that was built in 1889. it belonged to my grandmother and her sisters.

i didn't go to mit and i am not studying to become an engineer (but i suppose if i wanted to fall into debt and give it a go, i guess i could). i became a musician and i play the oboe in the wind ensemble. i'm only in the wind ensemble because they don't have anyone else. i used to be a good clarinet player. but i think anyone can be a good clarinet player. i've been playing oboe for almost three years. and i spent a year in symphonic band before i was moved up to wind ensemble. so this is my third semester in the wind ensemble. i hate the wind ensemble. i never feel comfortable. i feel so insignificant. i feel inadequate. i play in the diverse instrument ensemble and we play music that is far more musicially challenging and in an enivronment that is very intimate and revealing and yet i feel confidence and i don't feel alone in the ensemble.

i get a lot of grief as an oboeist because i lack in a lot of areas because of the little experience i have. i get hassled because i don't know how to make my own reeds. i get hassled because i don't know how to fix a problem on my instrument or fix a problem on my reed. i get hassled because i don't play soft enough. i get hassled because i don't play loud enough. i get hassled because i don't have enough ego. i don't think it's fair that i get all that grief. i never say anything about it because i know it makes no difference and people just figure you're just making up excuses. i'm not a bad player. i play in the wind ensemble and i manage to stay afloat. i play in d.i.e. and lloyd hasn't kicked me out yet. i'm not a bad player.

i think one day i might be an oboe player that people don't hassle. i'll get some respect for a change. i have no idea what this has to do with real music or fake music or the universe. i think i'm trying to deal with my friends death but i don't want to deal with it here.

i saw the terry riley concert at ucla a few weeks back. i was disappointed. i only went because carl thought it would be good that we saw him live. it was overpriced.