Music

Music. I think it's interesting how sounds affect people so much. A lot of times I hear people ask other people whether they would rather lose their sight or their hearing. Usually they say sight. I guess this is because our world is so based off of what everything looks like, and so we use sight to figure out where things are and how they work. If we decided to go back in history, and instead of focusing on building a world where sight is so necessary, we decided to build one based on sound, we would be like bats.

We would read books by speaking and hearing our voice hit the page and reverberate off the words. And then people would have iPods for portable art. We'd just plug the eyephones into our eyes and we'd buy all kinds of scenery for $2 off of iTunes and it would be like we were transported somewhere else for as long as we were plugged in.

That's what happens with music, right? We listen to it and it feels like it means something, and when you close your eyes you don't have to be anywhere. If you do it long enough and forget that you're sitting in a chair in front of your computer, doing homework at 3 in the morning, you can convince yourself that you're floating. It's like those times in the morning when I know I need to get up, but it's just so much more comfortable to be snug in my bed, so I imagine that I'm getting up and turning off the alarm. Then, since I'm kind of half asleep and half awake, I start believing it, and I'm so proud of myself for forcing myself to wake up. And then I suddenly realize that I imagined that entire thing and I still need to actually get up. It's kind of funny. At the time, it's actually kind of disappointing, but at least it's one of those weird things that everyone experiences and it's just funny because it's such a random experience for people to share.

Anyway, back to the subject. For some reason, I'm trying to monopolize the world into a tiny little city. So I'm just going to continue with my city analogy since it's already rooted in my head. And hearing-city sounds silly, so that's why it's bat-city. Anyway, we have a sight-city, where sight is the most important part of our everyday lives. In bat-city, however, hearing is everything. So logically, every situation involving sight and hearing is reversed. iPods blast art, galleries showcase music, cinemas are for symphonies, etc. I think it would make sense that iPods blast scenery too, not just art, like gallery art. Music moves people, so in this city, art should move people too right? A change of scenery would obviously make you feel like you were somewhere different. And musicians and singers would no longer be the big celebrities; instead, traditional artists would enjoy the fame and fortune.

There are the other senses too. Ghosts always wish they could taste food. Animals/vampires/creepy villains use their sense of smell to find their victims. And then there's touch, which always seems like an afterthought to me because it's the only sense that's represented by something that is not directly attached to my head.

Touch is actually pretty vital. If I lost my sense of touch, would I lose the ability to feel too? Like, I wouldn't be able to feel papercuts or velvet, but would I be able to tell if I bent my elbow or turned my head? Without touch, you can feel pressure, but not surfaces, which is kind of scary. If I couldn't feel anything, I wouldn't know whether I was standing or sitting or falling. If I closed my eyes and fell off a ladder, I would think, "Hmm, there's this strange pressure all around me," and then I would hit the ground and be like, "Oh, I must have hit something." My organs would probably feel like they were dislocated or something. And maybe I'd accidentally put my hand over the stove without realizing it and it would only be when I turned around that I'd see the damage and freak out.

Ok, since I've been talking about music(or was), I think I shall conclude with a song! I've been wanting to share this song for a while anyway. Don't listen to it on Youtube. Really. It doesn't sound as good on Youtube because it hasn't been amplified and it was recorded outside and has not been cleared by computer technology and there is just no magic. Listen to it on Grooveshark! The link is below, so just click on it.

Demons by On The Rocks - So... This entire song is voices only, without instruments. As far as I know, OTR does this with all their songs. It's kind of a sad song, but it's nice to listen to anyway. At first, when I saw the title, I was like, "Hey, demons. That sounds like a song that might be a rock song that I don't feel like listening to at the moment." But just in case it turned out to be incredible, I listened to it anyway. And it was totally incredible. So listen to it.

Week 415

Week 415

Speech :: Leech
Meredith :: Grey
Consensus :: Senses
Attack :: Defend
Sue :: You
Voted :: Star
Epic :: Game
Checking in :: Checking out
Dishwasher :: Plates
Underneath :: The bed

from lunanina

Next

So, I was thinking of what I would like to be in my next life. I don't really believe in any kind of after-death thing, I just kind of think it's all interesting. Anyway, I'm thinking "next-life" because I really doubt that I could be anything on the list now, since it's become apparent that I can't skate very well, or have the skills/talent/background for all the stuff on this list, for one thing. It's just fun to muse about. Or over? Here's my list:

An Ice Skater: Well, I was watching one of those ice skating competitions yesterday, and ice skating just looks really fun. You get to dance, spin, and slide at the same time. And while skating, all you have to do is push-off, and then you just whoosh through the rink without feeling tired at all. It's like running without having problems breathing.

A Singer: In a band too. Not just a lone singer, because that's not much fun. With a band, you get to spend time with your friends until you get sick of them. Or maybe I wouldn't like the band members and the only reason I was with them was because we made awesome music or something. Singing is fun, obviously. The only difference between singing and being a singer is that people have to actually like what you sing. You also have to be able to stand on a stage and sing in front of hundreds of people. So that just boots my entire potential singing career off my list. I can only hope that I'll be some fearless performer in my next life, because I'm tired of being quiet.

A NASA Computer Somebody: I don't want to be an astronaut. I can't imagine wanting to ever stay in a rocket going that fast off the face of the earth. I do want to try sitting on the moon though. I'd probably be the only one there, other than the other astronauts, so it's the perfect place to think, with the whole world around you. You do get to see space from the moon right? It's not like there are any clouds or atmo-strato-bio-etc. spheres around... Or are there? Anyway, the reason I'd like to be a NASA computer somebody is because it's such a cool job. I would look like I knew what I was doing all the time, and get to meet other NASA computer somebodies.

A Protagonist: Really, they get all the action. If you're a protagonist in a book, it's guaranteed that something interesting will happen to you in your life, and almost guaranteed that everyone will understand you. And satisfying endings are slightly more likely. Not in a horror novel though. Ooh, and if you happen to be put in a movie, songs will just start playing randomly, and life will have amazing lighting if you've got the director that made "The Devil Wears Prada".

A Lingualist - I'm not sure if that's a real word, but I'd love to know maybe, 15 languages and be able to communicate almost anywhere. It doesn't have to be a profession or anything, I'd just like to have the ability to understand that many languages. I imagine that I would know a lot more about everything. Since I'd know Latin as well as a bunch of old languages, I would be an excellent speller. I'd probably be able to mimic all kinds of accents, so I'd sound like I'd lived in New York or Europe or New Zealand all my life. That reminds me-

Maybe A Spy? - Or some undercover CIA person? It sounds fun and dangerous. I would be able to use my lingualist skills very well here. You know, I really don't think I need a very long explanation for this...

A Writer - It's fun, and you'd be able to tell a story and create characters of your own. And then maybe you could manipulate the reader to feel what you want them to feel. Wouldn't it be cool if one day you just walked by someone sitting in a cafe reading a book you wrote? Maybe then they would start sobbing because of some horrible plot twist that you put in the book. Or maybe they'd chuckle at a comical scene in the story. Unfortunately, I just can't seem to string interesting sentences together well enough to make a novel. I also don't have the ability to procure great adjectives and verbs, nor do I have the patience to go to the thesaurus every time I can't think of another word for "said". Oh well.

Actually, after the first few things on the list, I just started making them up as I went. I like them all though. I imagine all this while still being me, so it wouldn't work if I turn out to be a male australian lizard or something. I'd like to try being a bird once too. I just want to try flying. Maybe I can be a party animal sometime too.

Well, go ahead and make your own list! I want to know what you would like to be. There are no limits anyway.

(By the way, I'm listening to Syndicate by The Fray, and you should too, if you haven't already. It's a good song.)

Week 400?

Hello!

1. Return :: Away
   
2. Alarms :: Clock
   
3. State :: Flag
   
4. Picture frame :: Gold
   
5. Wreath :: Holly
   
6. Arrest :: Ton
   
7. Sincere :: Tom
   
8. Nathan :: Timothy
   
9. Bag :: Gift
   
10. Arched :: Wing
    

Hey

So, I kind of miss my elementary school classmates...
And middle school friends...
Hmmm...

Also, does anyone have any book recommendations?

Sites You Need to Sign Up At

I love these sites. They all have some kind of use. Try them out.

Quizlet - Online flash cards. This site helps you memorize things so quickly. I use it to study for vocabulary sometimes. And it doesn't look yucky either. I hate it when sites have a great idea and use and stuff, but it looks tacky. But this one even has nice animation! Yay! Try out the little sample on the homepage.

Playlist.com - Just compile all your favorite songs here. Each playlist can hold up to 200 songs, I think. I usually have 2. One for all the songs I like, and then one for just replaying a small group so I can just listen to what I feel like listening to at the moment. It's also great because you can use the search bar while listening to music at the same time. So it doesn't stop the music everytime you search up an artist or song.

Remember the Milk - This is an online to-do list. laurapoet introduced me to this one. I just signed up a few days ago. It's easy to use, and has an awesome name. I usually just rattle off everything in the little blank-where-you-type-tasks and press enter after each task. Then all I have to do is just click it off my favorites and then check off what I've done. You can even share to-do lists, if you like.

Flickr - This is a site with photos. Like DeviantArt except with only photography. Like photobucket but without all the tiny icons and animations. And much better photos than the kind you'll find on Google images. I mainly use this for favorite-ing amazing photos. Really, just type in a word and out comes all these gorgeous and cool and amazing and snazzy photos.

Blogger.com - Get a blog! It's really fun to just talk about anything you want, particularly yourself. And the great thing is, no one has to listen if they don't want to! So you don't even have to feel bad for talking too much. And you can add little things to the sidebar!

DeviantArt - A website full of art. And all kinds too. Traditional, digital, jewelry, ceramics, film, literature, flash, and a lot lot more. My personal favorite is the emoticons. Not just :)'s or :('s here. Nope. There's giant 100x100 emoticons, very long emoticons, static emoticons, treecutting emoticons, pirate-ninja emoticons, swinging around the world emoticons, and there's just so many of them! I love them so much that I'll even provide a link to the emoticon section, since it's kinda hard to find.

FutureMe - Send an e-mail to your future self. Maybe in 2020 or something. If you sign up, you can change the e-mail it'll be sent to in case you change e-mails. All the future-emails you send will also be compiled in a little list. The list only shows the title of the e-mail you send though, so you can't cheat and look at your e-mail before you get it. It's fun! I sent one to myself, which is supposed to arrive in 2016, when I'll be in college!

Geni - Well, I just found this. It sounds interesting. Basically, it's an online family tree that you can make. You just add relatives, and you can make profiles and send stuff.

Now just 2 other sites.

1000AwesomeThings - 1000 random, awesome things like "stomping dry crunchy leaves on the sidewalk", "when the hiccups stop", and "typing in your username and password at the speed of light". Not completely up to 1000 yet, but still cool. :D

BookArmy - I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds cool! It says, "Never read a bad book again". Anyway, I'll try it later. You should try too.

And I'm listening to, "Where Do I Go?" by Marie Digby.

That's it!

Happy New Year!

I'm alive. High school is busy, as usual. Happy 2010!
I have no new year's resolutions, so I'll make some right now.

1. Get all A's.

2. Sleep earlier.

3. Stay in contact with everyone.

There we go. Ok, so I was thinking. When I was 8 years old, I thought I was going to be a normal person. Go to a good school, another good school, and then another good school. And then I would get a part time job at a cafe and serve coffee to people. I always thought that was an awesome job. It looks fun. The only problem is that I can't handle situations with people, but I figured that I would know how to by the time I got the job. And then I would do everything else as a hobby. My plan kind of stops after college, simply because I didn't really know what would happen after that.

So now I'm thinking, if my 8 year old self could see me right now, would she be happy or surprised or confused? I keep changing my answer, but at the moment, I think I would be kind of bored. Everything is pretty much the same. I'd be happy to know that I survived middle school. I think I'm stranger than before too. And then I would be annoyed because nothing amazingly interesting happened between then and now. Nothing like, I learned how to play the clarinet, or I actually learned Spanish and Chinese and could speak it fluently! I hope that in 10 years I'll know how to speak both easily. Or almost as easily as with English. Although I'm horrible at explaining things in English, so that might be a problem.

Also. I've been staying up until 2:00am almost every night doing homework and sometimes even working ahead a tiny bit. Or finishing some art that I had been procrastinating on before. And I tell myself that I'm preparing for the future, so I can get into a good college and then a good job and all that. But then when I do get a good job, I'll keep preparing for the future. So I'm afraid that I'll always be preparing for the future, and never being in the future.

And everyone is preparing for some kind of future. We save our money so that we can use it when we need it later. As a kid, I ordered cafeteria food. I always left all the best stuff for last, but just when I started to get to the good stuff, we had to go, and I had to throw away all my wonderful food. I kept doing that, just because I'm stubborn with those little things that can so easily be done another way.

Anyway, the point is, the future never comes, right? It's like how everyone thinks about the past even though its all over. And then everyone thinks about the future even though it never comes. And it feels like we never think about the present sometimes, because it's over in an instant before it goes into the past. But if you pile up all the times you think about now right now, do you think it would be greater than the piles of future-and-past-thinking? I rarely think during the moment. It's always a little afterwards that I remember it.

I frequently think, "Record this moment." because I feel like I need to stop and absorb everything sometimes. Because this time, you can tell yourself, I know my mom's presence is over there, and my friend's presence is over there, and I'm sitting here, in my room right now, and it's cold. And then maybe if I want to recall something later, I'll remember it better. It works though. I remember a bunch of random times when almost nothing is happening because everything is normal.

Of course, you have to close your eyes when you do this. Because it's too easy to just think, "Record this moment." all the time and then forget it all later. At least with closing your eyes, there's some kind of risk involved. People could look at you funny, for one. Same with wishing. When you wish on something, usually, you don't have forever to do that. So by closing your eyes, it's almost like a little bargain. If you open your eyes too soon, the rest of the wishing time is gone. If you open them too late, then the whole wish doesn't count because you were being too greedy. Or something.

I've forgotten the whole point of this post. Oh well. When you start going off on tangents(I learned that word from my English teacher, because we often go off on these during class.), a lot of times you forget what you wanted to say originally.

Oh, and one more thing. Thinking. I think thinking is when you talk to yourself in your head. When you think actual words. Usually I do that when in doubt. But sometimes when you're undecided, your head is completely quiet. And most of the time, I guess we just do everything silently because it's instinct or routine or something. So if I just gave you an excerpt of my thoughts, it would be like:

Agenda.
Uhh.
Math-no-two hours.

in a span of 2 hours. It's weird how when you sing along to stuff, you don't think the lyrics in your head while the song is playing. It just comes up out of nowhere, all the words in succession. Same with reading and emotions and stuff. And talking to people. So not much word-thinking, I guess. A lot of times I wish I could just print out a script of my thoughts so I can see them all clearly. It's like when you draw things from life, but it's harder because only one point is in focus, but when you draw other parts, you focus on that part. And then since we have 2 eyes, lot's of times a line or shape changes if you close one eye. So taking a photo and drawing that is way easier cause you can't change it by looking at it.

Alright. I'm done.

And I am listening to The Saltwater Room by Owl City. I like that song right now.