In Which My Fanciful Nothings Go on a Rampage
"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." - Anne of Green Gables
October: What a crazy month! It has been going swimmingly for the most part, many writing assignments, Biology tests, and other schoolwork. As far as what I'm involved in, the list goes on and on. It suffices to say that I am quite busy and happily employed with what I am doing.
October. I think that fall is the sweetest time of the year. The leaves are turning, and the sky is unpredictable. Some days, it is crystal blue, and others, it is dark and mysterious. At night, the sky is cold and peaceful, and a feeling of calm resonates in the stars- stationary and embodying perfection.
Nothing extraordinary has happened this month which begs mention, so I shall include some poetry or other nonsense to occupy my readers in its place.
(This is a creative piece that I turned in for my English class a couple weeks ago.)
October: What a crazy month! It has been going swimmingly for the most part, many writing assignments, Biology tests, and other schoolwork. As far as what I'm involved in, the list goes on and on. It suffices to say that I am quite busy and happily employed with what I am doing.
October. I think that fall is the sweetest time of the year. The leaves are turning, and the sky is unpredictable. Some days, it is crystal blue, and others, it is dark and mysterious. At night, the sky is cold and peaceful, and a feeling of calm resonates in the stars- stationary and embodying perfection.
Nothing extraordinary has happened this month which begs mention, so I shall include some poetry or other nonsense to occupy my readers in its place.
(This is a creative piece that I turned in for my English class a couple weeks ago.)
Fireflies and Song
“Mommy, can we listen to the music, where it goes?” I asked, trying to tap out a melody and sing it really fast so that she would understand. I was maybe four years old and sitting on the floor of our little apartment home. It is kind of a blur to me now, but I remember the cupboard-like kitchen and the white carpet in the living room. I was sitting on that carpet and we were listening to Steve McConnell. I remember listening to his songs and imagining him singing them, a tall, white-haired man with green eyes. That was what he was in my mind. I liked crazy colors. I remember being in the basement and spinning crazily in a striped neon leotard that my mom had sewn me. I was listening to this Quebecois folk melody, the one that I was trying to get my mom to play right now.
“Mommy, please play it!”
“Are you talking about La Bottine Souriante?”
“Yes! That one. Can we listen to it?”
I was spunky, I loved to dance, and I was expressive. My parents always said that I verbalized well. Mom put on the Quebecois music. I loved dancing to it. I spun around in circles and pretended to be a ballerina, gracefully dipping and bowing about on a stage with a red velvet curtain. Of course, my lopsided and off-kilter appearance as I spun about that day was sure to make people laugh in amusement rather than marvel at the beautiful sight before them. That was one of my first memories with music.
That one Quebecois band is what I remember most about my childhood.
Dad would take me to school in the mornings sometimes in kindergarten, and he tells me that I would always ask for ‘Smoov Jazz 101.9’. I inadvertently correlate Jazz with that chapter of my life. My kindergarten career was not too memorable, but Jazz in the car brings it all back.
By the time I was five, my parents had me playing piano, and I tried ballet too. Dancing hurt. I could point my toes really well by the time I was done. That’s about all I remember of ballet though because my parents decided to make piano the focus.
My piano recitals were formal for the first few years. I wore a blue dress one time, and a purple one the other time. I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It made me feel quite important. I remember sitting straight and tall at the piano bench in the church, my first time on a stage, with perfect form, looking very grown-up in my mind’s eye, and playing out my little melody. The solemnity of the affair was overwhelming, so thank goodness for cookies afterward.
I continued piano with that teacher for a little longer, but as a student and teacher, we didn’t get along too well. She made me bow(incessantly, it felt to me), and she was constantly critiquing my form. When I was six I stopped piano lessons with her. I was homeschooled and just finished with first grade. Although I didn’t do anything musical during my second-grade year, I made a friend who took piano. One day I went with her to a lesson. It was exceedingly boring to sit there and watch her, and I think the teacher realized how bored I was because she asked me if I wanted to show her some stuff that I had learned at the end. Without hesitation, I did, and after playing her a few songs, I wanted to take lessons. I took the flier that she gave me home to my mom. We thought about it, and I really wanted to do it. They agreed and lessons began with her. Her recitals were in the spring and fall and were held at the public library. Though they were nerve-wracking, they were an excellent learning experience. I was eight at that point.
My new teacher had a different set of books that she taught with. Because I was halfway through the first Suzuki book, from my first teacher, my new teacher taught me the rest of the way through the Suzuki book. By the end of fourth grade, I had every piece in the book memorized, and we had a recital where I played through the whole book. It was just past my ninth birthday. I invited everyone that I knew. In the program that we gave out, my mom explained my musical journey up to that point in my life. It was long- as if I had already experienced so much in music, but now that I am older, I cannot see how there could have been much of a story because I was so young.
At the end of that summer, the first week of school, the week of fair, I went up to stay the week with a family in Livingston, Montana. My friend and I participated in a homeschool production of Pinocchio. We were puppets. My costume consisted of a bright baggy red shirt, big green pants that didn’t fit, and a yellow sash. I watched as the makeup artist put delicate sparkles around the fairy’s eyes, and I was excited for it to be my turn. Imagine my disappointment when all I got were red circles on my cheeks.
That spring I signed up for a church program for kids on Sunday afternoons where we did drama. My first role was “Townsperson.” We acted and sang songs. I always wanted to sing a solo, but never got one, because they always wanted me for acting instead. It was something that I did every year from then until my sixth-grade year. The spring of my sixth-grade year I was the main girl character, “Esther,” in that play. It really made me love the stage.
I played trombone in band in sixth grade at Liberty Christian School. I entered in the talent show that they were putting on in the spring. It was kind of looked down on in sixth grade because my classmates were all trying to be cool, but I really wanted to be in it because I loved singing and playing the piano.
It was one of my first times on a darkened stage all alone, addressing the audience. I sang “All Nations” up there. It was a Bible song from a family of singers that I listened to often at the time. Being up there scared me, but also was an amazing thrill. I loved the feeling it gave me. I also played a song on the piano. It was from the movie “Man From Snowy River”. My mom says that I caused an awed hush to fill the crowd of four hundred in the gymnasium from the time when my fingers touched the keys to when I stood and bowed.
At home, when I did chores, we often listened to an artist named Josh Garrels. I loved his music. Around this time I also fell in love with a certain album, called “Firefly and Song” by Sara Groves. We were on a road trip and it was getting dark. I had headphones on with Sara Groves, and I had a highlighter and a sheet of paper. I “wrote poetry” in the car on that sheet of paper, thinking that it would end up being deep and inspirational. I tried to read it the next day, and could not even understand it. I look back on that and laugh.
At that point, we lived out in the country, and the drive to school every morning was long. Dad and I would listen to music in the car. That was when I started paying attention to artists and song names. Dad would explain them to me and tell me about the backgrounds of all the songs. We listened to K-Love, classical, pop, and, of course, jazz. On 105.3, one station that we often found ourselves on, I called in for the “Nearly Impossible Question” with my dad’s help more than once. I really enjoyed those morning drives.
We moved back to town my eighth grade year, and I decided to go back to Liberty. That year I started singing more. I was told more than once to be quiet because I was annoying people. My friend who told me was just being bossy though. I didn’t listen. That’s what I thought then anyway. Come to think of it, that’s still what I think.
I started going to a youth group that year. We sang music every week. I wished that I could be on the praise team up front. It was run by the older kids. That fall at family camp, I was playing a song on the piano that I had learned from my teacher. The Phantom of the Opera theme song to be exact. It captured the attention of another girl my age, who got really excited. She and I became friends after that, and as I had never seen The Phantom of the Opera, we decided that she must show it to me at some point. As it happened, I went up to her house (she lived in Seattle) and watched it in the spring. I fell in love with the music and became, well, pretty obsessed with it. I practiced the operatic elements in it and that improved my voice. My mom appreciated the fact that I was not trying to copy the airy voices of pop singers any longer.
We go to the Juniper Dunes as a family every year, and one year as we drove up there, ‘Clair De Lune’ came on the radio. “Dad! Turn it up! I love this song!” I said to my Dad, who responded with, “I guess I’m lucky to have a daughter with such good tastes in music. It’s funny to have you ask to turn up classical music instead of Justin Beiber or something.” I hate Justin Bieber. I always have, even before I knew that it was pronounced “Bieber”, and not “Beaver”.
From there I also started listening to Les Miserables. My mom told me that before I could watch Les Miserables I had to read the book. My best friend gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday, and I did as Mom said. I read Les Miserables. It took me nine months of steady reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, but Les Miserables is only half “story”. The other half deals with the issues of France in the 1800s. Once I had finished it, I finally “earned” the right to watch Les Miserables. I fell completely in love.
That summer (my ninth grade summer) I went to a church camp. I have gone to a camp almost every year since I have been eight, so this was not my first time. I was getting into music at that point though, and there was a class on worship, and those who went to it could help lead worship at the end of the week. I was so excited! In front of the whole camp, I got to harmonize with the lead girl singer.
The next fall at family camp I was sitting on the dock, chatting with a new friend of mine. She asked me if I liked opera. Up to that point, I hadn’t listened to any true opera, but I said “Yes”, because of my love for Phantom of the Opera. She told me about this one play that she loved that was on YouTube, and I suggested we watch it. There was only an internet connection on one part of the property that we were staying at. Every time an event would end, we’d go back to that spot and watch some more of the opera. That caused me to love opera, and by that point, I felt pretty well-rounded in my musical tastes.
This last year I was on a show choir called Encore. We sang songs from “The Greatest Showman,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” and an Irving Berlin medley. I sang “Blue Skies” as a solo.
At the end of last school year, I got up the nerve to ask about joining the music team at my church. I began with helping lead the songs on our VBS mission trip. We stood in front of twenty or so kids and sang songs with simple hand motions for them to follow. The knack of it was acting confident and smiling. Simple as it was, it helped me feel out how it felt to lead others in music. Then came leading worship at girls camp later in the summer. That meant that I was on the stage for the whole week singing into a mic!
This Sunday evening is our first worship service. I will be singing up on the stage all year and leading others in the music! My thirteen-year-old self is leaping for joy as I think of it. On the way home from the camp that I led worship at, my friend introduced me to something new.
“Listen to this song!” said Hannah. It was “Burn” from Hamilton. I did listen to it, and I enjoyed it. I downloaded the whole Hamilton soundtrack for a road trip that my family and I went on at the end of summer, and listened through. Because Hamilton has elements of rap, I like to say that my musical tastes have now completely diversified. I love so many genres! My mom says in response to this that I now only need to listen to Classic Rock and Classic Folk.
I walked inside after getting home from a camp in July. It was the Friday before my birthday, and there were balloons at the top of the stairs. I smiled. I was not surprised, but I was pleased. I went up. My siblings were asleep, so the house was quiet. My mom told me not to go downstairs. I already knew what they were getting me for my birthday because they had talked about it since last fall. It was a new piano. When my dad came home, we all went downstairs and looked. The piano was completely black and shiny. It was not a keyboard, but it was electric.
“Some parents buy their children a car for their sixteenth birthday, but we thought that this would be better worth our money.” My parents said. I agree.
Music has been a fundamental building block for who I am as a person from the beginning. It has entertained me, taught me, uplifted me, and caused me to look at things in a whole new light. The beauty and power that music holds are unmeasurable, and the way it makes me feel is unmatchable. Music has taught me what beauty really is.
“Mommy, please play it!”
“Are you talking about La Bottine Souriante?”
“Yes! That one. Can we listen to it?”
I was spunky, I loved to dance, and I was expressive. My parents always said that I verbalized well. Mom put on the Quebecois music. I loved dancing to it. I spun around in circles and pretended to be a ballerina, gracefully dipping and bowing about on a stage with a red velvet curtain. Of course, my lopsided and off-kilter appearance as I spun about that day was sure to make people laugh in amusement rather than marvel at the beautiful sight before them. That was one of my first memories with music.
That one Quebecois band is what I remember most about my childhood.
Dad would take me to school in the mornings sometimes in kindergarten, and he tells me that I would always ask for ‘Smoov Jazz 101.9’. I inadvertently correlate Jazz with that chapter of my life. My kindergarten career was not too memorable, but Jazz in the car brings it all back.
By the time I was five, my parents had me playing piano, and I tried ballet too. Dancing hurt. I could point my toes really well by the time I was done. That’s about all I remember of ballet though because my parents decided to make piano the focus.
My piano recitals were formal for the first few years. I wore a blue dress one time, and a purple one the other time. I was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It made me feel quite important. I remember sitting straight and tall at the piano bench in the church, my first time on a stage, with perfect form, looking very grown-up in my mind’s eye, and playing out my little melody. The solemnity of the affair was overwhelming, so thank goodness for cookies afterward.
I continued piano with that teacher for a little longer, but as a student and teacher, we didn’t get along too well. She made me bow(incessantly, it felt to me), and she was constantly critiquing my form. When I was six I stopped piano lessons with her. I was homeschooled and just finished with first grade. Although I didn’t do anything musical during my second-grade year, I made a friend who took piano. One day I went with her to a lesson. It was exceedingly boring to sit there and watch her, and I think the teacher realized how bored I was because she asked me if I wanted to show her some stuff that I had learned at the end. Without hesitation, I did, and after playing her a few songs, I wanted to take lessons. I took the flier that she gave me home to my mom. We thought about it, and I really wanted to do it. They agreed and lessons began with her. Her recitals were in the spring and fall and were held at the public library. Though they were nerve-wracking, they were an excellent learning experience. I was eight at that point.
My new teacher had a different set of books that she taught with. Because I was halfway through the first Suzuki book, from my first teacher, my new teacher taught me the rest of the way through the Suzuki book. By the end of fourth grade, I had every piece in the book memorized, and we had a recital where I played through the whole book. It was just past my ninth birthday. I invited everyone that I knew. In the program that we gave out, my mom explained my musical journey up to that point in my life. It was long- as if I had already experienced so much in music, but now that I am older, I cannot see how there could have been much of a story because I was so young.
At the end of that summer, the first week of school, the week of fair, I went up to stay the week with a family in Livingston, Montana. My friend and I participated in a homeschool production of Pinocchio. We were puppets. My costume consisted of a bright baggy red shirt, big green pants that didn’t fit, and a yellow sash. I watched as the makeup artist put delicate sparkles around the fairy’s eyes, and I was excited for it to be my turn. Imagine my disappointment when all I got were red circles on my cheeks.
That spring I signed up for a church program for kids on Sunday afternoons where we did drama. My first role was “Townsperson.” We acted and sang songs. I always wanted to sing a solo, but never got one, because they always wanted me for acting instead. It was something that I did every year from then until my sixth-grade year. The spring of my sixth-grade year I was the main girl character, “Esther,” in that play. It really made me love the stage.
I played trombone in band in sixth grade at Liberty Christian School. I entered in the talent show that they were putting on in the spring. It was kind of looked down on in sixth grade because my classmates were all trying to be cool, but I really wanted to be in it because I loved singing and playing the piano.
It was one of my first times on a darkened stage all alone, addressing the audience. I sang “All Nations” up there. It was a Bible song from a family of singers that I listened to often at the time. Being up there scared me, but also was an amazing thrill. I loved the feeling it gave me. I also played a song on the piano. It was from the movie “Man From Snowy River”. My mom says that I caused an awed hush to fill the crowd of four hundred in the gymnasium from the time when my fingers touched the keys to when I stood and bowed.
At home, when I did chores, we often listened to an artist named Josh Garrels. I loved his music. Around this time I also fell in love with a certain album, called “Firefly and Song” by Sara Groves. We were on a road trip and it was getting dark. I had headphones on with Sara Groves, and I had a highlighter and a sheet of paper. I “wrote poetry” in the car on that sheet of paper, thinking that it would end up being deep and inspirational. I tried to read it the next day, and could not even understand it. I look back on that and laugh.
At that point, we lived out in the country, and the drive to school every morning was long. Dad and I would listen to music in the car. That was when I started paying attention to artists and song names. Dad would explain them to me and tell me about the backgrounds of all the songs. We listened to K-Love, classical, pop, and, of course, jazz. On 105.3, one station that we often found ourselves on, I called in for the “Nearly Impossible Question” with my dad’s help more than once. I really enjoyed those morning drives.
We moved back to town my eighth grade year, and I decided to go back to Liberty. That year I started singing more. I was told more than once to be quiet because I was annoying people. My friend who told me was just being bossy though. I didn’t listen. That’s what I thought then anyway. Come to think of it, that’s still what I think.
I started going to a youth group that year. We sang music every week. I wished that I could be on the praise team up front. It was run by the older kids. That fall at family camp, I was playing a song on the piano that I had learned from my teacher. The Phantom of the Opera theme song to be exact. It captured the attention of another girl my age, who got really excited. She and I became friends after that, and as I had never seen The Phantom of the Opera, we decided that she must show it to me at some point. As it happened, I went up to her house (she lived in Seattle) and watched it in the spring. I fell in love with the music and became, well, pretty obsessed with it. I practiced the operatic elements in it and that improved my voice. My mom appreciated the fact that I was not trying to copy the airy voices of pop singers any longer.
We go to the Juniper Dunes as a family every year, and one year as we drove up there, ‘Clair De Lune’ came on the radio. “Dad! Turn it up! I love this song!” I said to my Dad, who responded with, “I guess I’m lucky to have a daughter with such good tastes in music. It’s funny to have you ask to turn up classical music instead of Justin Beiber or something.” I hate Justin Bieber. I always have, even before I knew that it was pronounced “Bieber”, and not “Beaver”.
From there I also started listening to Les Miserables. My mom told me that before I could watch Les Miserables I had to read the book. My best friend gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday, and I did as Mom said. I read Les Miserables. It took me nine months of steady reading. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, but Les Miserables is only half “story”. The other half deals with the issues of France in the 1800s. Once I had finished it, I finally “earned” the right to watch Les Miserables. I fell completely in love.
That summer (my ninth grade summer) I went to a church camp. I have gone to a camp almost every year since I have been eight, so this was not my first time. I was getting into music at that point though, and there was a class on worship, and those who went to it could help lead worship at the end of the week. I was so excited! In front of the whole camp, I got to harmonize with the lead girl singer.
The next fall at family camp I was sitting on the dock, chatting with a new friend of mine. She asked me if I liked opera. Up to that point, I hadn’t listened to any true opera, but I said “Yes”, because of my love for Phantom of the Opera. She told me about this one play that she loved that was on YouTube, and I suggested we watch it. There was only an internet connection on one part of the property that we were staying at. Every time an event would end, we’d go back to that spot and watch some more of the opera. That caused me to love opera, and by that point, I felt pretty well-rounded in my musical tastes.
This last year I was on a show choir called Encore. We sang songs from “The Greatest Showman,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” and an Irving Berlin medley. I sang “Blue Skies” as a solo.
At the end of last school year, I got up the nerve to ask about joining the music team at my church. I began with helping lead the songs on our VBS mission trip. We stood in front of twenty or so kids and sang songs with simple hand motions for them to follow. The knack of it was acting confident and smiling. Simple as it was, it helped me feel out how it felt to lead others in music. Then came leading worship at girls camp later in the summer. That meant that I was on the stage for the whole week singing into a mic!
This Sunday evening is our first worship service. I will be singing up on the stage all year and leading others in the music! My thirteen-year-old self is leaping for joy as I think of it. On the way home from the camp that I led worship at, my friend introduced me to something new.
“Listen to this song!” said Hannah. It was “Burn” from Hamilton. I did listen to it, and I enjoyed it. I downloaded the whole Hamilton soundtrack for a road trip that my family and I went on at the end of summer, and listened through. Because Hamilton has elements of rap, I like to say that my musical tastes have now completely diversified. I love so many genres! My mom says in response to this that I now only need to listen to Classic Rock and Classic Folk.
I walked inside after getting home from a camp in July. It was the Friday before my birthday, and there were balloons at the top of the stairs. I smiled. I was not surprised, but I was pleased. I went up. My siblings were asleep, so the house was quiet. My mom told me not to go downstairs. I already knew what they were getting me for my birthday because they had talked about it since last fall. It was a new piano. When my dad came home, we all went downstairs and looked. The piano was completely black and shiny. It was not a keyboard, but it was electric.
“Some parents buy their children a car for their sixteenth birthday, but we thought that this would be better worth our money.” My parents said. I agree.
Music has been a fundamental building block for who I am as a person from the beginning. It has entertained me, taught me, uplifted me, and caused me to look at things in a whole new light. The beauty and power that music holds are unmeasurable, and the way it makes me feel is unmatchable. Music has taught me what beauty really is.
Fall and Friends
My Biology Notes(Theme: Les Miserables)
Style
Comments
Post a Comment