Things I Love

My Clarinet- My freedom from day to day problems and worry. It’s my vicarious voice. I love my flute as well. I used it as an escape from clarinet to make sure that I NEVER tire of playing clarinet like I did when I was younger (and obviously less mature). I believe that escape is the key to appreciating one’s life. The same way music allows an escape from politics (and most often money), my love of flute reminds me that I’m not bound to any one thing. Never will I be limited for life because of a single decision. But as much as I like playing the flute, I love my clarinet ten-fold more. I love the dark yet brilliant quality of sound and how it’s so possible to combine such traits.

My Periodic Table of the Elements- Just like musical scales it’s so fascinating to observe how certain elements are more stable than others (like notes in a scale) and work well with others. Molecules are like chords. Periods work in the same way scales do with octets. Each group or family is like a specific pitch class. It’s so amazing how the number 8 has such a huge role in valency and musical pitch.

My book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”- My favorite book by the author Jonathan Safran Foer. The story is about a child who is on search to find out what a mysterious key left by his late father from 9-11 is all about. I really enjoy reading books about children because their lives tend to be so much more colorful and imaginative than adults’ lives. I realized this trend in a memoir by Oliver Sacks (“Uncle Tungsten”).

My Mollard “Lancio” Conducting Baton- My gold-anodized-handled ( I recently learned about the plating process, and it’s so cool how it works) wooden stick of musical POWER. I conducted and taught a piece of three movements (we only worked on the first and third) to a band at my high school and I knew at this time that I wanted to be a renowned conductor at some point in my life. Things may have changed but I know that the baton is about as magical as a magician’s wand. A good conductor has the ability to almost telepathically convey a world of emotions to an ensemble and almost create a set of “musical emotions” that one doesn’t normally feel on a normal day.

I love my books on sciences and philosophy (especially the ones that encorporate music), I love my friends (*winkwink* Ariel Wheelock!) my cat, my laptop no matter how much it messes up sometimes, my clothes, my sunglasses collection, my education especially. I love being at VCU in the department of music and the school of humanities and sciences. I like my pill book and my other reference books on physics and chemistry. I like observing the sabbath. I love my cell phone (HTC Hero). I like the movie “Up”… It’s so charming. In fact, I like everything Pixar puts out… (unfinished list). I love language (English, French, Arabic, proper Ebonics lol). I like my hair, even when I’m not happy with it. I just like having it and being able to do stuff with it. I like fried tofu with peanut sauce. I love DNA and RNA synthesis; I think it’s fascinating.

My Synaesthesiae

Synaesthesia (wikipedia it )

1) Grapheme-color / Personification

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY & Z
123456789

This is a layout of the different colors of each letter or number I see. It doesn’t change. However certain words have their own colors such as the word “rock” just being gray. Also, each letter and number has it’s own gender and personality. Example: 7 is a cynical girl with dark medium-length hair and 9 is a spoiled preppy chick with blonde hair.

2) Mirror Touch

This condition is a little less self-explanatory. Synaesthetes with mirror-touch synaesthesia feel sensations when they see someone else be touched or hit. This is why I physically cannot hit people in sensitive spots. If I struck someone in the nose, I would feel a sensation of pain very briefly in my own nose. When I was a kid I remember a fight I was involved in (that I unproudly won) where I beat the other kid in his head but I cried to mommy because I knew how much it hurt the other guy even though he was trying to hurt me. I’m a very empathetical person because of this form. I’m also a hypochondriac. :-p

3) Sound -Touch Synaesthesia

I used to find it strange that I feel things when I hear certain sounds. I ALWAYS get an excruciating tooth-ache in my bottom tooth when I hear metal screeching or when I even think about it. (No my teeth aren’t grinding together).

Synaesthesia is a very broad subject of people whose senses seem to interfere with other senses. Google or Bing for some information on Synaesthetes because I simply can’t list every different condition. Some cases involve people with perfect pitch who see colors for every sound or pitch. Other cases involve people who might feel a prickly sensation in the hand when they taste chocolate. I have a friend who smells cheese when he hears the name of his uncle.

*Check it out on youtube

Indecisive

So, I believe it’s official that I am the most indecisive person I know. Here’s a perfect example: it took me over an hour of google searching and bing searching to figure out what I wanted to have as my blog background image. This is very normal for me but it’s really starting to affect my life.

Degree Program(s): I’m an ex-trombonist who plays multiple instruments pretty well. I finally managed to switch over to clarinet by re-auditioning at VCU. I thought I FINALLY made up my mind about something. Well…, I’m double-majoring in music education and psychology with the pre-med concentration. Music ED because I will have lots of back-up in music and pre-med because I don’t know if I want to go to grad school or med school. (Apparently there IS a difference between Neurology and Neuroscience). I really like studying the brain, which is partly what makes me like education.

Shopping: I have spent so much money on jeans (money that I barely had) and other items simply because I couldn’t make up my mind on what I wanted. “Oh no… what if I want jeans with holes on some days but on other days I just want regular bootcut jeans….” My shopping strategy has always been “If I can’t pick one, I’ll pick BOTH.”

Selling things: Well, I haven’t really sold anything yet because everything I’ve always come up with some sort of reason to keep everything I own. I wanted to sell my trombone, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking “Maybe ONE day I’ll want to play it again and I spent so much time with it I can’t simply just sell it.”

When people say “it’s up to you” to me: THE WORST THING TO EVER SAY TO ME… Number 1) I’m wondering what would be nice for BOTH of us, and Number 2) I can’t decide what I would want to do MYSELF

But I’d have to say that the degree program section is the part that’s troubling me the most. I’m never going to be successful unless I either PICK ONE… or figure out a way to be successful combining BOTH which would be one plan. We all have to have a focus in our lives. No one wants to look at a photo where the background is just as clear as the foreground.