By the way, I'm still here, but this week, and last week are/were really busy...

Make picnics, not war.

What would we do without cartoonishness and ridiculously bad painting skills.

Gosh, I just don't know.



Acapella

I think the voice is sometimes undervalued, or maybe people just don't get that singing can work without a guitar.

Anyway...

Sing About Love - Chumbawamba

Bonny Wood Green - the Kokopelli version (I don't know where this song came from so I don't know if it's actually meant to be acapella or not)


John Williams is the man - this guy on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk5_OSsawz4
not the original version, I don't think, but whatever.

The Golf War Song - Moxy Fruvous

violin tuner peg, scroll.
I don't know why I drew this

"I knew who I was when I woke up this morning, but I'm afraid I must have changed several times since then"

Believe it or not, there is a story here.

In the field next to my school on the way back from gym class one day, I found a whole bunch of pieces of smashed wood.  I thought it was odd that they were varnished, flat and had rounded edges, there was one abandoned fret board lying on the ground with them and that one especially large rounded piece was tied to a tree with guitar strings.

Then it clicked.

I spent the rest of the day finding the remaining pieces of smashed guitar from people that had picked pieces of wood up from the ground, and then I went home, and spent two weeks with super glue in my back yard.

I don't know why I do these things.  I must be crazy.  There is no other explanation.

When I had successfully glued together as many pieces as possible, I realized I had extra paint, and the guitar's soul was broken anyway, so I may as well make it look cool, so my friend and I spent about half an hour splashing paint on the broken guitar.

'Twas fun.

I guess it could be considered art, but I mostly think it's greatly symbolic. 

violin tuner peg, scroll.
I don't know why I der this

How is it that I know so many wonderful people?
http://www.youtube.com/user/hannahhaderlein#p/a/u/1/AD79ex-YGss
I think everyone alive should listen to this song, but then again, I am biased...

The fact of the matter is that I love Winter.

I love how the trees lined up on the sidewalk steadily fade into a haze of whiteness.  I love trying and failing to catch snowflakes on my tongue.  I love walking down Whyte Ave during the snowfall and seeing just cold haze and neon lights.  I love Chrismas trees and I love listening to the Kokopelli version of Wintersong until I don't need to press play anymore to hear the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHxeiEJ09PI

But at the same time, it amazes me every year how the first snowfall seems to change everything.  You wake up one morning and the whole world's still asleep, hidden under this soft coat of downy frozen water.  Pieces of ice are floating down the river like sugar spun lilypads, and there's a certain element of sadness in the air.  Joy, sure.  Bells, laughter, pretty twinkling lights, candy canes, hot chocolate and love - yes, but at the same time there's a kind of calm melancholy, not sadness, not to the extent of wanting to cry, but a sort of ecstasy at the same time.  Maybe it's just me, but either way I wish I could understand it.

All I know, is all I want is to sit in a Second Cup on Whyte Ave and 105th street and drink hot chocolate. 

One of the few things I've ever done that actually has meaning.  But I'm not going to say what that meaning is, because then the internet would think I was crazy

You see,

I had a fantastic plan to make a blog called "talk to strangers" where people would send in stories of conversations they'd had with strangers and it would be awesome.  It was kind of meant to break down the idea that our parents ingrained in our brains that strangers = bad, because they're not.  They're just people.  And sometimes they're people who can just be really funny, or they're people who can help you more than your friends can because they have an unbiased point of view, and there can be some people who are just really nice, and they don't have to be nice to people they've never met before , but they are.  And it pisses me off, because I went on blogger, and I tried to make the blog, but the url talktostrangers.blogspot.com, but it turned out that it already existed.  It was created in 2004 and there's one post,  And you know what it says?  DO YOU KNOW?  No, you don't.

It says...

"Testing"

And that's it.  It's a waste of a perfectly good url.  And IT MAKES ME ANGRY.

Then I tried "talkingtostrangers.blogspot.com" but that is also a used url.  It was made in 2002, and there are five posts.  AND NONE OF THEM MAKE SENSE.  Okay I lied, there are six.  But you know what really makes me angry is that the chicka that made this blog HAS THE SAME NAME AS ME.

WHAT THE SHIT????

talkingwithstrangers.blogspot.com was better.  It was an attractive woman who rode her motorbike or something similar.  She actually posted though.  I haven't read it yet, but I want to.  I really really do.

ANGER FACE

Someday it'll happen.

OH OOOH OH OH OH

Maybe ....

Maybe I should just do it in a sketchbook, get my friends to do pieces and then leave it at a bus stop somewhere, hope that it makes its way back to me.

Meh....

Could be fun.

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wait wait....
wanna show you something I think is cool because I have no life.
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Or maybe I'll just post my experiences on this blog under the tag "talk to strangers"

my imperfect dancer...

Also done from a picture by a favorite friend (he once made a post on his blog about how I was his best friend, so I have to at least add one word of niceness)  :)

The original picture (on his blog):

http://taketheplunge213.tumblr.com/post/11238213919/clawrence

On Dance

I don't know who said that dance was the poety of the foot, but I kind of think they're a little bit of a moron, because I'm pretty sure that dance is the poetry of the entire goddamn body.

Actually it was John Dryden and he lived in the 1600s so that's okay then
I pretty much think that dance is one of the most beautiful things man has ever decided to make happen.  It amazes me how fluid dancers are, and it pisses me off when people who don't dance say"I could do that" because if they could, I could, and I can't, trust me, I've tried.

It never ceases to amaze me how dancers move, how fluid they are, how they can fly and fall and hit level ground again and they're barely even human, or maybe they're the epitome of human, but whatever the hell it is, it's beautiful.

Link to my completely unbiased favorite dance video of all time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=refn1BLUf0M

Dance movie (which is still kind of a video because the movie itself is only 30 minutes long)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itDRZlc7d8U
About this movie, you can probably tell, but I'm going to mention it anyways, one of the two main dancers (also fluid and the epitome of human) has no legs, and he dances.  He's really good at dancing, considering he has no legs.

The ballet I saw tonight (Wonderland)(Alice In)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVSojDikNIQ
There was also much flashy tech stuff , which was also cool, but the entire thing was actually just brilliant. 

Okay, youtube is a distraction now

I won a game of Monopoly for the first time ever last night.  I also danced with my sister to loud Welsh music. 

I wish someone would comment.  I feel all sad and alone.

On Snow, Love, and Donovan

It was supposed to snow today.  So I left the house decked out with frog mittens and all, and was sadly disappointed.  I really, really wish it would snow, just so there was a change, if that makes any sense at all.

Yesterday we had a guest speaker that I got to miss school for - Deen Larsen, founder and director of the Schubert Institute, if I'm right.  He was talking maily about Goethe (the guy who wrote Faust and the Sorrows of Young Werther, which is supposed to be a fantastically depressing book that sparked the whole blue raincoat yellow rubber boots thing, which is now a classic) and wholisticism and ... just.. oh my god....

One thing he said was that (relative to Goethe) *goes to fetch notes*... I can't remember exactly, but there was a lot of opposites and pieces and the whole picture - how erotic and sacred are essentially the same thing in nature, and that art and science are two aspects of the same thing, which is essentially just love, and like joy and suffering can't really be separated. 

The joy and suffering part came from a poem Goethe wrote (that is also a Schubert song) - "The rose on the heath" where a little boy sees a red rose in the distance, and runs up to look at it more closely.  "Morning lovely" was how the poem described it (red like the sunrise, red which is the colour of birth, sex, and death, essentially) and the little boy has a dialogue with the rose, where he says he's going to pluck the rose, and the rose says she's going to stab him with her thorns so he won't forget her.  But he plucks the rose anyway, basically taking the beauty even though he knows the pain comes with it - saying yes to the mystery

He was also talking about true inner nature, and how it came through not through what you say but the way you say it, and talking about the inner nature of people, and of trees, and how everything is connected, but not just parts of the whole, but the whole is also completely in each of its parts, and it all made a lot more sense when he said it.

"Become what is in nature, it will use you in a beautiful way"

He also talked about a scene in Faust that had to do with the sunrise and a waterfall, and there was more about colours. 

I don't know, it was all just very beautiful and amazing and inspiring and made me want to learn German. 

And speaking of colours, as I was writing this, I was listening to Donovan, who has a song about colours, but that's in relation to love and suchlike, so it's not really connected in any way shape or form