Haha this is a cute video!
Meiko - Boys with Girlfriends
Living is so tiring to me. Maybe it's the way I allocate my time that exhausts me so quickly--recently I've been inserting blue boxes into every white space on my Google Calendar without taking into account how much ballroom exhausts me or how much time I need to get ready or where I need to leave time to breathe. People at Penn impress me so much with their work hard, play hard mentality and how they manage to keep it all together through it all (or at least keep a reasonable front). They seem to able to make Monday classes with hangovers, get straight-As yet not be one of those studious "missing" people.
In New Zealand, things were all about meeting people and exploring which was absolutely awesomely relaxing. But as evidenced by the independent project I took up and the winter job search and the side work I started on my portfolio while I was there, something in my nature stops me from sitting still for long periods of time. I constantly need to push myself, I need to be better... I need to go out on Fridays yet I need to work on my demo reel alone tonight. But unlike most of my peers, living this double life is way-y-y beyond my capacity. So I end up stretching myself out until the breaking point and I dissolve into a blubbery mess over existential/quarter-life crisis of-the-month. It's almost as routine as my menstrual cycle. (OH MY GOD. Correlation. Haha.)
I can't stop. I can't stop wanting even though it's wearing me down. And I know it's a stretch to say I'll never truly be happy chasing my desires 'round and 'round, but it really scares the shit out of me to think that there's so end in sight. It almost makes me want to give up now and sleep for the next twenty years. Except I'd wake up all pissy everyone else got their degrees and dream careers while all I accomplished was... nothing... I can't even stand the thought. That's not happiness to me. Somehow, idle happiness is not happiness to me.
How do you do it, summa cum laude fraternity boy? How do you take seven classes, ballroom dancer? Where do you find the extra time and energy--and how much are you willing to sell it to me for?
MIA - Ten Dollar
I'm feeling inordinately pissy right now. The carrot-cake-flavoured Clif Bar I'm eating has real bits of carrot & looks like one of those rubber gag barf splatters. Ballroom sucks. I am growing horizontally. Don't want to study for Physics tomorrow.
What can I get for ten dollar? Anything you want.
Junior Boys - In The Morning / Daft Punk - Technologic
I don't know what happened to me between the last fourteen years of my education and this semester, but all of a sudden I'm making it to my early-morning class consistently on time. Every time the fifth alarm on my cell phone rings at 8:30am I'm certain I won't think consciously again until I awake with a start four hours later, but then I surprise myself by dashing down the stairs and making it. And staying alert and interested throughout 90 minutes of lecture.
I'm sort of scaring myself.
What brings me to Annenberg two 9ams a week is a class called Communication and Persuasion, taught by Professor Cappella--yeah, I'm trying to learn their names now. *(When I took Physics I didn't realize my prof was Hollebeek and not Fortune for, eh, a month or so...) This is a boring topic for someone completely uninterested in advertising, politics, or anything that requires this manipulative skill, but the lecturer makes it interesting in the way he speaks and presents his points. I've had too many teachers (unfortunately in compsci, math, and other technical fields) that don't speak well or don't engage their class in the topic, and because of this I inevitably lose interest and stop attending class at all. And he's very clear, which I realize is important when I place him next to my engaging but hard-to-follow World Film prof (he throws in so much film jargon that goes way over my head). He's making me freakishly excited about formulating a Health PSA to practice persuasion techniques; he even makes me want to raise my hand in a big lecture class. He shows the Colbert Report and Blagojevich interviews in class that are entertaining yet intregal in my understanding of his examples. This is really a good teacher. For once, I feel like I'm doing good in spending (as my one-time Biology prof informed us) the $4000 we do per class at Penn.
Rediscovering Van Pelt in between lectures while rediscovering So You Think You Can Dance music from 2007 while avoiding Physics. I haven't been a good student since college, a straight-A student since 9th grade, a top student since 6th when I moved from near-rural Massachusetts to the Three Village School District. I know grades are all relative, but I wonder if I can make this education worth it after two years of slacking off.
Listening: Junior Boys - In The Morning (this song is so hot, in a sleazy way) | Daft Punk - Technologic (after the Humans are Dead robots will go clubbing to this song)
I'm sort of scaring myself.
What brings me to Annenberg two 9ams a week is a class called Communication and Persuasion, taught by Professor Cappella--yeah, I'm trying to learn their names now. *(When I took Physics I didn't realize my prof was Hollebeek and not Fortune for, eh, a month or so...) This is a boring topic for someone completely uninterested in advertising, politics, or anything that requires this manipulative skill, but the lecturer makes it interesting in the way he speaks and presents his points. I've had too many teachers (unfortunately in compsci, math, and other technical fields) that don't speak well or don't engage their class in the topic, and because of this I inevitably lose interest and stop attending class at all. And he's very clear, which I realize is important when I place him next to my engaging but hard-to-follow World Film prof (he throws in so much film jargon that goes way over my head). He's making me freakishly excited about formulating a Health PSA to practice persuasion techniques; he even makes me want to raise my hand in a big lecture class. He shows the Colbert Report and Blagojevich interviews in class that are entertaining yet intregal in my understanding of his examples. This is really a good teacher. For once, I feel like I'm doing good in spending (as my one-time Biology prof informed us) the $4000 we do per class at Penn.
Rediscovering Van Pelt in between lectures while rediscovering So You Think You Can Dance music from 2007 while avoiding Physics. I haven't been a good student since college, a straight-A student since 9th grade, a top student since 6th when I moved from near-rural Massachusetts to the Three Village School District. I know grades are all relative, but I wonder if I can make this education worth it after two years of slacking off.
Listening: Junior Boys - In The Morning (this song is so hot, in a sleazy way) | Daft Punk - Technologic (after the Humans are Dead robots will go clubbing to this song)
Lou Reed - Perfect Day
This is your brain... this is your brain on drugs. While hobbling to Student Health this afternoon every song on my iPod seemed too loud, too fast, too offensive... except for this one! Fever-head manifested as a melody sounds like this. Lalala.
Just a perfect day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone good
Just a perfect day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else
Someone good
Stars - Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
This is one of my favororororitest songs of all time--it's so pretty I can't describe it in words, you'll have to listen for yourself. A friend of mine introduced it to me in freshman year, during which I remember many nights listening to it on my iPod, lying awake in bed and thinking. Strangely happy memories :)
I am gluttonously devouring a tub of cereal and blogging. Too much dance and class and sickness and deadline-ness there's no time to breathe. And think. And happily become a fattie.
Aretha Franklin - My Country Tis Of Thee / Itzhak, Yo-Yo, co. - Air & Simple Gifts
Aretha and her gargantuan bow
Yo-Yo Ma is so smiley :D
MGMT - The Youth
Wtf is up with the glittery hipster children in this video? I never liked this song but it got very stuck in my head for no reason on Saturday.
This is a call of arms to live and love and sleep together
We could flood the streets with love or light or heat whatever
Lock the parents out, cut a rug, twist and shout
Wave your hands
Make it rain
For stars will rise again
The youth is starting to change
Are you starting to change?
Are you?
Together, together, together, together...
Elliott Smith - Son of Sam
Kind of satisfying song for a day spent lost in the disastrous NYC weekend subway system, dodging unwanted inquiries about my marriage plans from creepy men, waiting around in the cold to avoid being stalked by said creepy men, being stranded in a sketchy area of Queens, realizing the extent of my ballroom regression, feeling highly uncomfortable contemplating racism, finding metal shavings in my already crappy diner pasta, and functioning on three one-hour pockets of sleep I got last night because the apartment is so hot it parched my throat to hell and repeatedly woke me up.
Bleh.
Ben Folds - Smoke
Double Feature! Because I'm trying to compensate for not being able to find "Alice Childress" on YouTube, here are two versions of "Smoke." The first was performed in 1997 with Ben Folds Five on a series called Sessions at West 54th, and the second was done in 2005 with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra. Neither mimics the studio version on Whatever and Ever Amen, yet both have their unique charm--the first because it's so raw, unpolished, and honest; the second because it simply sends chills down my spine.
So sleepy don't wanna go to MAC. =P
So sleepy don't wanna go to MAC. =P
Sessions at West 54th
Western Australian Symphony Orchestra
Western Australian Symphony Orchestra
Flight of the Conchords - The Most Beautiful Girl
This has inexplicably been stuck in my head all day... maybe all week. You're so beautiful, like a... tree... or a high-class prostitute. I constantly have the urge to blurt out lines from this song at inappropriate moments...
I just went with one of my roommates (I almost said flattie) to stand in line at the opening of Chipotle on Walnut Street and it's damnnnn cold. The line stretched halfway down the block and by the time I got my free burrito an hour later my toes were frozen and I could only c-walk home. Now I am sitting on top of my heater that is turned up to 85 degrees because I've decided to take full advantage of the services Rodin provides and who am I to say no to free stuff? This might also go well with the free leftovers I pilfered from people who don't finish their meals.
Hooray for only one class on Thursdays, a nice view, snow flurries I can watch floating by my 13th floor window but don't have to walk in. Hooray.
Mazzy Star - Into Dust
I can't fall asleep. Before Melatonin and the prevalence of wireless internet in laptops, which together made my insomnia seem a little less daunting, late at night when I couldn't sleep I'd do what I was doing five minutes ago: staring at the lights on my ceiling. It's a rare sight nowadays, that blank corner at the top of the room decorated with illuminated stripes let in by the blinds. This scene is a faded memory of countless other sleepless nights in my life, all important in my mind... because nowadays I never see the ceiling lights anymore unless I've just gone to a new place and haven't yet settled into the routine of escaping online. After the commotion of moving subsides and leaves me nothing but darkness and quiet, I start to think. And everything begins sinking in.
I remember being scared that first night in Dunedin, where the cold repeatedly jolted me awake to sight of yellow streetlamps flooding into my too-large room. I remember my first night in New York this past winter, the blinds letting rows of light into my cousin's shoebox apartment, the excitement that came with being there. Sansom and the curtains that prevented the dim glow of the city from entering the dorm, how I felt when viewing them from below. My first night at home, in near-complete darkness. Moments long ago when I crawled into my parents' bed after being scared by some bump in the night and felt safe between the sheets watching the headlights of passing cars roll across our ceilings and walls.
This is my first time sleeping in Rodin 13, the last few hours before class begins again, and the first time since I've come to Philadelphia that I've felt comfortable, really comfortable, with my being here. Just another ceiling-light memory I'll remember for the next time.
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