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hawthoreus
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Interests: Music, Psychology, and Medicine, especially overlaps between any two, or the extremely special confluence of all three (E.g:....see Oliver Sack's book, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat)
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medical
Message: message me
Member Since:
7/25/2003
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| Ever notice the advertisements on the side when you do a google search? They're there to try to tempt you into buying shit on impulse. They represent, in my opinion, the lowest low that advertising has EVER sunk to. Try for example, a search for the "Godfather," and you end up with an ad from--no kidding--"guidogear.com" who's website boasts "everybody loves an italian" in annoying green, white, and red. OK, so now they sell out people's ethnicity to make a buck. Then there's always the shameless vendor that always boasts "find great deals on _____!" no matter what you did a search for, whether it's "music," "cloud," "planet," or whatever. Some online advertiser always has to add in his stupid two cents about what you should buy. Just to see what would happen, I did a search for "skull fucking," and got two ads: one for "great deals on skull fucking now!" courtesy of ebay.com and my personal favorite, an ad from "GothicMatch.com"--meet hundreds of thousands of Gothic Friends and Singles!
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Getting ready for a new semester after a wonderful break in the good city and county of SF. There's never enough time to do everything I would have wanted too, though, dammit. Well, it was good while it lasted. It was especially nice reconnecting with old friends and teachers, and seeing where they're being led by life, work, and love.
Bumming around at the UCSF med school and talking to as many docs as possible fully convinced me that medicine is what I will spend the next 10+ years of my life working towards.
Now, I'm staving off a cold, and sound something like Don Corleone crossed with a donkey.
This semester should be great...I'm taking two science classes, a biology class and a neurobiology class, classes I purposely chose that will overlap a lot. I love when that happens. I'm going to be volunteering in a partial hospitalization clinic called Horizons, a program for inpatients of the Behavioral Health Center transitioning to independent living. I'm taking piano, voice, and composition lessons, and continuing my research on the cognition of music and language using IU's new fMRI machine (we finally are going to start running subjects soon, after a presentation to the IU neuroimaging faculty). And my favorite...I get to be in the opera Carmen! It's nice that they were SO desperate for tenors that they let me do it with my terrible voice. Looks like I'll get to be skulking around in the background dressed as a gypsy! I'll also be teaching a family friend piano lessons, and hopefully getting back to playing with the IU Klezmer band.
Cool. Projects...I love having lots of projects to work on. Assuming I don't die, this semester will be a blast! | | |
| - The perfect ending to a night, for me, is when you hit that special
place that is a mixture of amusement at the strange people and
situations life throws at you, a painful awareness of all the suffering
and sadness everywhere, and a deep respect for those who bravely manage
to continue working, laughing, and loving despite this pain surrounding
them. It's only through pain that the true beauty of life can be
fully appreciated; it is at moments like these that I just ache
thinking of all my selfish shortcomings and human flaws that keep me
from making more of a difference. If there really is some sort of
god, I think that holiness and purity is the capacity to transcend your
own narrow self-centered view of the world and use this vision to be
able to act selflessly and be a force for good. I'm not
necessarily talking about a "save the whales" crusade kind of good;
small things especially can be just as transcendent. To be able
to engage somebody deeply with no ulterior motives, no fears, no
resentment, no superficialities, and completely as an equal is, in my
opinion, one of the most difficult, yet one of the rewarding
experiences life has to offer. that is godliness, wabi-sabi,
balance, purity et al.
I'm hoping I won't wake up tomorrow morning and realize this is all
just ape shit. Let this just be a tribute to what seemed for a
moment to almost click into place.
the week in review;
Spring break was wonderful, like a dream already fading away.
getting back to IU was abrupt, and has been pretty frantic since.
the studio recital was great, and the after-party was even
greater. lots of good food and nice studio mates, but the white
wine didn't make my cold (ahem ;) ) any better.
Prokofiev's Ballet: Cinderella was a night to remember, great music and
dancing, and an interesting talkative bookwormy guy sitting next to me
who didn't mind diving randomly into an aggressive discussion on
modernism in music with a complete stranger.
the fun wandering through the IU campus with adhsmith, running into
many familiar faces on the way, ending with a delightfully sobering
conversation over a fake multicultural snack of fake chinese food and fake
mexican food.
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| phew. Just saw Aisha and Eric off to the airport, after cramming in some last minute mexican food, thrift town, and a trip to the MOMA and the MLK memorial. It's been a fun visit, and it's been great to spend time with IU friends without IU giving us grief at the same time. but my dad needs to go to sleep, so this must be continued later. | | |
| - bananaphone - - - -
I. Played a klezmer gig today
A. For father of band leader and friends
1. math professors here in bloomington for a mathematician's birthday
2. extremely stereotypical jews, almost suspiciously so
a. there is a stereotypical way that middle aged jewish fathers act
b. it's impossible for anyone to honestly act so stereotypically
c. it's amusing to
see people unconsciously alter their personality to fit cultural expectations
B. Free food
1. yay
2. yum
C. horrible piano
1. probably hasn't ever been tuned
2. small, tinny, raunchy, feeble sound
3. ended up sounding OK because tuning doesn't really matter in klezmer
D. http://www2.jonathansalter.com:8080/klezmer/mp3/
II. watched The Life Acquatic yesterday
A. amazing movie
1. awesome sideways unexpected humour
a. obviously fake special effects
b. random fight scene in the middle of the movie
c. female character
with practically no lines, but who is always inexplicably
topless
2. bill murray is an hilarious
star playing an endearing, ineffectual depressive character
a. depsite the fact
that steve zissou has absolutely no good qualities and is a liar and a
cheat, I ended up loving him anyway.
b. movie minus murray=flop
3. LMAO
a. laughed my ass off
B. spent evening with Adam (5w6), taylor
(6w5), aisha (3w2), and eric(6w7)
1. after movie, ate sandwiches, then tacos
a. I
tried cow tongue taco, it tasted like beef. (it was beef, I
guess...)
2. Interesting midnight political debate
a. the
republican party is *ingenious* in the way that they disguise their selfish,
capitalist agenda with contrived morality well enough to sell it to the christian
working lower/middle class
b. It's
hopeful that despite the brilliant planners behind the republican
party, the democrat
shit-for-brains planners still are following closely behind
III. Enneagram
A. It's great
1. It helps me understand myself
2. It helps me understand other people
3. It helps me help other people understand themselves
4. It helps me help other people understand me
5. It helps understand how people interact in pairs
B. I am a six wing 5
C.
 free enneagram test
D. I strongly recommend looking into
it/buying a book, esp the one by helen palmer. the website is
mildly hokey, but also helpful.
IV. favorite quote since I last updated: "...Is it about, like, love or something?"
A. by Mr. J. Yanik
B. after being asked what a certain schubert
song was symbolic of in theory class
V. good night, moon
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| - - I think my face is allergic to Indiana. It makes me break out. Bloomington doesn't want me to be pretty.
I've decided that a good ditch-digger allows his friends to hide in the
secrecy of his trenches, while still laying open for all to see.
Names are hiding places of my invention, entertaining the ignorant who
wouldn't know anyway, thwarting the nosy who would know but shouldn't,
and delighting (hopefully) the people themselves with inside jokes.
today's activities:
8am-9am: wakey, wakey, make horrible mexican chocolate oatmeal.
9am-10: ear training drill with a soft-spoken, wispy, vaguely
pretty pianist grad student. yay for little mamma jackson in my
drill too
10-10:30: Honors theory! discuss this semester, mainly romantic music
and later. Flaming AI, who apparently came out to his students last
semester. Mr. Smith goes to Washington agrees to be my workout buddy
10:30-11:15: exasperating online course bullshit
11:15-12:05: practice chopin
12:05-1: lunch, earl gray, salad, more uneaten oatmeal. Paris and Ivory Queen join me for second half of lunch.
1-5:15: practice bach prelude and fugue in E major, book II;
schubert Eb sonata. interrupted at 4ish by young hippielet space
cadet. I'm not the only one with a long distance
relationship! excellent. great to see her again, glad my
sex advice actually worked, meager though it was.
5:15-8pm: dinner at home with Kene Gelly, little mamma jackson,
Paris. soup and oatmeal, then see's candy. so much for
healthier eating. Dolcinella arrives, leaves with Paris.
Email Cherry Blossom girl. Enter the facebook whirlpool
8-11pm: practice more schubert, nearly pass out sleeping at 9, second wind until 11.
at home after hourz: more internet, email teacher, eat sesame
bar, prepare sight-singing melody. Paris arrives back home, fully
bitten and heart succulent from the honeydew sunshine
sugarladyfriend. Gave him some cold medicine to help him fall
asleep. throwaway remaining oatmeal.
It seems that some of us (more than one) think I'm somewhat of a
manwhore. you know who you are. some say it (bravo), some
think it (I have sources and can read minds anyway). Once the
semester starts, and there isn't as much to say, a scandalous expose of
Foss is on its way, to set the record straight. It's really quite
simple.
sigh. nighttime. springtime is far off. months and
months until flowers bloom and fruit softens. exit ditchdigger.
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