Untitled

Finding intellectual kinship is wonderful. It gives me the greatest buzz. 

My dreams

Yale - 

I got into Yale.

I checked Juilliard first, because, well, that was always the long shot and I expected nothing.

Well…

I got into Juilliard! THE HELL IS THIS 

So I freaked out.

Then…

I checked Columbia.

Wasn’t anticipating much…but slightly less ehhhh….

A video came on-screen, and I flicked on the sound and started screaming. That was a yes as well!

Then….

I finally mustered up the courage to check Yale.

I typed in my information wrong five times. Then I remembered I had used the wrong username…

I got it, typed it in, and listened to the sound of “Bulldog” wash over me like a cool, breezy wave at the beach on a perfect day of summer. 

I got into Yale.

I have an idea for the direction of this online compendium.

A few months ago, I read an article in the NYT Education Life insert about a student at UC Berkeley who dedicates an hour to learning something new every day.

I already feel like I’m behind the Princetonian curve. So what better way to advance myself than to take this Berkeley student’s idea and run with it?

Let’s start now.

Music, like other live things, needs to breathe. T-Pain’s presence in the song “Five O’Clock,” based loosely around the track “Who’d Have Known?” by Lily Allen, suffocates Allen’s tender lyrics and simple electronic background. His blathering and beats add nothing but chaos to what ought to be a lovely, uncomplicated ditty about new love. The idiotic words he’s plastered on top of her beautiful voice, coupled with a similarly stupid music video, mask the meaning of the original with nonsense about girls in clubs and bedrooms. 

I would love to know what goes on in the heads of people who ruin music. “Who’d Have Known?” is a precious song about a feeling everyone has felt at some point - when love (or like), in its incipient stages, feels sweet and simple and uncomplicated and fresh. How could it even have occurred to T-Pain, or whatever his real name is, to smother it?

I can’t write right now, my head is in other things. 

Tristan und Isolde

I don’t think anyone can properly experience music without being completely involved in its production. I’m listening to “Isolde’s Liebestod” from the Wagner opera Tristan und Isolde, and it is just not provoking the same emotions from me as it was during orchestra today. Perhaps my loss of feeling has to do with the fact that I’m not paying very close attention to it, or maybe that I’m just out of feelings after a long day of incredible listening. But I feel very convinced that music is an insider thing.

I had a religious experience today listening to that piece. Admittedly, I have heard music like it before; the Prelude easily evokes Mahler’s “Adagietto” from his Symphony No. 5 in C# Minor, and the “Liebestod” foreshadows Prokofiev’s “Suite No. 2 from Romeo and Juliet” with its tremelos in the strings and long horn lines. But there was something hopeless about this music, something uncomfortable and wrenching, in that it called to a passion I doubt people can feel unassisted. Everything I had ever felt, in the moment of performance, felt very silly and trivial. I was completely aflame. A line from a poem read by the editor of the Phoenix my freshman year - ”My heart, America, my heart” -  repeated over and over again in my head; I was held captive by its significance. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was having a heart attack. It was an attack, though, of the spiritual sort. Honestly, who needs church? Everything began to seem very out of focus, out of order. I wanted to cry, even - but crying, regular displays of human grief, paled in comparison to what I believe is among the most tender, intense, and passionate declarations of the cosmos, let alone the human heart. It was a feeling beyond love. It was the sound of some god, or heaven, or something, but certainly not anything from this planet. I was stunned at the realization that I could never feel this way about another person, about myself, or even something material. This kind of feeling can only exist in the staves…isn’t that curious? 

Composers are prophets. They listen to what god says and they write it down. There is no other explanation for this highest of callings. 

On a completely unrelated note, I refuse to capitalize “god.” 

For people who claim to have a lot of faith, they sure don’t have very much faith in themselves. 

God isn’t going to help you with this one. 

I feel like writing for a public. I found this number challenge on Tumblr that I will attempt to complete now.

1. Coraline is my favorite book, but I told colleges it was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close because it was easier to explain. I guess if I wanted to put it nicely, I could say Foer holds my mind, and Gaiman holds my heart. 

I can never turn away from something consequential. So I suppose I don’t find most things consequential, because I am always starting things without ever finishing. I only finish the big things, and Coraline was definitely a big thing. I thought it was wonderful. Probably because the heroine gets to escape to a world only she can see and understand. The world is nearly her undoing, unfortunately, but the point is the escape. In my life, I seem to be heading away from escapism and more towards an acceptance of things as they are. I think I need to re-read this book. There is more to life than achievement. 

This is a very long-winded way of explaining that there is a cat in Coraline that has no name. When asked why, he says “Cats don’t need names.” I wonder what not having a name would be like. 

2. I think astrology is stupid. I think anything that exists to impose a scientifically unfounded order on the universe is stupid. The universe is magnificent enough. 

3. I fear spiders, and two other things that I will keep to myself.

4. I don’t love many things. But I love music, and talking. 

5. I have many friends. To call one the best would be assigning a superlative where none is deserved. I have friends of varying closeness, but none of them are “the best.” The best to whom? In what area? I think the idea of having a “best friend” is juvenile. I’m tired of ranking and being ranked.

6. The last song I listened to was “Skinny Love,” by Bon Iver, and covered by Clara Chung. She is outstandingly talented.

7. Be smart, attractive, thoughtful, and law-abiding. 

8. Do not be the antipode of any of the above.

9. I don’t have a favorite anything. I have many things that I like, and their order rotates every month or so. 

10. I lie so often it scares even me. I am constantly lying about everything. I have already lied three times, right here.

Just kidding!

I am a little upset that this company is, whether knowingly or unknowingly, attempting to perpetuate a misconception. Their own misconception, that is. This is not the evil eye. That looks like this: 

It is worn in Turkey and in areas of the Middle East, where there is a belief that individuals who are envious of your good fortune will cause bad luck to befall you. Believers say that wearing an evil eye bead will ward off bad luck.

The eye depicted on this cuff is the eye of Horus. Horus is a member of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, and has the head of a falcon and the body of a man. He is the god of the Sky, War, and Protection, which might lead to the confusion with the eye described above. His eye is known as the wedjat. It is also a symbol of protection, but, again, it is not the evil eye. 

I think people would be smarter if the media were smarter. We did a lesson in AP Government about how the media controls what information is reported on, and how. I never really thought about the media acting as a gatekeeper. For seventeen years, I labored under the delusion that the media reported what happened. Well, I knew there were levels of reporting, but it never occurred to me that they would intentionally skip over something that was inconvenient or unappealing to a certain set of elites. 

I know that this is just a piece of jewelry on a website that caters only to a very limited demographic. I’m probably the only person to notice this, and am definitely the only person to write anything about it. As I’m writing this, I’m gradually coming to understand what a massive overreaction this is. 

But history is history. Let’s get our facts right. Why does it matter? Because people learn from everywhere. They pick up little hints and details from the most unlikely of places. I don’t think it is appropriate for even an online store to be perpetuating ignorance. What this product’s name represents to me is a serious historical error that I really inherently wish would be corrected. This is a wedjat, not an evil eye. 

So

So I just got into Princeton University. Let me tell you how it feels…

I feel drunk. High. I’ve never been either, but this is what it MUST feel like…my heart is going at a million miles a minute, I’m dizzy, I’m…on a different planet. Everything is very fuzzy…

This is what it feels like to be validated. 

It feels pretty damn good. 

“And look at me, it’s like you hit me with lightening.”

I really like this line for some reason.