2000-09-26 - 13:51:36

Music ...

It is really interesting how important this is to me, and yet it isn't what I do for a career.

Nobody in my family really had / has any musical talent with the exception of my mom's aunt. No blood connection there. None of her children or grandchildren studied music.

I actually didn't have an interest, but in Jr. High I was incredibly interested in "art". I actually wanted to just "draw" and sketch for the rest of my life. So naturally I signed up for art first thing.

The class sucked. We spent a week sitting around and talking about lines and pencils. I wanted to create first, worry about the technical / mechnical details later.

[Escuse me if I'm distracted, my home internet access is down, so I'm writing while screening stage, flow, and salinity data ... the work is slow, which is why music came up. I listen to music most of the time I'm at work as well as at home. In fact, I can't sit through a movie without wanting to stop it and just sit and read while playing music ... now even reading is becoming secondary to just listening.]

continuing ...

So the art class sucked. Big time. And the people in the class weren't artsy kids, but the bullies who _did_ beat up people. Not that they bothered with me. (1) I was known to run very fast. (2) I didn't fight back, hence boring. (3) Sometime in elementry school two other important reputations followed me around:

First a kid named Frankie who flunked the 1st grade a few times once beat a kid who was threatening to hit me. He only pushed the kid, but said it was mean to beat up on kids my size. I was the smallest kid in class. Anyway, he basically told folks that I was off limits. We didn't talk or anything, but I think I might have reminded him of somebody or something. It was weird then.

Second I was pretty insecure and wouldn't talk to but a few people. It got so bad that they sent me into counciling and I would only talk to adults or puppets.

[Mmmmm: din_fiv's first album is nice. Not something I'd recommend, but the first track rocks. "Time of Death". It is very odd how my love of music extends completely away from technical and into the symbolic means of the song or piece. I attach emotions with music, which is also why I love soundtracks. They really are visually inspiring when done correctly. Though it does worry me that my lyric interests are most certainly rooted in darker thoughts: death, suicide, corruption. Fortunately I like some uplifting stuff too. Even my darkwave music may be based from one side, but it is countered by progressive marches or beats.]

Anyway, our school's orchrestra teacher came into my art class the second week asking if anybody wanted to switch from art into the orchrestra. I hated art class, so I asked if orchrestra makes music or talks about it. She brought her violin and said she'd just show me what class was like, so I got my first lesson in front of everybody.

OK, I was hugely embarassed, but I made music. It was fun, and I ended switching immediately *and* also taking private lessons for the next 3 years. I won a few medals for beginner level playing. And had a blast.

So I continued playing, but as I got older ... not being patient, and becoming more interested / concerned in nature, I wanted to hike more than practice.

I grew up at the end of a subdivision next to a large field that looked out onto an Air Force Base (Ellington AFB). It was cool. As a young kid, I'd wake up at 5 AM to watch through my telescope the pilots do combat "touch and goes". I learned to tell when the US was going to enter a war by watching changes in their flight patterns. I predicted Panama and the Gulf Wars this way. :)

Now as I got older, when I wanted to be alone, I'd go on a hike to this grove out in that field. I'll talk about it another day.

But music wasn't as interesting anymore. I liked listening, but less playing. Weird. It probably was because I was busy and it was frustrating that I couldn't read music. For years I played by ear. Reading and spelling have always been problems for me. It is funny that I was in the higher math "levels" in school, but since my communication skills sucked, they wouldn't put me with the gifted kids and my reading group was lower. Which the sad thing was reading wasn't the hard part, it was communicating that I saw what I did. But many of my teachers recognized this.

Now my point is I just came back (Saturday) from the BEST concert of my life:

din_fiv, opening for VNV Nation an Apoptygma Berzerk.

I really don't like Apop that much. I like their song Non-Stop Violence, but after what they did to fans in three cities and their poppish appearance ... nope. VNV on the other hand :sigh:

The concert rocked, I'll talk more about that later.

-=-

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