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mamusiq · 3 years ago

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9 Things You Didn’t Know About Für Elise

Posted by Dr. Anna Wulick | Feb 9, 2021 1

From its first repeating notes, Für Elise is instantly recognizable. It may even be the most famous melody ever written! But did you know that when Beethoven first drafted this short piano piece, he stuffed it in a drawer, never to be seen in his lifetime?

Curious how it went from forgotten trifle to universally known? Wondering what exactly makes it such an unforgettable ear-worm? Need some tips on learning to play this piece? Then keep reading for everything you've ever wanted to know about one of Beethoven's best-known masterpieces.

Für Elise: The Basics

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote Für Elise 1810 as a small piece for the piano, and then put it aside with his many other draft works. We only have it because a musicologist found it and published it in 1867!

And it's a good thing for us that Für Elise was finally found! Its first five notes (alternating E and D-sharp) have become as famous as the booming da-da-da-dum first notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.

Why has this piece been so popular ever since its publication? Musically, Für Elise is deeply melodic and full of nostalgic feeling, with a relatively simple harmony that makes it very accessible and not overly intellectually demanding. At the same time, because its first part is easy even for a beginner piano player to learn, but is also beautiful, it is often assigned by piano teachers the world over, perpetuating its fame. And finally, the romantic and mysterious possibilities of its name make us wonder about the identity of Elise and the love life of its composer!

Where Can I Listen to Für Elise?

Before diving into the history and background of this piece, here are some versions that will give you a great sense of the range of interpretations out there.

Start with this straightforward Für Elise piano recording:

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Then, you can explore interesting takeoffs, samples, and modifications. On the piano, there is a great blues-imbued version, as well as a ragtime version. At the same time, the piece's arpeggios make it a popular choice for classical guitar interpretations like this one.

Because Für Elise is so incredibly popular, there are a million and one versions of it on YouTube. Do a quick search and check out the versions played by wildly talented four-year-old prodigies!

The History of Für Elise

In 1810, when he was 40 years old, Ludwig van Beethoven was already renowned as one of the greatest composers of all time. He was also already plagued by the horrible tinnitus that preceded his eventual deafness. Although the very next year he stopped performing in public altogether, he never stopped composing.

On April 27th, 1810, Beethoven drafted a bagatelle - a small, unimportant song - and jotted the label "Für Elise" on it in his famously messy handwriting. But he never published this piece of music. Instead, it sat in a drawer until 1822, when Beethoven revised it slightly, and shoved it back into the same drawer. In 1827, Beethoven died, and his bagatelle never saw the light of day.

It was only in 1867, 40 years after Beethoven's death, that a musicologist named Ludwig Nohl found the piece of music and published it.

Who Was Elise?

Remember how I told you that Beethoven jotted the words "Für Elise" on his final draft of the sheet music? Well, it turns out that we only know this from Ludwig Nohl, the man who found and published the piece. The actual final draft itself is missing! Not only that, but no distinct records, letters, or accounts from people at the time make mention of an "Elise" in Beethoven's life.

So who was the mysterious Elise that Beethoven apparently dedicated this music to? There is no conclusive answer to this question. There are several theories, however, which I will lay out in order of most to least likely.

Theory #1: "Elise" Was Beethoven's "One That Got Away"

Beethoven had a doomed love affair with a woman named Therese Malfatti. She was his student, and he fell in love with her right around the time of the composition of Für Elise. We aren't quite sure exactly how they broke up, but we do know that he proposed, and she either said no right away, or strung him along for a while and then said no. Either way, Therese then married someone else. So, the most popular theory is that our friend Ludwig Nohl misread Beethoven’s messy handwriting, and that in reality, the piece was labeled "Für Therese" not "Für Elise."

Theory #2: "Elise" Was Beethoven's Opera Singer BFF

A few years before writing Für Elise, Beethoven became friends with an opera singer named Elisabeth Röckel, whose nickname may well have been Elise (Elizabeth to Elise doesn't seem to be that much of a stretch, but we don't have any documentary evidence that anyone actually did call her Elise). Beethoven and Rockel were close friends until she married Beethoven's frenemy, Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Perhaps Für Elise was written in the midst of this friendship - or as a way of saying good-bye.

Theory #3: "Elise" Was One of Therese Malfatti's Friends

The least likely scenario is that Beethoven wrote the piece for another woman nicknamed Elise - Juliane Katharine Elisabet Barensfeld, who used "Elise" as a variant first name. She was a musical child prodigy who was Therese Malfatti's neighbor and conceivably could have been her student. This theory holds that Beethoven was willing to do anything for his one great love, Therese, including writing a quick piece of music for one of her favorites.

Since there's not enough evidence to prove it conclusively, we should probably use Occam’s razor for this one. To whom is a sad, longing love song dedicated? Probably to the lost love of Beethoven's life, Therese.

What Does the Title of Für Elise Mean?

The full title of Beethoven's piece of music is Für Elise: Bagatelle in A minor WoO 59. In reality, the stuff after the colon is the official title, and "Für Elise" is just a nickname for the piece. This is because musical compositions have a specific naming system that references type, key, and a numbering system. Let's unpack each of the components of this title separately.

Für Elise. The words “Für Elise” mean “for Elise” in German.

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theimprobabledreamersworld · 3 years ago

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Yayy! Despite trying to fight off a monster of a cold, I’ve got a new chapter written! :D

As I mentioned yesterday, this one is written from Logan’s POV because I’ve been wanting to create a back story for him in this story :)

I’ll post the chapter under a line on here, but please check it out on Ao3 too! I love reading comments and stuff to find out what people think :)

Hope you like it!

Taglist: @psychedelicships @edupunkn00b @jwillowwolf @kacklingisanart @look-ma-im-on-tv @stardustlv @lost-in-thought-20

Chapter 5. My Heart Was Made Of Stone. And You Broke It Twice.

“But the wind has changed. My walls are weakening. They’re gonna fall soon. And I’m gonna need you.”

Logan was a man who always kept his emotions in check. He never let himself get too consumed by any kind of feeling. Happiness, sadness, love, hate, anger… Ever since he was sixteen, he refused to be vulnerable ever again. If you’re vulnerable, you can be broken. He had been broken far too many times when he was growing up.

His parents were agreeable, he couldn’t deny that�� but he was never enough for them. Even as a young child, nothing was quite good enough. He remembered when the class teacher told his parents that he was the first child to learn how to write his name… he stretched up to show them and they let the paper flutter to the floor saying it wasn’t neat enough. He was only four! It got worse as he got older. Every time he was proud of something he had achieved, like getting a high grade, he was always asked why it wasn’t full marks. The unattainable goals were never reached and it took a lot to even vaguely satisfy them. He worked himself into the ground for the entirety of his school life, it affected his health, but they still weren’t happy. He was never strong enough, creative enough, serious enough, smart enough… and it hurt so much to know that. His friends however were amazing, they would always encourage him and make him take breaks when they knew he was working way too hard. They could always cheer him up and he was eternally grateful for that. Logan clenched his fists… he hated how much it knocked him down when he would walk in smiling over something that happened at school, to be told they weren’t interested and to just go and study. He always set himself up for the fall almost every day… no wonder emotions became such a hinderance. Luckily, music was his salvation for about eight years.

Logan took his head out of his hands, readjusted his eyes to the light and felt how raw they were from crying before staring at the dusty piano in the house intently. He used to be pretty good at playing. He loved his classical music, and still does. Just not playing it anymore. When he still had lessons, he was always thrilled with the challenge of increasingly difficult pieces given to him by his teacher. It was funny, his music teacher was the only person who ever truly believed in him. He was also the one person who could convince Logan to perform. The last concert he ever played in was the day before his sixteenth birthday, he played his most difficult piece to date… Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu Op 66. They decided on that because it was originally a piece that no one was ever supposed to hear, Chopin never wanted it to be released after he died… but they did it anyway. His teacher said that he could then perform it however he wanted to, artistic interpretation and all that. He practiced and practiced at school so his parents wouldn’t hear it before. When it got to the concert, and his parents actually turned up, he was genuinely surprised. He walked out on the stage and sat down looking for his teacher who gave him a smile and a thumbs up, then the music began. He felt almost like he was watching himself play, he had never played with such determination before and as the final note rung out… there was silence. Before the room broke out into applause, his teacher was standing up clapping vigorously, then some of his classmates and other parents stood up too. His parents however were sat down, clapping politely with a neutral expression on their faces and Logan’s smile faltered. He gave a quick bow and walked quickly off the stage. His teacher followed him and gave him a hug while telling him how proud he was. Logan couldn’t stop the tears, he had never cried in front of another person, but no one had ever been proud of him before either. How embarrassing. The first time he had been shown positive interest by someone he respected, and he cried until the top of their shirt was damp with his tears. His teacher just held him and told him everything was okay. After he had calmed down and the tears had stopped, he went to go and join his parents for the second half of the concert, but their seats were empty.

In that moment, he didn’t get upset again and stayed unusually calm, and he knew that this was the final straw. He stayed at a hotel for the night at the insistence of his teacher, that way he could sort out his head and start looking up different apartment options. Which he did realise could be tricky as a sixteen-year-old… but he was smart, reliable, didn’t drink or smoke and had a substantial amount of money at his disposal. He waited until the morning and snuck back into his parent’s house to collect all of the things that he deemed necessary. Thankfully, the hotel manager was understanding and let him stay for the bare minimum price until he could find an apartment for himself. It took a few months, and the landlord had to be persuaded by his music teacher, but he found an apartment which was close to everything he needed and was affordable. One day, he would repay that teacher back for everything he had done for him.

He looked at the calendar, the picture of him and Virgil smiling and holding up their wedding ring hands was taunting him on the wall. He noticed the date. Wow, it had been ten years since he left without looking back, and he never heard a single word from them.

That was clearly for the best.

Ever since then, he never let emotions get the better of him ever again. However, as he looked around at the decimated living room, he had clearly broken and let all of those emotions consume him once again. Logan inspected the damage, as he traced the hole in the wall, the shattered photo frames and glass covering the floor, it caused his heart to fill up with regret. His heart was already full of pain, the regret was enough to make his heart quite literally tear in two. Virgil was the first person he felt like he could be vulnerable with again. When they first met, there was something about him, something that reminded him of himself. Maybe this guy was just as broken as he was, as he saw him hiding in the corner of the coffee shop trying to stay away from the world. He told Virgil this many times, but he had encased his heart in stone to keep it safe. As their relationship developed, as stupid as it sounds, he could feel the stone wall cracking and breaking off piece by piece, and he honestly didn’t mind in the slightest.

Now, he didn’t know what was going on with his heart. He was hurt, he was angry. It’s not every day you find out that the man you’ve been married to for the last five years spent most of his life as a well-trained and dangerous assassin. Going by Virgil’s words alone, the body count to his name is staggering and who knows how many people he’s hurt over the years. The argument they had earlier in the evening was playing on repeat in his mind.

“I couldn’t tell you!” Virgil shouted across the room.

“Why the hell not?! I’m your fucking HUSBAND Virgil, you are supposed to trust me. No matter what’s happened in your past!” Logan rubbed his forehead in frustration.

“Okay, you want to know why I hid everything from you? I did it to PROTECT you! My past is something that can be used against me, it is still being used against me. If anyone from it came after you… I would never be able to forgive myself!” The tears wouldn’t stop rolling down Virgil’s face as he spluttered out the words while his body shook with sobs.

Despite the hurt of seeing Virgil in so much pain, Logan couldn’t contain his anger. “What makes you decide if I need protecting? I can handle myself, ever since I was sixteen I’ve been on my own… You know that!”

Virgil sighed, like he was debating whether or not to say his next sentence.

“Remember when we met all those years ago? You told me about how you were attacked and how scared you were after it? Well… it was me. I was the guy who saved you. Every day since that moment, I vowed that I would protect you no matter the cost. Then I fell in love with you along the way, and I’ll love you until the end of time. If you want to know the truth about me, I know he gave you something. Look at it, and I won’t blame you if you try to turn me in to the police afterwards. I have to go now though, otherwise you will get hurt… I’m sorry, Lo.” Logan was left dumbfounded, and Virgil ran out of the front door, slipping away into the night.

There had been so many lies and too many secrets. He remembered that USB stick he threw in a drawer months ago. He opened it up and stared at the blue object, the label that read ‘Virgil… ?’ taunted him mercilessly. He looked over at his open laptop that was spared from his destructive anger, should he look at it?

Logan shook that thought away instantly, he needed to clear up first before making any kind of decision. He crouched down on the floor and started to sweep the glass over towards the sofa with his hand, just so he could clean it properly soon. He got to the first photograph, him and Virgil sitting in a restaurant holding hands and smiling at the camera. That picture was taken by Thomas and Nico, their two closest friends… He thought he should text them and see if they could come over. Virgil left half an hour ago, and he already felt too alone.

He’d contact them later, but for now. He wanted to stare at photographs and revel in his memories.

#fanfiction #ao3 #My story #ts fanfic #ts fandom #au #ts logan #ts virgil #assassin au #new chapter

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musedrevolution · 4 years ago

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Why do we teach music history?

I’ll be honest for a moment here: I have not enjoyed music history in college. The class has always felt unnecessary: memorize this information, spit it back out. Learn these names, these pieces, and these dates. I can’t imagine needing it. But music history the subject has always fascinated me. When I took piano lessons in high school, my teacher would always instruct me to research the composer a little whenever I got a piece by someone I hadn’t played before. I not only did this research, but did it enthusiastically. I was excited to share what I found about Haydn or Tchaikovsky.

One could argue that it was simply the way I was being taught that could change my opinion on similar material so drastically. I don’t disagree with that assertion. My previous music history education was a conversation that I got to contribute to. I got to feel like an expert sometimes because I came in with information that my teacher didn’t necessarily have. She didn’t give it to me, I found it on my own, while everything I’ve learned in college music history has come straight from the textbook or the lecture. But I would also like to argue that I was learning the material for a completely different reason when I loved it in high school piano.

Here, I am ignoring the fact that my piano lessons were not graded and did not contribute to my GPA. I know that part of the reason I learn music history now is because I would like a good grade in my class, but that motivation is not what I am discussing here. I am focusing now on the purpose provided by the scenario. Why was the music history being taught?

I would assert that my college music history classes are being taught in a bubble. I am learning music history because I have been told that it is “important,” although I have seen little justification for this in the rest of my studies. As a student whose primary focus is wind ensemble music, I rarely play pieces by the composers we study in-depth. When I eventually direct a band myself, this trend is likely to continue. Mozart simply didn’t write for wind ensemble, as the wind ensemble did not yet exist. My theory classes covered the music of the baroque and classical eras well before we discussed them in music history, meaning that I was once again unable to apply the things I had learned in the history class.

This bubble is further created by one of my music history professors outright forbidding our class from connecting what we were learning in class to the music we were familiar with. The class covered music from ancient times until the year 1750. We were explicitly forbidden from mentioning anything that occurred after 1750 in our work. I did a presentation on renaissance instruments at one point, and was not allowed to mention the trombone when discussing the sackbut, nor the oboe while discussing the crumhorn.

Without the ability to compare the past to the present, the class felt absolutely useless. Why do I need to care about the sackbut in the first place if it is not to understand the origin of the trombone? Why should I care about baroque opera that I can’t understand if I can’t connect it to the modern musical theater that I have so much affection for?

My answer to these questions became “because I want an A in the class.” As a teacher, I hope that my students never have to answer the question “why do I need to know this” with “because I want a good grade.” That answer leads to a lack of motivation and, worse, a lack of understanding. When students don’t see purpose in learning the material, they aim to memorize rather than really engage with the content. They prepare for an assessment rather than attempting to really internalize the concepts. As an educator, that is heartbreaking.

Yet that has been the case with my music history education much of the time. When I have asked the question “why are we learning about X,” I am often met with the argument that “X was a genius” or “X is a brilliant piece of music.” I have never found that to be a satisfactory answer. There are lots of things that are brilliant that I have no interest in studying in-depth because I know I will not use the information: papers on particle physics, for example. I’m glad someone did it, but I feel no compulsion to engage with it just because it is a work of genius. I also think that “genius” and “brilliant” are very subjective terms, and are often misused in the world of music, but that’s beside the point.

Returning to my love of the music history I learned in piano back in high school, I never had to ask why I was learning it: I applied it immediately. I learned about the Russian revolution when playing Russian music, and put the anger and fear that so many people experienced into my interpretation of the piece. Even five years later I remember playing a Kabalevsky’s Sonatina in a minor and learning about the small act of rebellion he committed against the communist party he was employed by when he included two measures with emphasized syncopation. Syncopation was considered a “western” concept rather than a “Russian” one, and therefore could not be used in Russian music. I still know this because I got to apply that knowledge to my performance. Even if my parents didn’t know why those two measures were important, they could tell they were important because I brought them out of the texture a little.

That application made the material mean something. Kabalevsky was more than a name and set of random facts. He was a rebel. He was fighting against oppressors. He was cool to a sixteen year old me. I have never experienced that thought in my music history classes.

So the question becomes this: how do we get the goal of academic music history classes to be application?

As a future high school band director, the solution is simpler than it is for my collegiate music history professors. I will have the opportunity to do something very similar to what my piano teachers did, and teach music history alongside the pieces we are performing: if we are performing “The Washington Post” march by Sousa, we will discuss march form and history, along with why John Phillip Sousa was a big deal and how the march got its name. Where was it performed for the first time? Students will connect to this information because they will be able to use to inform a stellar performance.

This is quite impossible in a college music history class. At my university, there are members of no less than ten different ensembles enrolled in my music history class, including students specializing in wind ensemble, choir, orchestra, and jazz. It would be impossible to cover every composer we’re playing pieces by, and no composer would be directly relevant to everyone in the room. So this solution that is simple in a band room becomes impossible.

I would suggest changing the goal of music history from knowing about certain composers and pieces to learning a skill set that is applicable to any composer and any piece. This skill set would include an advanced musical vocabulary. We would still need to learn about genres, forms, textures, and instrumentation. We would have a basic timeline of the evolution of these concepts so we can understand approximately where a piece fits in. We would learn about the useful generalizations that can be made using the idea of musical eras. This necessary skill set would also include research skills: how do you learn about music once you’re out of this classroom?

Now with the idea of a skill based curriculum comes the question: what about all of the “brilliant” composers that we focus so extensively on in our current model? Well, firstly it is important to remember that some of them fit into an understanding of the musical ideas I’ve already discussed. You cannot talk about the evolution of the symphony without talking about Beethoven. You cannot discuss the development of opera without discussing Mozart and Wagner. But these discussions can be had based on what they did rather than simply their excellence. Students can learn for themselves why these figures were important. These so-called geniuses can also offer great practice for the application of research skills that are so essential to music history scholarship. Rather than simply reading about these people in a textbook, why not read primary sources focused on their work? Why not expect students to find pieces that demonstrate general characteristics common to a composer’s style? Not only will students learn more about whatever great master is being studied, but they will be able to apply that information beyond that individual.

This approach would have multiple advantages. Firstly, if we’re studying the people in music history for reasons other than “they’re important” it is far easier to diversify the curriculum. Music history is very straight, very white, and very male. When pieces and composers are being used as part of a broader curriculum rather than the sole focus, lesser known artists and works can be incorporated. A lesser known classical sonata can be substituted for one by Mozart. A wind ensemble symphony can serve as an example of the genre’s modern incarnation just as easily as an orchestral one. This allows all students, even those for whom orchestra or choir is not their primary focus, even those who are not white men, to see themselves in the class, and to connect to that.

Secondly, and I cannot stress this enough, students can apply this curriculum when they are not discussing Mozart or Beethoven. As a band director, it is unlikely that I program much Mozart. But I will certainly use my understanding of how to discuss music history when I program a symphony for band, or discuss the latin origins of a piece like Kevin Day’s “Havana.” (If you don’t know Kevin Day, you will one day. He writes great wind ensemble music and is going to be HUGE). My students will need background on these pieces just as much as they would if they were playing baroque music. I wish I was being prepared as if that were the case.

Instead, I am learning names and dates. I am learning piece titles and the fact that they are “brilliant.” If I am to apply this information outside of my music history classes, I have to figure out how to do that myself. I can do that, but I hope that the music history community aims to make their class more worthwhile to the students. Students don’t dislike music history because they are lazy or stupid. They dislike it because they don’t know what it’s for. I think it’s high time we change that.

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iandeleonwrites · 4 years ago

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Ian’s Case: A Personal Statement for Grad School Admission

Personal Statement, Ian Deleón

“He felt something strike his chest, and that his body was being thrown swiftly through the air, on and on, immeasurably far and fast, while his limbs were gently relaxed.”

It was more than a decade ago when I first read those words. Written by the American author Willa Cather, Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament has always felt to me like an intimate account of my own life penned by a woman one hundred years in the past.

That is a feeling which makes me proud; that my personal whims, fears, and desires, could find their echo long ago in a story about a young man and his pursuit of a meaningful life. Because of it, I felt a pleasing sense of historicity at a time when I was struggling so much with my own.

I grew up in Miami Beach. Literally not more than a block away from water for most of my life. My father had emigrated from Cuba with his family in 1980. My mother had come on a work visa from Brazil a few years later. They met on the beach, had an affair, and I came into the world in May of 1987.

My life was marked with in betweenness from the very beginning. My parents’ relationship did not last long, so I grew up traveling between houses. I had two families. I was American, but I was also Cuban and Brazilian. I even have a Brazilian passport. I spoke three languages fluently, but I couldn’t dance salsa or samba. I felt at home with the working class immigrants and people of color in my neighborhoods, but I often had to work hard to prove I wasn’t just some gringo with a knack for foreign tongues.

[A quick note on Paul’s Case––If it happens that the reader is not familiar with the short story, let me briefly summarize it here: A disenchanted youth in turn of the century Pittsburgh feels increasingly alienated from his schoolmates, his teachers and his family. His only comfort is his position as an usher at Carnegie Hall, where he loses himself in the glamour of the art life. Having no drive or desire to become an artist, however, the dandy Paul makes a spur of the moment criminal decision and elopes to New York City. There, he is able to live out his fantasies in a financial masquerade for about a week’s time, until the authorities back home finger him for monetary theft. Learning that his father is en route to the city to collect him, Paul travels to the countryside and flings himself in front of a speeding train, musing about the elegant brevity of winter flowers.]

When I first encountered Cather’s short story I was blown away by the parallels I saw between my own life and Paul’s. In 2005, fresh out of high school, I was living mostly with my father as my mother had relocated to faraway West Palm Beach. I was an usher at the local concert hall, a job I cherished enough to volunteer my time for free. I became entranced by the world of classical music, opera, theater, and spectacle––often showing up for work early and roaming the performance spaces, probing high and low like some kind of millenial phantom.

In school, however, I had no direction, no plan. I had good enough grades, but no real motivation, and worst of all, I thought, no discernible talent. I probably resented my father for not being cultured enough to teach me about music, theater, and the arts. No one in my family had ever even been to a museum, or sat before a chamber orchestra. And it didn’t seem to matter to them either, they could somehow live blissfully without it.

Well I couldn’t. I began to mimic the fervor with which Paul immersed himself in that world, while also exhibiting the same panic at the thought of not being able to sustain my treasured experiences without a marketable contribution to them. But here is where Paul and I take divergent paths.

I was attending the Miami Dade Honors College, breezing my way towards an associate’s degree. I took classes in Oceanography, Sociology, Creative Writing, Acting and African Drumming. I was experimenting and falling in love with everything.

But it was my Creative Writing professor, Michael Hettich, who really encouraged the development of my nascent writing talent. Up until that point my ideas only found their expression through class assignments, particularly book reports and essays on historical events. My sister had always felt I had a way with words, but I just attributed this to growing up in a multicultural environment amongst a diversity of native languages.

As a result of that encouragement I began to write poetry, little songs and treatments for film ideas based on the short stories we were talking about in class. Somehow, thanks to those lines of poetry and a few amateur photographic self portraits, I was admitted to the Massachusetts College of Art & Design for my BFA program.

There, I attended classes in Printmaking, Paper Making, Performance Art, Video Editing, and Glass Blowing. I was immersed in culture, attending lectures and workshops, adding new words to my vocabulary: “New Media” and “gestalt”. I saw my first snowfall. I had the dubious honor of appearing at once not Hispanic and yet different enough. I was overwhelmed. I felt increasingly disenchanted and out of place in New England, yet my work flourished and grew stronger.

It was during this time that I developed a passion for live performance and engagement with an audience. I also worked with multi-channel video and sculptural installations. Always, I commented on my family history, grappling with it, the emigrations and immigrations. I even returned to those early short stories from Miami Dade, one time doing an interpretive movement piece based on The Yellow Wallpaper. Most often I talked about my father. He was even in a few of my projects. He was a good sport, though we still had the occasional heated political disagreement. We never held any grudges, and made up again rather quickly. It would always be that way, intense periods of warming and cooling. A tropical temperament, I suppose.

I continued to take film-related classes in Boston, but my interests gradually became highly abstracted, subtle, and decidedly avant-garde. I had no desire to work in a coherently narrative medium. This would eventually change, but for now, I let my ambitions and aspirations take me where they would.

I returned home to Miami for a spell after graduation. I traveled the world for five months after that. I moved back to Boston for another couple of years, because it was comfortable I suppose, though I was fed up with the weather.

Finally, I wound up in NYC. Classic story: I followed a charming young woman, another performance artist as luck would have it, a writer too, and a bit of an outsider. We were quickly engaged and on the first anniversary of our meet cute we were married on a gorgeous piece of land in upstate new york, owned by an older performance-loving couple from the city. Piece of land doesn’t quite do it justice, we’re talking massive tracts, hidden acres of forest, sudden lakes, fertile fields, and precocious wildlife. As they say in the movies, it really is all about location, location, location.

Nearly all of our significant personal and professional achievements in the subsequent years have centered around this bucolic homestead. After meeting, courting, researching and eventually getting married there, we soon decided we would stage our most ambitious project to date in this magical space––we would shoot...a movie.

We hit upon the curious story of an eighteenth century woman in England called Mary Toft. Dear Mary became famous for a months-long ruse that involved her supposed birthing of rabbits, and sometimes cats. The small town hoax ballooned into a national controversy when it was eventually exposed by some of the king’s physicians. My wife and I were completely enthralled by this story and its contemporary implications. Was Mary wholly complicit in the mischievous acts, or was she herself a sort of duped victim...of systematic abuse at the hands of her family, her husband, her country?

We soon found a way to adapt and give this tale a modern twist that recast Mary as a woman of color alone in the woods navigating a host of creepy men, a miscarriage, and a supernatural rabbit.

Over the course of nine months, our idea gestated and began taking the form of a short film screenplay. This was something neither of us had done or been adequately trained to do before. But we knew we wanted it to be special, it was our passion project. We knew we didn’t want it to look amateurish––we were too old for that. So we took out a loan, hired an amazing camera crew, and in three consecutive days in the summer of 2017 we filmed our story, Velvet Cry. It was the most difficult thing either of us had undertaken...including planning our nuptial ceremony around our difficult families.

It was an incredible experience––intoxicating––also quite maddening and stressful. But it was all worth it. Because of our work schedules, it took us another year to finish post production on the film, but throughout that process, I knew I had found my calling. I would be a writer, and I would be a Director.

Perhaps I had been too afraid to dream the big dream before. Perhaps I had lacked the confidence, or simply, the life experience to tackle the complexity of human emotions, narratives, and interactions––but no longer. This is what I wanted to do and I had to find a way to get better at doing it.

In the intervening months, I have set myself on a course to develop my writing abilities as quickly as I could in anticipation of this application process. I know I have some latent talent, but it has been a long time since I’ve been in an academic setting, and in any case, I have never really attempted to craft drama on this scale before.

I’ve read many books, listened to countless interviews, attended online classes, and most importantly, written my heart out since relocating down the coast to the small college town of Gainesville in Central Florida with my wife in June of 2018. It was through a trip to her alma mater of Hollins University that we learned about the co-ed graduate program in screenwriting a few months ago. After all the debt I accrued in New England, I didn’t think I would ever go back to college, though I greatly enjoyed the experience. But what we learned about the program filled me with confidence and a desire to share in the wonderful legacy of this school that my wife is always gushing about.

Our Skype conversation with Tim Albaugh proved to be the deciding factor. I knew instantly that I wanted to be a part of anything that he was involved with, and I had the feeling that my ideas would truly be nurtured and harnessed into a craft––something tangible I could be proud of and use to propel my career.

I continue to mine my childhood and adolescence in Miami for critical stories and characters, situations that shed light on my own personal experience of life. I’ve found myself coming back to Paul’s Case. No longer caught up in the character’s stagnant, brooding longings for a grander life, I’m now able to revisit the story, appreciating the young man’s anxieties while evaluating how it all went so fatally wrong for Paul. There was no reason to despair, no cause for lost hope. I would take the necessary steps to become the artist I already know myself to be. The screenplay I am submitting as my writing sample is a new adaptation of this story, making Paul my own, and giving him a little bit of that South Florida flavor.

I will close by reiterating how I have visited Hollins, and heard many a positive review from the powerful women I know who have attended college there. As a graduate student, I know Hollins can help me to become a screenwriter, to become a filmmaker. This is the only graduate program to which I am applying––I have a very good feeling about all this.

I want to be a Hollins girl.

#college essay #paul's case #queer writing #hollins university

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dancing-the-hellfire-rumba · 5 years ago

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Dear Hannah,

Pairing: technically Destiel, but that’s not what this is about Word Count: 4.9k (wow wtf) Warnings: mentions of self-harm, cancer, shitty father John (as per usual), angst and angst and father-daughter love and angst. Summary: When Dean, strapped to a bed, coughing up a storm, catches sight of his newly-adopted baby girl, he decides that, if he is to leave this world, he has to leave something behind for his favorite person. So he writes a booklet, trying to tell her all the things he would’ve if he was alive. Author’s note: This was originally done for @welldonebeca ‘s 2019 Song Challenge but I fucked up thinking the deadline was the 31st of October instead of the 15th. Whatever the case, my prompt was movement, by Hozier, which I interpreted as Dean being fascinated by his daughter enough that he’s inspired to write a letter book to her. Of course this wouldn’t be the entire thing, but I had to keep it under wraps.

Feedback is always welcome! No beta, all mistakes are my own.

~~~~

Hannah,

Christ, it’s the third time I’m starting this. The truth is, I’m coming up with blanks as to how to actually start. This has got to be the best I’ve got.

I’ll tell you the moral of this story, my story, from the get-go. Life’s a fucking bitch, okay? I want you to know that from now. I’d try to hold back on my swearing, but I want you to know me as the person I am, the person I’ve always been. I know what having an absent, terrible father’s like, as you’ll soon see, and I don’t want that for you. I wish I could tell you all this up close, give you advice, tell you all my crazy-ass stories as the dumbass of the teenager I was, and all the shenanigans your uncle (wow, Sam really is a friggin’ uncle!), by a campfire, while you drink your first beer.

Sadly, my odds aren’t looking so great, honey. So this is all I got. I know it’ll never be enough but something is better than nothing.

Enough with the chick flick introduction, though. Let’s start.

The pen’s heavy in his hand, and it’s equal parts the mental heaviness, the weight of the task, as it is his fatigue. Dean’s really just started this. He can’t believe it. The heaviness of uncertainty, of whether or not he’ll get enough time to finish it settles on his chest like an anvil. There’s a solid chance he doesn’t make it before his time comes.

Hannah’s sitting right there, carelessly looking at the plastic, grinning stars above her crib. She’s so innocent, skin creamy, chocolaty and bright, a young, fearsome woman that’s gonna turn out to be so incredible, he’s certain. A small baby who’s soon to walk.

Dean already knows, this kid is destined for great things.

She’s gonna grow up, past the tutus and the miniature racing-car collections, she’s gonna have a movie she’ll play on repeat for ever and ever, with a song that he’ll learn by heart after having heard it so many times. She’s gonna go to high school and she’ll be bullied but she’ll learn to kick some serious ass. She’ll develop interests, she’ll have mediocre grades but a fiery passion and a love for anything alive.

She’ll, then, go to college. She’ll fall in love, with people and life itself. She’ll do what she loves most and she’ll be so damn good at it, she’ll excel.

And Dean… Dean will be nowhere near her to see all of it.

The bitterness… it makes his eyebrows stitch together, his lip curl in clear frustration and sadness. After everything he’s been through, finally finding the person he loves most and creating a full-ass apple pie life, and it’s all gonna be gone as soon as it started. Because, as he told his favorite Hannah, life’s a fucking bitch, and there’s no denying it.

As he lays there in his bed, pale as a sheet, watching her giggle for a while, reaching for the stars, soon yawning, small eyelids shutting softly and rocking just slightly, he… he falls in love with her. This tiny, tiny happy-beyond-words creature that could ask anything of him, and he’d do it, god damn it. He really would.

A giant bubble grows in his chest, a bubble that makes him feel like he’ll protect her at absolute all costs. He’ll grab the moon and fucking move it if that’s what she needs. And all she has to do is yawn and fall asleep.

A tear appears in the corner of his eye, lingering and falling down his ashy cheek. He can’t believe he brought this bright ray of sunshine to this world, and he’s about to make her live with an absent father. That he won’t get any memories with her at all. It’s torture. All of it.

He doesn’t know what else to do, so he grabs his pen with more determination. If he’s to leave her with something, it’ll be a part of him and that is that.

~~~~~

I was born on January 24th, 1979, the first son of a, dare I say, colossally unlucky family. Your uncle, Sam, my brother, is four years younger and will ALWAYS be a wimp, don’t let the height fool you. He always had terrible, shaggy hair and was always the sharpest tool in the box. Hell, the boy went to freaking LAW SCHOOL of all places! That’s kinda crazy!

My parents, your grandparents, were Mary and John.

Mary was a sweet, incredible, fearsome blonde woman, kindest of them all. She’d cut the crusts off my toast, sing Hey, Jude to me before bed and tell me angels were watching over me. (While we’re on the topic of the Beatles, make a note to listen to them. “Hey, Jude” must be your first song, but beyond the classics [Let it Be, Hard Day’s Night, I Saw Her Standing There, I Wanna Hold your hand etc] I hope “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” will hold a special spot in your heart, much like me.)

So, Mary. Sweet Mary. She was a real badass, you know. This one time, Sammy was hungry, so I decided to make, get this, French fries. I think I was seven. She caught me getting ready to pour oil in a very hot pan. When I say she swooped in, I mean it, quite literally. I think she saved me a hand that day.

Now, about John…You’ll have to forgive the mess that I’m about to make with this, but John was a fucking sorry excuse of a father, alright? He got piss-drunk every night after Mom died, and naturally, Sam and I were the punching bags, sometimes literally. The best nights were the ones he wasn’t home.

For years, the house was silent. Sam and I tried to keep everything clean, stock up on canned food, because at times we would only have ten bucks to hold us for over two weeks. I took him to school, fed him, made sure he studied –not that I really had to- and kept John of his hair. At sixteen I picked up a shift at Bobby Singer’s garage, a man that, at this point, deserves the Dad title significantly more than John.

Whenever Sammy was sick, it was my fault. Was anyone loud? Dean’s fault. House dirty? Dean’s fault. Did we wake him up? …Let’s just say we learned not to do that.

I tried to put myself before Sam, did anything I could to protect him. There were times when that wasn’t even enough.

I dropped out of high school at seventeen. The second I saved up enough money, I rented a hole of an apartment at the other side of town, in an attempt to help Sam have a normal life, and we hauled ass out of there.

Before I tell you about our shitty apartment, let me tell you about the highlights of my high school career. Starting off with me “unintentionally” kicking a ball at my least favorite teacher’s face (and hitting him) ((Don’t take your father’s example, kid, violence isn’t the answer.)) (Did feel pretty good at the time though), making out with Jenny in the Janitor’s closet and with Arthur at the locker rooms afterhours (I don’t know what age you’re reading this at, but I sure hope it’s over 16). Also, that one time I pulled a prank at my friend, Cole. I spray painted his entire locker. He didn’t like me very much, to be honest…

~~~~~

An important story I feel inclined to share with you, would be the fact that I was once a bully.

Kids are just mean, but also, I couldn’t understand that troubles at home, traumatic pasts and anger are not to be taken out on other people who are not at fault. Instead of finding a healthy way to deal with everything that was happening at home, I decided that every happy person that was weak enough to meddle with, didn’t deserve any happiness.

I picked on a couple of people, but I think the one I will always regret will be Kevin Tran.

Kevin was a freshman when I was in junior year. He was in the Math club, the Science club and the Robotics club. He had maybe two friends, he was skinny, short, shy as hell, he drowned himself in oversized clothes and always carried a neon green book bag around, that worked on me like red cloth to a bull.

Every time I spotted the bag in the hallway, the drill would start. Shoving the poor kid against the locker, calling him names and laughing at his face for no apparent reason. I’d steal his calculators when I found out he had chemistry tests, spray paint the door of his locker and cause rib bruises from my shoving him against walls and furniture.

I soon find out Kevin was severely depressed. In fact, I saw him in the back of the school, where I’d usually go out to smoke because I thought it was cool (it’s not, it makes you light headed, unfocused and struggle to breathe. Just an all-around terrible experience, but this is just a side-note.)

It was a Friday after school. I didn’t wanna go straight home and Sam still had one more period, so I decided to go smoke and listen to some music in the back of the school building. And that’s where I found him.

I don’t know into how much detail I should go here, but Kevin was harming himself. With a small pocket knife, he sat on an old basket and made incisions on his arms, tears running down his face like a faucet. My God, Hannah, I’ve never felt like a bigger piece of shit in my life, because I knew, and I knew very well, that at least part of those incisions were caused by me.

I called out to him, and the look on his face, as he scrambled away from me, made me feel so much worse. I was the scum of the earth at that moment. I was the biggest asshole on the planet.

My initial reaction, I’ll admit, was pretty harsh. I grabbed the pocket knife out of his hands and threw it as far as possible in the grass. I grabbed a small first aid kit I had in my bag (in case anything happens to Sam), made him sit down by force and bandaged him up. He’d been reduced to sniffles by the time I was done.

Somewhere in between, I remember, he asked me why I was doing this. I didn’t answer.

Eventually, when I was done, I sat on the ground in front of him, ripping blades of grass from the ground. I apologized. Something along the lines of “I didn’t know, not that that’s an excuse. What I’m going through is not an excuse, but I hope it makes you understand that it was nothing to do with you. I’ll stop. I’m sorry. Don’t do this to yourself, man.”

That evening, Kevin was one of the very first people who found out about John. His own dad had passed away, and things at home were rough with his mom. That, along with the whole depression thing… it wasn’t a good combo.

After a solid two hours of talking with him, making amends, apologizing profusely and getting my apology accepted (which I absolutely didn’t deserve by the way,) we made it back out front.

From then on, I stopped picking on anyone. Kevin and I actually became really good friends, though we drifted apart eventually. I think he works in Google now.

This is really important. I want you to pay attention and take heed of my words. There are a couple lessons in this story.

One, be kind. Always be kind. To everyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re going through a rough time or not, the same way it didn’t matter that Kevin’s father was dead. You don’t know the other person. There’s never a reason to not be kind, if the person has done nothing to you. A smile can make somebody’s day, a compliment can go a long way, and being open and honest and kind will make people who are looking for help find you, it will make other’s lives better, and if you’ve helped even a single person, your life has been successful.

Two, never, and I mean never take your emotional pain out on yourself, or others. There are healthy ways to deal with ugly emotions. There are people who can help. Find a new hobby, as silly as it sounds. Start doing something creative, something that draws your attention elsewhere, like art of any kind, or, in my case, fixing cars. Something to keep you busy. If you’re in trouble, emotional or otherwise, there are people who love and support you, who will do their mightiest to be by your side, and if those aren’t your friends, they’re definitely your family.

Bottling up emotions, or dealing with them in horrible, unhealthy ways has been my go-to. Don’t be like me. Express yourself in different ways, and don’t keep your feelings shoved under the carpet, because it will, absolutely, unceremoniously explode, and you’ll take people down with you. And that’s when you’ll feel like the worst person in the world. The guilt, the residue of said ugly feelings isn’t worth it. Trust me.

If you make mistakes, if you hurt people who don’t deserve it, learn from it, grow, be better. Do not sink into yourself , don’t hate yourself. Apologize, make amends and move on, try to never do the same thing. It’s okay. We’re all human. The only thing that matters is that you try to be better.

No matter what, remember that I will always love you. ��

~~~~

So. Our apartment back in Kansas was, as I told you, a real dump. It had a tiny-ass kitchen with a miniature stove, two mattresses that were creaky and lumpy and were left there by the previous owners, as well as the TINIEST bathroom you’ve ever seen. It didn’t have shower walls, it had a shower head and a drain on the floor and was not in any way separated from the toilet. The walls of the place were peeling, the floor was tiled and cracked in a bunch of places and the humidity must’ve been over 80%.

I fucking loved that place.

On our third day there, I borrowed some spray paints from Cole, carried them in a cardboard box up the claustrophobic, green stairs, and opened the door in absolute triumph. That day, Sam and I opened the two windows, scratched the paint off the walls with two spatulas and went WILD. It must’ve been the only day Sam didn’t study.

Actually, no, now that I think about it, there was another time, when little ol’ ten-year-old Sam fell off a ledge and freakin’ broke his arm. I dumped him on Cole’s bike and pedaled to the hospital like a maniac. That was the first day he didn’t study.

Anyways, that apartment wall made our crappy little living situation a home. Our own sanctuary. We finally got agency over our lives, from staying up late, to choosing which type of dish soap we’d use because it smelled better and didn’t remind us of the terror chores once were. Eventually, we got soft blankets, books, board games, decorations… Finally, after 18 years, we’d started our lives.

I think one of my favorite memories would be coming home from my first date with a guy. I was just 18 and Benny, the dude, kissed me before I left, his fists clutching at my flannel. I was driving home with a giant, dopey-ass smile, stretching from one ear straight to the other. That same night, with new-found confidence, I told Sammy to drop his book, bought ourselves some beers and snacks, and drove to my favorite clearing.

There, right under the stars, with Sammy trying out his first beer, I told him I’m bisexual, and the cute bastard hugged me and told me he loved me no matter what. That same night, he thanked me for everything I did for him while living with John. We talked until the sun was rising.

I’ll tell you this right now, kid, in case you haven’t gotten it yet. I love Sam. Love him to bits. I raised that kid all on my own and will do anything to protect him. I know he cares for me, I know it kills him to see me like this, in a bed, pale, miserable and coughing every three seconds. I just want you to know, honey, that whatever you need, anything at all that, for some reason, you don’t want to tell Dad, you go to Sam, okay? You can trust him to be supportive, loyal, to be there for you when no one else is and to love you like you’re his own daughter and best friend. I promise you, he will always, always be there when I’m not.

That night made us grow so much closer. The lesson here, I’d say, is be bold and confident in what you believe in and who you are. Be your own, unique self, be brave, and love whoever you choose to fully and with your whole heart, without shame, ever. If you are yourself, I promise, you’ll find the people that love you for you, not the person you’re pretending to be. You’ll inspire other to be themselves.

A good example of this would be my best friend, Charlie. When I came out, I was armed to the teeth to deal with whoever wanted to bully me for that part of me. To tell you the truth, my school coming out was a mishap. It takes nothing but a risky make-out session in the janitor’s closet and nosey students that rip doors open far too violently. Nevertheless, I was literally out of the closet, fists up. And that’s exactly when I met Charlie.

With her comic book stories and her books, her bubbly personality and bright smile, she wiggled her way into our lives and permanently stayed there. She was a freshman when I was a senior, but she seemed to find sanctuary by my side, as I did by hers. She was just one of those people who clicked, you know? Far too mature and interesting for her age, with an obsession with computers, even back when they were barely even a thing.

She now lives with her long-term girlfriend, Gilda, who owns the best bakery in the state. Ask for the apple pie, you will not be disappointed.

Charlie demanded of me to tell you, first off, to watch Marvel and screw DC right to hell (with which I have to agree, though Batman still remains one of the coolest Superheroes of my childhood (and Joker, the coolest villain)). She also told me that, if you read this, go ask her for her comics, She’d love to let you borrow them and she’s certain you’ll love them. Second off, she asked of me to tell you the Impala story…

It’s not as grand as she makes it out to be, honestly. However this is the part where you’ll learn all about the one and only Bobby Singer.

Bobby was my boss, an old friend of dad’s John’s and the first person who ever saw the bruises under my sleeves. He gave me a job, a family, and later on… a car.

Bobby owns a scrapyard. He taught me everything I know about cars, including driving, and for my seventeenth birthday, he brought a dusty, beat-up car in my workspace. The hood was bent, the seats were torn, and the engine needed immediate replacing. The customer never paid the price for the compartments the garage had paid, so under store policy, the car was ours.

Hannah, I can’t exactly describe to you how long it took me to repair that car. Buying the spare parts and assembling them would’ve probably taken less time. I built her from the ground up, it took me almost a month and a half of daily, eight-to-six work, but I made it. I fixed her up. She was in prime condition, and I had completely fallen in love with her.

I finished working on her early January, dreading the moment I would see her drive away. Bobby had seen all the effort, by then I’d worked at his place for over a year. So, on the day of my birthday, I opened my locker to put on my jumpsuit, when I saw a box placed on my neatly folded clothes. I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now. Yes. It was the keys to my dream car. A beautiful, sleek, black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, the one I had brought back to life. And it was all mine.

I don’t think I’ve hugged Bobby any tighter since then. Hell, I don’t think I’ve hugged him period.

That car… That car is probably the most stable thing in my life, apart from Sam, obviously. I’ve cried in that car, I’ve escaped from my terrible past, I’ve laughed, I’ve had my first time, I’ve been through breakups and I’ve spent my best days with it. I cherish it more than any other item I know. It’s not even an item, it’s my baby. I love it almost as much as I love you.

I met your dad, and kissed him for the first time in that car.

It’s actually a pretty fucking hilarious story. Cas was on a date with this guy who was completely disgusting and creepy as hell, so in true movie fashion he decided to, get this, jump out the bathroom window and escape.

Yeah.

So just as he was running out of the bar, the guy must’ve caught wind of him or something, because he stepped outside in order to find Cas. What did your dad decide to do, I hear you ask? He ducked behind a car in the parking lot, opened the first unlocked door he found, and jumped in.

Spoiler alert. It was my car.

I was sitting in the front seat, fighting with Sam through text when the door opened. It was highly comical, watching this guy duck behind the bench seat, mumbling “oh God, oh God, oh God, please don’t see me, oh God.” I cleared my throat.

“Oh, I see you, buddy.” That’s the first thing I told him. The look on his face and the genuine yelp, made me laugh a full belly laugh, and completely forget about my fight with Sam. He apologized profusely, explained panicked what had happened and begged me to stay in my car just for a couple minutes so the guy can lose him.

Long story short, we ended up going out ourselves. I don’t know how to explain it… we just clicked immediately. Like, there was a connection. Him and his big words, his baby blue eyes, his steady, deep and rough voice… I knew right away that all I wanted was to spend time with him, learn everything he was willing to share with me.

I’m so glad to have met your Dad. He was, is and always will be one of the best, kindest, most humble and genuine people on the planet. He sees the world from such a beautiful point of view that contradicts my eternal realism (he enjoys calling me pessimistic.) He’s a genuinely great person, and I can’t wait for you to figure so out yourself, if you haven’t already.

Of course, it wasn’t all fine and dandy. Meeting his parents was hellish. Let’s just say, Chuck and Naomi aren’t… the best people. They tried really, really hard to stop us from seeing each other, and eventually, they completely disowned Cas. He doesn’t like to talk about them much. His brother, Gabriel is an asshole, but a loveable one, while his other brother, Michael, you probably don’t know about. And you shouldn’t. Let’s just leave it at that. If Cas wants to share that story with you, he’ll do it at his own time.

I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here. Something about, when finding your person, to keep them, fight for them, don’t stop loving them because everyone else is telling you (unless of course that person is toxic). But I don’t think I can give you solid love advice through a dumb book. Every relationship is different, and your Dad’s better at this than me anyways.

I don’t know exactly how long this thing is, by this point, but I’ve almost finished the pages of this booklet. I was really, really worried I wouldn’t finish it in time, but here we are. However many thousand words later, and I’m clueless as to how to wrap this up.

My life isn’t over yet, however it looks like it soon will be. I will confess to you, I’m scared, but most of all I’m angry. I’m angry at the world, at life and fate, if that’s even a thing, at God even. I’ve fought my whole life for peace and quiet, and right when I have found it, it’s being ripped from under my feet. Cancer fucking sucks.

No matter, my chin is up, and so are my fists. Winchesters don’t give up easy. I will fight this until my last breath, even if the chance of watching you grow up and being able to tell you everything I’ve written face-to-face, is nothing but a sliver. After all, impossible odds were always my favorite.

Sweetheart… I don’t know what to say. This might be the only thing you have left of me for the rest of your life, and it tears me up inside. Of course, I will not be able to write thirty five years of experience in a small book such as this, but this is a part of me, memories you can keep all to yourself. Ask Dad or Sam about any of it, I’m sure they’ll fill some gaps, tell you things I haven’t written.

I don’t want you to cry much, even though I’m not sure you will at all, given the fact that you’ve never met me. Either way, whether you feel or think anything of me or not, I want you to know that I love you so much. I’ve only known you for a couple of months, and, already, you’re the brightest ray of sunshine in my life.

I promise I will be by your side no matter what happens, through every milestone and hardship, I will love you from wherever I am.

Honey, please stay true to yourself. Never give up, no matter what curveballs life throws at you. There’s always reason to keep going, even if you can’t see it. Always keep fighting, ‘till your last breath, ‘cause you’re a Winchester and you’ve absolutely got this.

If there is something I want you to remember from the scribbly mess I’ve made, it’s this:

I love you. I’m proud of you. I believe in you.

Go get ‘em, tiger.

Bonus:

Tears streaming down velvety soft cheeks, dainty fingers gripping the book tightly, like her life depends on it, Hannah stares at the ceiling and groans at the mess she is. It’s the second time she read that last bit, and just as she thought she’d gotten over it, here she is, crying just as hard as the first.

She gets off her bed, pulling on her sweater sleeves. Feet in slippers, she makes her way down the corridor, knocking on the door, and opening when she gets an answer. Her fingers grip the doorknob, the other clutching the book, and she stares at the bed, watching as green eyes look up from his laptop.

“Why did you give this to me, you ass, you’re not dead,” she sobs, and Dean pushes his laptop to the side, arms opening wide to invite her in them.

“Aw honey,” he coos, a gentle, loving smile on his face. Hannah climbs on the bed and slides to his side, curling up in his arms. “It’s okay.” Fingers stroking her hair gently, as sobs wrack through the poor girl’s body. Dean almost feels bad.

Just then, Cas appears in the doorway, having heard Hannah’s cries. He sees the booklet clutched in her arms, her face buried in Dean’s neck, hidden behind her spring-curly hair. He makes eye contact with his husband, a knowing half-smile on his lips, as he leans on the doorway.

“I love you,” Hannah says, nose stuffed and running. “Thank you for not giving up on a relationship with me, even when you didn’t think you’ll survive.” Tears wet Dean’s eyes, as he presses a kiss on the crown of her head.

“I love you too.”

#dean fluff #dean angst #destiel #daddy!dean #destiel dads #supernatural au #spn fanfiction #supernatural #spn angst #spn fluff #oc

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prorevenge · 6 years ago

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Discourage & humiliate your students? We’ll get you fired from your alma mater.

I’m going to preface my long-winded story with a PSA: don’t study music in college. If you’re truly passionate about it there’s plenty of cheaper, less stressful ways to pursue your dreams. Hell most majorly-successful artists now didn’t go to college or dropped out. Anyway, my revenge story:

I was inspired by FatAngryOrc’s Post about his student teacher in high school. I was taking a Piano course to fulfill an elective for my major & because I needed something easier amidst my course load. I’d studied private piano for 12 years prior to college & this particular course was geared towards music majors who played other instruments and weren’t familiar with a piano (strings, brass, winds, etc). Our professor was a jazz pianist who let everyone call him Tony. Tony was AWESOME and super chill & patient about everything. This class was going to be an easy A for me, no problem.

1/3rd of the way into the semester, Tony announces he won’t be able to continue teaching the course. I forget the details - something about his role with the music conservatory, blah blah blah. A new professor would be coming in to take over. We were sad because we knew we had lucked out with Tony, but we didn’t think it could get too too bad. Tony’s replacement ends up being a graduated music ed student of the conservatory whose primary instrument was I think classical trombone or something. She was much younger and I think this was her first real teaching job at the university level. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

One thing we did in this class was collab with other students on our respective keyboards (full 88-key keyboards with headphones so it wasn’t a cacophony of noise) to play duets for the class. My partner was also an experienced pianist & once we’d played through the piece once we’d start dicking around & changing it up a bit: changed the instrument on the keyboards to a plucked bass & a muted trumpet, swing & syncopate the rhythm instead of playing it straight, y’know, musician stuff. We decided we’d present to the class that way. We went last after all the other duos struggled through their performances (which is understandable, because again they’re not pianists) because we knew we’d get a laugh. And we did, and we even got applause. After each performance the prof would give us some praise & critique for us in front of the whole group, standard musician stuff.

Well, new professor did NOT appreciate what we did to the piece. She was disappointed that we didn’t play it how it was written on the page and, I fucking quote, “did not want us to get creative with it”. Not only was I embarrassed for being yelled at in front of my peers, I was fucking LIVID. My partner & I had perfectly demonstrated our ability to perform the piece flawlessly and we went the extra step to show how the piece could be interpreted, a shitty 16-bar whatever that had PERFECT potential for syncopation & jazz interpretation. At no point in the assignment did she indicate we weren’t allowed to “get creative”, something I generally expected was, well, EXPECTED of music majors. What would music be now if men like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven didn’t get creative?

Okay I know, this was just one little in-class assignment, I’m overreacting. But as the semester went on, she was ALWAYS like this - discouraged interpretation, humiliated students if they were struggling, overall brought a negative cloud of energy that killed whatever joy Tony had previously brought to the course. Speaking to her one on one was useless as well because she always managed to turn the blame back on us or refused to give extensions if we were bogged down with other assignments. I spoke to my classmates and it turns out we all hated her. It was a small conservatory that excelled in teacher-student relationships and we weren’t going to let this fly.

At this conservatory, professors were required to do student evaluations each semester. We were required to write them out day-of in class and the professors in question weren’t allowed to look at them. I’d never really had much to say on them, but after speaking to my advisor (who had also recently been promoted to Dean of the conservatory!), he said it was very important that we express all of our concerns in these evaluations so when it came time to review, he and his peers would decide if this new professor issue needed to be addressed.

I passed this along to the rest of the class, and boy did we come in clutch. I’ve never written front & back on an evaluation before but lordy did I have more than enough to say. In fact, everyone in the class was writing front & back. The professor even made a comment in a super nervous voice about how “everyone seems to have a lot to say” to the dead silent room of furious music students. Someone had even TYPED OUT their evaluation the night before & submitted it. That is how frustrated we were.

Two days later, last class of the semester, our professor starts by letting us know she won’t be returning for the following semester. She gave this little speech about how she’s sad she failed us as a teacher & wished we had come to her about our problems (which we had, numerous times). I was trying my damndest to look guilty & not laugh but was failing miserably. I looked around the room and we all were trying not to lose it. We had really done it - we actually managed to get her fired.

Tony returned the following semester to teach the next portion of the course.

(source) (story by chelsmels)

#prorevenge #by chelsmels #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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rainydawgradioblog · 5 years ago

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Rainy Dawg Radio’s Best of the 2010s!

ALBUMS

Palberta - Bye Bye Berta

Palberta is a band that somehow manages to scratch almost every musical itch I have. Nowhere else have I heard a band successfully hold three part harmonies over squeaky atonal guitar riffs and abstract drum thrashing. Although I wouldn’t categorize them as twee, noise rock, post-punk, indie pop, no-wave, or any other genre name for that matter, they distill everything I love from all these types of music and mush it into something beautifully stinky. In my eyes, their 2017 album Bye Bye Berta stands as the definitive statement of what Palberta’s all about. With 20 tracks clocking in at under half an hour, the album wastes no time on filler. Skronky punk riffs burst apart at the seams and a sweet little lo-fi love song comes out of the wreckage, only to be replaced by an abstract tape sample collage. The band also has an incomparable mastery over lyricism, as evidenced by such classics as Finish My Bread (Finish my finish my finish my bread, finish my finish my finish my bread, etc…) and Trick Ya (HEY! Don’t trick me, I’m gonna trick you! HEY! Don’t trick me, I’m gonna trick you!). Highlights include the endearingly ramshackle and stupid pretty “Honey, Baby” and their cover of “Stayin’ Alive” (Jenny’s eating burgers and everybody’s shakin’ and stayin’ alive!)

- Elliott Hansen

Alex G - DSU

Shit if you know me you know I live for that sad bastard indie music. That’s exactly what DSU does best. Probably my most played record of the 2010s, this album’s lo-fi indie rock overfloweth. The opener, After Ur Gone, is on the noisier side of the album’s spectrum along with the squealing guitar of Axesteel and Icehead (peep the scream vocals in his live performances), while songs like the instrumental Skipper exemplify why Frank Ocean tapped Alex for the Self Control riff on Blonde. The emotional core of the record, Sorry, gets right back to the Elliott Smith comparisons that we know and love: lyrics of trauma, drugs and apologies included. My favorite song is Harvey; it smacks me right in the younger brother emo spot, with “run my hands through his short black hair I say / ‘I love you Harvey I don’t care’”. While not as chaotic as House of Sugar, twangy as Rocket, or psychedelic as Beach Music, this record is Alex G comfort music at its finest.

- Max Bryla

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Picture this: J Dilla, Madlib, and Aphex Twin all come together to create an album with little more than some old Coltrane records and an original Xbox at their disposal. The end result is like a trip through the universe. Yet the album comes from the mind of a single individual, who sits in the cockpit with a mischievous grin on his face: Steven Ellison, known professionally as Flying Lotus. The opening track, ‘Clock Catcher’, feels like Ellison slamming his foot onto the ignition so hard that it snaps out of place, shooting into the heavens at the speed of light before the listener can even strap in. Whirling through the stars, the rest of the album is the journey home from the expanse, often melancholic, often wondrous, always changing. From the punchy, off-kilter rhythms of tracks like ‘Nose Art’ and ‘Computer Face//Pure Being’ to the fat synth melodies of ‘Dance of the Pseudo Nymph’, ‘Recoiled’, and ‘Do The Astral Plane’, Flylo is always striking the listener from a different sonic vantage point. You can tell he’s having the time of his life with each of these songs, wanting to share every bit of it with our eardrums. After countless listens, I’m still finding new things about this album to appreciate. A complete masterpiece of cosmic epiphany fuel.

- Trey Marez

Ott. - Fairchildren

People throw so much music at me. And I remember this album was recommended to me back in high school, and I listened to it for the first time in zero-th period -- I think it was someone who went by the name “phryk” on IRC. And dang, it’s still such a good album! In what sense? It’s so well-mixed; that’s the first part. Secondly, it is just a wonderful listening experience from start to finish. If you need a good album of reggae, dub, electronic, here it is. One thing you shouldn’t do with this album: use it to test out speakers at Goodwill. The bass of this album was so good that I bought home a pair of speakers that turned out to be so bad.

- Koi Nil

Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy

Bandcamp has been known for hosting some of our wildest dreams this decade, and when 2011 lobbed William Toledo’s first rendition of Twin Fantasy down my ears my life changed. Emotions are crushed to death in the back of parking lots, the lo-est of fi’s, and lyrics that trigger far and melancholy memories of the early 2010 zeitgeist swarmed with insecurity and Skype calls. The album is Toledo’s first cohesive piece, finally creating work with developed central themes, dedicating the first concept album of his life to falling in and consequently out of love. The album speaks as a mirror to itself, reflecting Will’s own joy and confusion towards falling conservatively and completely in love, until the sobering downward spiral back into isolation. I was only eleven when I let the album own me completely, and am only nineteen as I hold onto it for dear life. Twin Fantasy was never a perfect album, and Toledo recognized this as he re-released Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) in 2018, reinventing the album’s sound with a much higher fidelity, lyrical updates, and redone instrumentals that turn the original into an overture or prologue to be enjoyed separately for more context. Searing solos, cute doo-wop moments, sentimental lyrics, slap-happy drums, fish wearing business suits, dogs, coming out over Skype, smoking, not smoking, nice shoulders, waitresses, the Bible, the ghost of Mary Shelley’s frankenstein, cursive, they might be giant’s rip offs, not knowing SHIT about girls, stealing alcohol from our grandparents and grandparents, bruised shins, cults, fish, getting the spins, and being really really really sensitive to the sunlight. I’d fight for this album, listening to “Cute Thing” as I get RKO’d. Take the time to enjoy the ride, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. (It technically used to be a gay furry album, but now it’s techincally a straight trans furry album.)

- Cooper Houston

Sabaton - The Last Stand

Sabaton is every history teachers dream band. These Swedish power metallers educate the listener about the history of war by discussing various battles, conflicts, and figures. They do this through anthemic choruses, riffs that make your fist pump, and oddly enough synths that work surprisingly well. Since history interests me and I really like metal, Sabaton was pretty much made for me. This album will always have a soft spot in my heart and evoke fond memories as it was one of the first CDs I picked up after getting my license back in 2016. As I gained more independence and freedom as I approached adulthood, this was my soundtrack. This album lived in my CD player during this time as I listened to it over and over again, never once losing its replayability. Ranging from the American battalion that got lost in the Argonne Forest during WWI to Allied and Axis forces joining together to fight at the end of WWII, this album tells of various historical last stands. While this is certainly isn’t the best metal release of the decade, it’s still an extremely solid album. In this case, the sentimentality plays a larger role than anything. While it may not be found on any “Best Album of the Decade” lists, Sabaton’s The Last Stand will always hold a place in my heart and in my car’s CD player.

- Jack Irwin

CONCERTS

07/20/19: What the Heck? Fest @ Croatian Club, Anacortes, WA

Choosing a single favorite concert from the entire past decade seemed insurmountable until I decided to define it by the overall experience rather than exclusively the music. This past summer, I was lucky enough to be one out of barely over a hundred people at the first What the Heck? Fest in 8 years. The festival took place annually from 2001 to 2011, featuring PNW indie legends, K records icons, and all manner of dorky indie folk kids. WTH laid dormant until this past spring, when Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie) announced its return along with the revival of his long-dead initial moniker, the Microphones. I made the trip up from Seattle alone by train and bus, spent a little while wandering Anacortes (the Business was closed :( ) and made my way to the repurposed church which houses the Unknown and the Croatian Club. I ended up seated a few feet from Calvin Johnson in one direction and Kimya Dawson in another. I felt a little out of place at times, like a stranger in the middle of a 90s indie family reunion, but the atmosphere remained consistently welcoming. D+ opened the show, fronted by Bret Lunsford (formerly of Beat Happening), the founder and main organizer of WTH, and backed by Phil Elverum and Karl Blau, who played their own sets later in the night. K Records mainstays Lois and Mecca Normal were on next, delivering stripped down, socially-driven whisper punk/indie pop. Karl Blau led an outdoor sing-along and covered a Pounding Serfs song, who played the next set (their first in [a lot of?] years) for a total of two renditions of “Slightly Salted,” a song I could have listened to in every set that night. Phil hopped back onstage again alongside Lee Baggett to back Kyle Field from Little Wings, an indie-folk favorite of mine, with rambly half-nonsensical lyrics and plenty of soft strummed warm twangly guitars. Black Belt Eagle Scout delivered (comparatively) heavier sounds, coupling slow, soft sung melodies with fuzzed out shoegaze tones, building tension until the Microphones (Phil backed by Kyle, Karl, Lee and keyboardist Nicholas Krgovich) came out for the final set of the night. They opened with what I interpret as a 25-minute rendition of the then-unreleased Belief, which was later shortened to 7 and a half minutes as the opener to the new Mount Eerie record, Lost Wisdom pt. 2. Phil then played a handful of old Microphones tracks alone, including a version of The Glow pt. 2’s title track with reworked lyrics, as well as its closer, My Warm Blood, excerpts from the final Microphones album (confusingly titled Mount Eerie), and what I believe to be another unreleased song. I left with the most limited merch I’ve ever managed to snag: one of two Ziploc bags of lettuce with “the Microphones” and a small K records logo sharpied on the front. I felt bad eating my merch, but it sustained me through the cold Anacortes night as I wandered to and from poorly lit parks, killing time until my 4AM bus back to Seattle.

- Elliott Hansen

03/09/19: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Solo) @ Vermillion Gallery, Seattle WA

Was really not sure what to expect from this one going in, but CYHSY’s s/t from 2005 has always been one of my favorite records. I hadn’t ever been to Vermillion in Capitol Hill, but it was hosting CYHSY on a “living room tour”, where Alec Ournsworth (vox, guitar, harmonica[!]) hit tiny spaces around the country. Vermillion sat 40 at most, and I got to check out some cool local art in the space as well. Alec’s trademark voice that (according to p4k) sounds “as if someone were pressing his vocal cords to a fret board and bending them” which is pretty damn accurate. Amongst CYHSY’s greatest hits (In This Home On Ice and Cool Goddess in particular), he also covered Pixies and Tom Waits through lively and exciting banter. Great dude, great music, great venue. My favorite of the 2010’s for sure.

- Max Bryla

11/14/18: Milo @ Vera Project, Seattle, WA

Milo, and the ruby yacht house band are poetic alchemists that constantly dish out hefty servings of succulent syllables with each new release. Kenny Segal who does the beats for a few of Milo’s songs (and other hip hop artists) opened by transporting the crowd into the ethereal realm with a few classics from his album: happy little trees. Once Kenny Segal finished, Milo accompanied by the ruby yacht house band jumped on stage. I was close enough that I could make out Milo’s squirtle tattoo on his bicep and waited for his vivid and veracious vocabulary to leave me in a state of decapitation. Crispy, potato chip like static (a Milo-live signature) was consumed ferociously by the crowd as he hit us with one banger after another. About halfway through the set Milo dropped the mic and went off stage into the back room. The ruby yacht house band was left Milo-less; their beat lingering in the air, festering with each hit of the snare. Milo returned a while later, wielding a pair of tap dancing shoes in one hand and a ukulele in the other. He put on the tap dancing shoes on stage, everyone in the audience screaming with his return. Donned with the tap dancing shoes and positioning his ukulele on his chest; he began to dance. Holy shit he was good too. Strumming the uke and tap dancing away I was utterly mesmerized. My eyes glued to his performance. Suddenly, as if stricken by some divine intervention, Milo seized the ukulele by the neck and smashed it against the ground, splintering into a thousand pieces. After his destructive fit, he picked the microphone back up and whispered into it emotionlessly: “Think about that”. I did. The whole experience was transcendental and instantly triumphed as my greatest concert of the decade. You KNOW I snagged a sliver of uke on my way out.

- Rocky Schaefer

08/07/17: Metallica @ CenturyLink Field, Seattle, WA

While Metallica has had its ups and downs throughout their career, they do one thing well, and that is putting on a damn good live show. Metallica built the best line-up I have ever seen, given the popularity of the bands they chose. With them they took Avenged Sevenfold, who I greatly dislike but are still a huge band, and Gojira, one of the best modern death metal bands on the scene. The sheer size of this concert was absolutely and extremely inspiring as Metallica was able to fill up CenturyLink Field, a venue usually reserved for pop artists who draw in thousands of attendees. The amount of people that attended signaled to me that metal is far from dead. While this tour was in support of their newest album Hardwired to Self Destruct, Metallica made sure to incorporate classics into their setlist including “Seek and Destroy,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and “Battery.” James, Robert, Kirk, and Lars delivered a killer concert will tight playing and outstanding individual performances. Being able to see my music hero, James Hetfield, play live was truly a special experience. The one thing that stood out during the performance were the visuals. Each song had a unique and individual video effect on the large screens behind the band which made each song special and memorable it its own way. While I wasn’t close to the stage by any means, the crowd interaction created a unique experience that made me feel much closer than I really was. This concert wasn’t just a concert, but also a life-changing experience. Seeing the band that truly got me into metal, the thing that I rest my individuality on, is something that defined the decade for me and will live with me forever.

- Jack Irwin

SONGS

“You Are Here” - Yo La Tengo

This one I don't think I can fully explain. By miles, this is my most played song of all time. It is the opener of Yo La Tengo’s 15th album, There’s A Riot Going On. The album, and song, starts with the meditative synth line that builds into a pulsing rhythm over the course of the first minute. The rhythm maintains through the rest of the song, as casual guitar strumming is added and another synth that doesn’t sound all that dissimilar to Jonny Greenwood’s Ondes Martenot. My favorite part of the song, though, are the drum fills of the latter half: they crash and roll like the ocean. With or without the title of the song, the audio conveys a degree of presentness and contentedness that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere quite yet. I’d recommend it.

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chocktaw-salchow · 6 years ago

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TRANSLATION: Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha, two gifted skaters who have no time to lose

By Michel Marois

This is a translation of an article originally posted by La Presse

Three time canadian junior ice dance champions, Majorie Lajoie and Zachary Lagha will be in Zagreb, Croatia next week for the World Junior Championships. Though the team went their separate ways a few years ago, Lajoie and Lagha reunited and now train in Saint-Henri with renowned coaches Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon

“We were with a different coach at a club on the South Shore [of Montreal] and we decided to take a break,” recalled Marjorie Lajoie last week in an interview. “It was when we arrived here [at the Montreal International Skating School] that we started to skate together again…”

Patrice Lauzon, who admits to having contributed to their reunion as a team, explained: “In dance, it’s always an advantage to have been together for a long time and they [Marjorie and Zachary] had been skating together for years. We were convinced that they had the potential to improve a lot more and that is what they are currently doing.”

Zachary Lagha remembers it: “It was a big leap when we started training here. We quickly learned new, more complex footwork and our programs evolved a lot.”

Lajoie is studying to become an actress, while Lagha is already a talented classical pianist. These artistic gifts are evident on the ice. “We are always telling a story on the ice, and what I have learned from my teachers about interpreting emotions and intentions has helped me to create these characters,” explained the skater.

“For me, the piano certainly helps me to better understand music, to be able to capture the emotion, especially this year with the program we have [to music from Richard Addinsell’s Warsaw Concerto],” underlined her partner. “I recently played a Tchaikovsky concerto in competition, a difficult piece, very philosophical, which includes a little bit of Russian history- Tchaikovsky’s as well. The beginning is joyful, but then we see a lot of vulnerability. It’s the same sensibility that helps me on the ice.”

Even if Lagha thinks that the team could make a great deal more progress in terms of interpretation, the skaters are also working tirelessly on the technical side of their skating.

“The steps are complex. The sequences difficult, but the goal is to make it all look easy,” explained Lajoie.

Lauzon underlined that Lajoie and Lagha are among the most hardworking teams on the ice: “They always want to be there and work a lot. They do countless repetitions in order to look after every detail in their programs and it really shows.”

“When you are passionate, you don’t count the hours,” assures Lagha,

who is also pursuing his studies in university. “It’s when you don’t have a goal that it is difficult to be motivated. We have very clear goals and we know what to do to reach them, there is only one way: work.”

With The Best

Canadian figure skating is currently in a state of change with the retirement of many champions and the arrival of a new generation of aspiring stars. Lajoie and Lagha are among them.

“The goal is to go all the way,” assured Lajoie. “We want to go to the Olympics, to the major competitions, but at the same time that is a long ways away and we prefer to focus on the short term with specific goals that allow us to concentrate on what we need to do without losing our heads.”

At 18 and 19 years old respectively, Lajoie and Lagha could continue to compete at the junior level next season. But after three national titles, victories on the Junior Grand Prix and appearances at Junior Worlds, they feel ready to make the transition up to seniors.

It’s not the high level of ice dance in Canada and elsewhere that scares them. Every day at Dubreuil and Lauzon’s international skating school they train alongside many of the best teams in the world at the Gadbois center.

“Sometimes it’s necessary to set very high goals, almost unrealistic, to breakthrough to the next level, even if you don’t reach them,” explained Lagha. “We don’t want to be left behind in the junior ‘trap’. Many skaters have had wonderful careers at the junior level, but they never had the same success afterward.”

“We are already seen a little bit like seniors and that is the effect that we want to give on the ice. We are young, but at the same time, we don’t have time to lose.” - Majorie Lajoie

Junior worlds in Zagreb could therefore be the last junior competition for Lajoie and Lagha. They will face the three teams of Russian skaters that beat them in December at the Junior Grand Prix Final in Vancouver. The Canadians missed the podium by three hundredths of a point…

“At the moment, we aren’t thinking to much about the results because there are still so many things to incorporate at technical level,” underlined Lagha. “When we are on the ice, it’s true that we are going there to win, it’s the goal for the competition, but we especially want to have a good performance, to get our technical levels and to please our coaches.”

“Honestly, if our coaches are happy, I think that we will have reached our goal.”

#fstranslations #Marjorie Lajoie #Zachary Lagha #figure skating #ice dance #Team Canada

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seekerpiner · 2 years ago

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Classical guitar shed block chord

If we do this all the time, then we break up the long phrases we are trying to carve out, we lose the contour of our sound. To do this, we have to abandon the rudimentary idea that we should always accent certain beats in each measure. It is guided by line, and phrase, and contours of sound. While there are pieces that we may play which are heavily influenced by folk forms and dances, much of the pure music we play is elastic in nature. I see a correlation between a classical ballet dancer and a classical musician. When watching classical ballet, however, you might have a hard time seeing the physical link between the dancer’s body and the beats in the music.Ī ballet dancer is more concerned with line, phrasing, and form as opposed to synching up with the conductor and individual beats. She plays with the beat, stretches it, arrives early late and in the groove, but in general it is safe to say there is a strong and visible link to the beat. My wife is a Swing Dancer, and her foot pats like a drum when she dances. One of several exceptions to this is classical ballet. The dancer isn’t moving to the band, she is part of the band! It is almost like the dancer is using the body as a percussion instrument. Dance forms walk hand in hand with accented beats. Swing dance, marching, salsa, polka, the waltz. In fact, general accent rules in music work very well for any music that is associated with movement. Accenting beats two and four is also true in jazz. Somewhere in that learning you will be told that the first beat, the down beat is the strongest beat in the measure and it should have a heavier accent compared to the other beats.Īs a broad generalization this is true. One of the first ideas we are taught when learning music is to play in time. What I do know, for certain, is that I have repeated these concepts again and again over the years as a teacher and if you can absorb and use these guides, then you will be ahead of the game! 1. They are not written in stone, and should be taken with a grain of salt, as there are always exceptions and varying circumstances. What I hope to do with this small list is to provide you with some general “guides” to interpretation that will inform your interpretations without needing someone to tell you what to do. It is something that is elusive to many people and I would argue that apart from fingering and technique it is one of the major focuses of private lesson time, especially for advanced students. The solution lies in your own understanding of musical interpretation. You will find, with some more contemporary composers, scores that have an overload of instruction in an effort to communicate exactly what they want, but this is the exception rather than the rule and in the end it can actually hinder the overall learning experience because everything is so micro-managed. All of these interpretational aspects are left up to our own understanding of musical style and syntax, they are generally not included in the score. Things like tapering off a phrase, or slightly emphasizing a chord, giving a focus on one voice but not the other, adding vibrato, and letting the music breathe between ideas. But, once we have tamed the mechanical aspects of a piece, much of the study time is dedicated to musical nuance and gesture. To take it one step further I will throw in my own two cents and say that neither of them do a particularly good job of communicating music.įor communicating general rhythm, pitches and a structural overview they suffice. It doesn’t take to much digging on the internet to find a heated discussion about TAB vs. It can be learned, and in this post I hope to share five basic rules or guides to help develop your own interpretations. It allows us to communicate a shared feeling between strangers, even if they are from another culture. Musicality is largely an understanding of musical syntax. Interpretation of classical guitar music is what makes the difference between a mechanical rendition vs.

#Classical guitar shed block chord

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ragnvdnir · 3 years ago

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Yes this is Detective 🍰 at your service, Your Highness. 🕵️✨

"I enjoy you seeing try tho, maybe i shouldn't have given you hints so you can try guessing longer," too late ;D well unless you have other stuff that you want me to try guessing- try playing hard to get by being more cryptic with symbolisms and/or recognizable but subtle references. 🤔🧐 Idk how to give an example but i'm used to doing that 😰 maybe... Look back on our crazy ass drama when you haven't known who the secret mystery anon was yet 😍 oh how i missed those times when you're going through a crisis bc of me 😎 i feel like trying that again 😎 but if u really want examples id try to think of some by later or tomorrow after our first day of exams 😋 as your loyal advisor why shouldn't i give you some when Your Highness asks for it? 🥰

I can relate with not liking your actual irl name tbh, my in-game name too is basically a name i'd rather like to be called or the name i put when games needed it 😌 and fyi since you have shared smth abt you, i have like 3 names. You and your siblings are really being 💅💅💅 with that royalty references 🤨🤨 if you're curious if im laughing when reading your messages: DEFINITELY. Im like cackling everytime bc it's so fun to talk to you 🤬😍 like most of the time, i dont like how passive-aggressive ppl are on the internet (typical GenZ behavior tbh 🙄 i mean i am GenZ too but i'm much more like a polite person bc im sexy 😎) but when it comes to you, Ein, it feels so funny and actually not offensive 😍😍😍 (this is coming from a person who gets offended easily by ppl who display rude attitude)

Thank u too for the goodluck wishes!! I gave up studying lmao it took me like 2 hours to finish one SIMPLE lesson bc i keep spacing out 💀💀💀 so yeah continuing is futile, i'd just speedrun it in the morning 😍💗 Gonna do my best and not die bc my Queen actually cheered me on 😳😋💨 i def wont leave u bc as your royal advisor, you might do more impulsive shit than ever before so u better consult me first if you have some tempting thoughts to actually act on 🤬🤬🤬 this is for your safety and so you won't regret anything 😩 your kingdom would def be in shambles at anytime with one dumb mistake 🤬💨 so dont decide stuff with your goofy ass impulsively and without your royal advisor's approval 😌😌😌 Gotta get you married off to either Prince Vyn of the Richter Clan or Emperor Diluc of the Ragnvindr Kingdom 😍 so behave your self young lady ✌️😌

I'm happy you're enjoying the playlist i sent you 😍😍😍 tbh im sorry to break it to you but like clair de lune and merry go round of life is too repetitive for me already so im so done with those popular pieces😌 there's so much more classical music out there SO ALSO tell me if i should send more playlist links bc for sure i do have a bunch to send you 💪💪💪

BONUS: *classical music playing in the mansion* "These music is my favorite" (what you said). "Actually you're my favorite music." (what diluc said). idk figure it out maybe 😋 i have your "voice" in mind but if you have other interpretations then that's cool. Yes it's cringe or whatever but anything for this man 💪💪💪

Also i think ur now experiencing my long-ass asks 😍 how do you feel about it 🎤🎤🎤

— 🍰.

you're not only a criminal (refers to the mystery game) but also a detective now? i see🤨🤨

yeah ik, its too late now 😔😔 bae idk how to be cryptic when im a blabbermouth and a honest person😇😇☝️naurr bc i was just said the "come out and show yourself" as a joke but somehow you really did gave me hint and that's how it all started🧐🧐 ngl i miss those times too (i sound like a grandmother reminiscing her youth days😟) examples would be very much appreciated, gl on your exams again, show the teacher who's the girlboss😼😼

us dissapointed on our parents now 🤝🤝🤝 but ig i got used to being called like that(my irl name) oooh three names? cant relate i only have one word name😶😶😶

we are girlbosses😼😼😼 mom said we may not be rich but we are rich in terms of name. mom is the real mastermind here💅💅

uhm as u should? im putting on my make up clown everytime i answer your ask and u won't laugh? thats offending maam🤨🤨 (oh no what i have done to you to say things like this😟😟 but slayy😼😼) im afraid that one day i might offend ppl for acting like this so im glad you're finding it punny👉😻👈

tbh i dont study even though i have a big exams coming up, i just give my all to my stock knowledge (self reliance at its finest😼☝️) and somehow i still manage to pass when most of the time i just listen to my instincts (if the answer sheet is multiple choices)

i will dear advisor🙄 (affectionate) but maybe i wont bc ik you will clean the mess i always do😽😽 im sorry but im not dainty like those other young ladies so lemme do what i want😾😾 and why marry one when i can just marry two and create a harem😏😏

ik merry go round of life is repetitive already but i still love it bc that masterpiece got me feeling like a royalty 😔👉👈 claire de lune isn't exactly my fav bc i prefer the ones with violin😗😗 go and send them to me anytime, i wont mind😉😉

i see your back into your fairy godmother agenda🧙🧙 nah but that actually made me stifle a smile

*grabs the mic* okay so ehem ehem! it feels nostalgic actually *mic drop 😼😼*

#—letters 💌#talks with: 🍰 anon #you have so many alias now👀#i edited this for 🍰 anon's information!#apparently cutting yourself off is ableist so i deleted that part #im really sorry i didnt know :((

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lindsay36ho · 4 years ago

Text

The Transcription – Zlata Chochieva

Zlata Chochieva is one of the most interesting musicians of her generation, with her breathtaking technique and musicality as well as with her choice of repertoire. “(re)creations”, her latest CD, offers an exquisite collection of transcriptions by her great heroes, Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Friedman, and in the title lies the secret of this special art form, so closely related to the piano.

Please tell me how you are coping with these challenging times…

It is very difficult not being able to communicate with your audience, but it would be even more pity not to use that time as productive as possible. And I am happy and lucky to say that I have been busy! I took part in several online-concerts, and projects such as “Concerts in Quarantine” of the great film director Jan Schmidt-Garre, from the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, saved us, musicians, from silence. I also had a chance to focus my mind on my new CD project starting my collaboration with the Accentus label. It is always different and special to work in a recording studio, which is a completely different world, without audience. You are alone playing for microphones. In that moment you realize how important is to have another pair of ears behind the wall – the sound- producer. As you work on creating the sound together, as well as developing the most powerful and interesting interpretation. Working with Tonmeister Philipp Nedel became one of the most remarkable experiences I ever had.

Do you feel the arts in general are appreciated enough for the vital role they play in our society?

Not by many unfortunately. Especially nowadays culture has being put in a sleeping, silent mode. But one of the organizations which doesn’t allow musicians to feel forgotten is the Funk Stiftung that made my CD-project happen and generously supported the Berliner Klavierfestival digital edition where I was invited to play online in the Konzerthaus Berlin last May. Especially to Robert Funk I would like to express my deepest gratitude, as with his such a sincere and dedicated work he brings to music its true meaning and importance into this world.

The lockdown seemed to have influenced you also in the choice of repertoire.

Yes, this is an uncertain, lonely time when we became even more fragile and sensitive than we ever were before. I found my inner voice with the Schubert songs transcribed for piano by Liszt and it became the main impulse for creating a program which became very special to me. There is a stereotype that transcription is rather a virtuoso brilliant piano piece. But I wanted to show the genre Transcription from all different sides, and mainly as a re-creation of an original work that we know from before, putting it into a new concept that would make us find something different in it.

Transcriptions should sound like an original written for piano?

Yes, I want transcriptions to sound that way, because the piano has its own magical sound, and it would be a sad not to fully express it. There is no intention from my side to copy the sound of original works. Rather to make it sound as a true piano piece. You can compare it with poems in translation – Shakespeare, Pushkin. It will sound different but the meaning will remain the same.

With songs it often seems as if the expression is stronger in the piano version.

Yes, that is my feeling too, the vocal line always remained in the transcription, but the meaning of the text is being replaced by the musical expression itself. For instance, Rachmaninoff with the Tchaikovsky’s lullaby enriches the original accompaniment on such an extent that it becomes a magical solo, that sounds even darker in atmosphere than the original song. The human voice has always been your starting point, and you make Siciliano by Bach, original for flute, sound like a song. Indeed, the voice has always been the most important teacher for me. For Horowitz, one of the pianists I admire most, the cantabile was one of the qualities he wanted to convey most, and he was greatly inspired by the great singers of his time.

Do transcriptions influence your interpretation of original works for piano, of Chopin or Beethoven, for example?

In transcriptions, you almost automatically develop a feeling of being like a composer. There is more room for imagination and you learn a lot about the pianism of the transcribers. I have recorded all of Chopin and Rachmaninoff’s etudes, but I can hardly recall anything as difficult as Liszt transcriptions of Schubert’s songs or some of Friedman’s or Rachmaninoff’s transcriptions such as for example Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer night’s dream. There are so many layers, each with its own color, sense of timing and we have just two hands to make it all sound as rich but light and natural as possible.

It sounds fantastic on your CD, and you take very fast tempo!

She laughs. It’s funny, in that Scherzo I’m only two seconds faster than Rachmaninoff himself. So I do have an alibi for that pace!

Tell me a little please about Liszt, Friedman and Rachmaninoff, the three transcribers on your CD.

All three have their own characteristics. Robert Schumann considered Liszt’s transcriptions as “new” works. But in his adaptation of Schubert and Mendelssohn songs Liszt tries to preserve the special authentic world of the songs. His work on Schubert’s songs is extremely delicate, as the power of that music lies in its vulnerability. Here Liszt is very faithful to the world of the original, whereas with the most of his transcriptions he usually presents himself more as the main character. Friedman in his transcriptions was profoundly influenced by Busoni, to whom he even dedicated his transcription of the Tempo di Menuetto from Mahler’s Third Symphony. And especially in his transcriptions of baroque music, for example the Brandenburg Concerto on the CD, you can clearly hear the shadow of Busoni in the manner Friedman symphonically expands the sound and the ideas of the rather minimalistic original. Whereas Rachmaninoff modifies original works much more than Friedman does, he is more a coauthor and the chemistry between himself and a composer of an original is always very strong. He is never too massive but refined, as his pianism also was.

The last piece on the CD, a waltz by Eduard Gärtner in the piano version by Friedman, sounds like a nostalgic farewell.

As I mentioned before this program shows transcriptions from different sides and sometimes as an inner intimate piece. Also this program is very much related to what is known as the Golden Age of the Piano, when the piano world was so different from the general aesthetics of our time. Ignaz Friedman was as one of the greatest representatives of that special era that personally deeply influenced me too. This waltz would be one of the Friedmans typical encores and with its special warmth and nostalgia it reflects a very special way of story telling – when every listener feels the piano “speaks” privately, intimately to him only.

Author: Eric Schoones

Read more: www.zlatachochieva.com www.accentus.com www.funk-stiftung.org

This article is a contribution from the German and Dutch magazine Pianist through Piano Street’s International Media Exchange Initiative and the Cremona Media Lounge.

Pianist Magazine is published in seven countries, in two different editions: in German (for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg and Liechtenstein) and in Dutch (for Holland and Belgium). The magazine is for the amateur and professional alike, and offers a wide range of topics connected to the piano, with interviews, articles on piano manufacturers, music, technique, competitions, sheetmusic, cd’s, books, news on festivals, competitions, etc. For a preview please check: pianist-magazin.de or www.pianistmagazine.nl

from Piano Street’s Classical Piano News https://www.pianostreet.com/blog/articles/the-transcription-zlata-chochieva-11016/

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education-memoriesls11 · 4 years ago

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Nursery to Reception - Part Timer to “Big School” and “Pizzagate”

From those days I can still visually picture how we all looked and were, the top music star of the time was Michael Jackson and my long time friend Shayn Thomas is always shocked to remember that I can still picture that he used to have his “thriller” T-Shirt on at school (no uniform at BPS in those days we could wear what we wanted). As far as nursery goes from memory it felt like one day I was spending days watching tv, going out on the Cardinal Field or playing with my pals round at the twins Duane and Danny’s house, then suddenly I was told “you’re off to nursery tomorrow” by my mother, so off I went with her, I remember first seeing the building, much of which has remained the same to this day with its dark brick oblongs with the white frames and fascias and green pipes as it had at the time.

I used to come up past the house then known as “The Convent of The Most Holy Cross and Passion” on Town Street, where you could see the school building in the distance, then we would go up the winding path by the terminus to the nursery. In those days we used to be scared of the Nuns as some of them almost had a ghostly appearance but in later life whenever we said a good morning to them they were always found to be polite, its now a house known as “The Old Convent” as you would expect.

At this point that The Nursery and one Classroom next to the big playground were the only “Huts” at the school, the Portakabins were still to be dropped in. Of course, the first job of the day was getting your pumps on which we brought in our pump bags, I had the same one all through primary school hand made by my Aunty Diane. We were taught by Miss Holgate and Mrs Allen, Miss Holgate had a patient calm and welcoming manner, at nursery I don’t think I ever had a day when I didn’t want to bound in and look forward to it.

Miss Holgate was one for engaging the group in creative activities, most of which used to involve those old little white gluesticks and pots of glitter, or plenty of scribbling with crayons, Mrs Allen's forte was in storytelling, she was at both that school then Hugh Gaitskell all through my primary years, she had a preference for dressing in trouser suit/waistcoat combos when at Beeston Primary, with her short cut and tinted glasses, we must have been one of her early classes before she moved into single class teaching. She could be calm and soft-spoken with a slight depth to her voice but did not take any nonsense and the tone she used if there was any made that clear to not go too far.

Playtimes were spent between us all either trying to cram ourselves into the little wendy house in the playground, throwing coits on to poles, playing with the rocking horse or other similar toys or trying to get first dibs on an old fashioned metal tricycle so we could dash around doing circles of the yard, it was much faster than all the other plastic bikes and push cars and made you feel a bit more grown-up. The days were always finished off with a little story on the carpet and it was just a really enjoyable introduction to school life.

The one-story I remember in particular then we were read a few times was "Funnybones" with the opening line of “in a dark dark house on a dark dark night” Mrs Allen did a great interpretation of it. Some of my longest and oldest friends were in this class including Ben Woodburn, Shayn Thomas and Phil Mitchell, we all grew up on the Cardinals and Waincliffes and in Ben and Phil's case spent our entire school years in the same schools. Some of the other kids locally would go to the nursery in Cottingley at that time, who would then come and join us for “Big school”.

Beeston Primary Reception Class 0W / RW

For my introduction to mainstream schooling reception I was taught by the then Miss Harriet Wood (later to be Mrs Ansell-Wood), she was a fantastic teacher, she had a very calming presence, Tall with a blonde bob, a smile for everyone and welcoming manner about her, in later life she also then moved on to what became Hugh Gaitskell primary after the middle schools were abolished in the area, in what has become a recurring theme over the years some of my friends who came from different parts of Yorkshire, and even Europe became work colleagues with her in their early teaching days and every one of them has nothing but kind words to speak of her.

One particular time I was falsely accused of filling a crisp packet full of water and throwing it on my older mate Duane's head, a likely story indeed I wouldn’t even know how to do that back then, despite being an unproven allegation I was taken inside for a dressing down, At first I was just defensive and angry in my reaction to the point of being hysterical due to knowing I'd not done this. I remember Miss Wood did a marvellous job of calmly settling me back down, giving a reassuring hand until I could explain myself and all was forgiven. Kindness and understanding always live long in the memory.

We would work our way through the colours and levels of our maths books, learning to read via the Collins “one two three and away” books, learning about the Village with 3 corners and its inhabitants Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue hat and Jonathan and Jennifer Yellow Hat (The first Hart to Hart reference in this series).

We learnt to put words and sentences together using “Letra sets” that were in giant binders and looking back on it reminded me a bit like a more word-based version of having your scrabble letters out but filling in the words!

We would go to the main hall and take part in “music and movement” which involved sort of classical piece from the sound system playing while we would attempt various shapes or swop from hopping to trotting, skipping or other such movements to the soundtrack. With a few games of musical statues thrown in at the end for good measure!

If we did PE then the old blue mats would be brought out for doing little forward rolls and the old balance beams with the hooks on and various other bits of apparatus would appear, all the time this was carried out barefoot which in winter was freezing as well as being very sore on your feet and not so fun a landing if you took a wrong step.

On my little table, I was sat with Richard Leach (who met his wife at the school who are happily together to this day), Matthew Jeffers, James Ratcliffe, Sophie Grant and Stephen Hullock.

Stephens grandfather was the school caretaker for many years, there were a lot of days you would see him when we were out in the playground, he would be on the roof of the school retrieving various footballs and items that had been dispatched to the roof the night before by the kids from the Heathcroft estate during their football games or whatever other antics they chose to partake in, he would be greeted by a cheer as some of the balls were thrown back down into the playground. Talking of which Ste’s Grandfather on his dads' side was none other than Leeds United legend Jimmy Dunn, his other grandkids also went to our school and you can find his name on Bremner Square at the ground, check it out and if he is a player from before your time read him up and learn about his career he was a top player.

The year group was based at the back end of the school that faces the Heathcroft Estate, the classrooms would usually have one wall separating them at the side with a large curtain at the end of each classroom being our way in and out which would then be closed for privacy at reading times our more “creative” play and lessons took place in what was known as the “Wet Area” where we would be able to get up to the more messy types of play, such as sandpits and making Papier Mache items by sticking bits of old newspaper to balloons, the area was overseen by Miss Barker (she still had her maiden name then) who also had the job of patching us up if we fell in the playground complete with that yellow spray that used to sting like mad and leave you smelling like TCP. Miss Barker always had a bit of glam and somehow managed to work in the messiest part of school yet always be dressed immaculately and still end the day still resembling Joan Collins.

It was also in this playground where I first found out about one of my lifelong passions, before then I only knew of Everton and Liverpool as football teams (I was only 4 years old so only ever saw the cup final up to then, which you may recall was played out by those two teams in 1986), we always saw the old gigantic floodlights and stadium down the hill, you couldn’t miss them, then one day in the distance I noticed some men were running up and down Fullerton Park in white tops, when it was still the training ground, I asked Mr Johnson who was on Duty, in his normal attire of polo shirt and jeans with this white winter coat and coffee in hand, “what's that down there sir” to which he then told me it was a football team called Leeds United, I asked him if they played Liverpool but he said they played in division two, so I credit him with the introduction as from there I looked out for them on the local news or tv when football was mentioned and along with the encouragement of my neighbours from the Wales family i was set to be a fan for life. Nice one sir!

This fact was also further made clear to us throughout the years by Mrs Robinson, one of the teachers who lived locally, she was a class teacher of many of my friends over the years and occasionally took the odd lesson of mine, she was notably famous in school for having an array of Leeds United artefacts both in her car and in the classroom, she would also wear the Leeds Hats or Scarves if on duty in winter, She also had a fondness for collecting items relating to Owls, another symbol of the city, she had a great rapport with all the students in the school and was seen as being very cool, in those days everyone at school still supported Leeds and any other team was out of the question, much like it hopefully will again in this new rebirth we are seeing at the moment.

Going back to the “wet area” this is also where the younger year groups would be served lunch as we had our first experience of “school dinners” the dinners at BPS were generally very good, the kitchen led by Mrs Willens and her team, which at then included Mrs Slight (who I now know as Gill, my classmate Amy’s mum and a good friend of my family Sunday afternoon pub trips and Darts and Dominoes) who later also then became a lunchtime supervisor.

We were served dinners on giant plastic trays that were split into segments, one for the main meal, one for your drink and biscuit (the second one after the then customary little bottle of milk in the morning part of the day) and one for the dessert or pudding as we say in LS11.

I used to love the puddings, Jam sponge or Chocolate Cake, always followed with a generous ladle of custard served from giant metal urns, and the top one which was the Lemon Meringue, which was like a new world to me in terms of food but I loved it, however, I was never as fussy about the main meal, which would get me into trouble from time to time, This is how we would also first encounter the famous Lunchtime Supervisor Miss Mary and her cohorts which at this point in time included Mrs Preston and Mrs Shipman (whose son Damian was also in my class) .

Once we had all dutifully lined up to get our dinners and then take them back to our places, in what became commonplace at the school the dinner ladies would circle the tables armed with their dishcloths, in between wiping up they would be checking first to make sure that no one was misbehaving or throwing food around, but their key function at that time seemed to be to ensure that we all ate properly or as much as possible, once we had reached however far we could manage with our main we would have to sit with our hands up and then ask their permission to “turn round” aka “I've had enough of that can I have my dessert please” in our inner thinking. It was at their discretion if we were permitted to do this unless you had eaten all the lot which meant you could turn round anyway.

One of these particular times had a lasting impression on my food habits for many years. Pizza was on the menu, I'd never had it before, didn’t like the look, smell or taste of it (nothing like the ones you get in a shop) I couldn’t face it. Asked to turn round, Mrs Preston with her dark bob and circular glasses was not having any of it, neither was I, so 15 minutes later I was still sat there, in tears being told I could not leave my seat until I ate it, everyone else was in the playground by this time, it was a battle of wits and in the end, I was defeated and had to sit there and eat every mouthful of it until it was gone, at which point I was done in, had my pudding then got to join my friends for about 5 minutes before we had to go back in, red-faced puffy-eyed, it must have had a lasting effect, it was noted in future by my parents that I didn't like pizza and it put me off eating it until my mid-20s, it goes to show that some of Sigmund Freud's theories definitely hold some gravitas!

Although that encounter with her was a bit more traumatic, Mrs Preston was only doing what all the dinner ladies then would do, a few friends have told me they had similar encounters with the other dinner ladies with the foods they were not keen on, they were trying to ensure we eat and try different foods, she never held it against me as the rest of the time she was always a very approachable and had a neighbourly manner about her, she has been a stalwart and mainstay of the school for decades and moved into working in the school offices in later years. She has given decades of her life to that school and is to be applauded.

A true servant to the school on every level.

#beeston leeds cardinals schooldays LS11 memories

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teachersofbeestonls11 · 4 years ago

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Background Story - Nursery years and “Big School”

So firstly to give you some background to the author.

I was born Jonathan Lee Hart September 21st 1982 at Hyde Terrace Hospital, The Eldest of 2 children on my Mothers side and Third born of 11 on my Fathers. Both my parents lived in Beeston. I was raised at 3 Cardinal Square on the council estate where I lived initially with My Mother, Grandad and Grandma and 2 of my Aunts who then moved out in my early primary years as they went about their adult lives. My family have lived on Cardinal Square since the day the houses were first to complete, something which is true in the case of both grandparents I grew up with, My grandfather Les lived on the “Little Square” just 5 doors down from where he then made his Marital home with Hetty, who grew up at 105 Cardinal Square with her parents, one of my earliest memories is going up the street with her to see my great-grandma Young every now and then, in later years my Aunt Janet moved into 103 and My mother Carol still lives at number 3 to this very day, where she previously grew up with her Brother Ronnie and her sisters Susan, Janet, Diane and Linda. Janet still also works in the area at Cardinal Court just behind where she grew up. My Grandfather on my Dads side also spent his final years on the neighbouring streets following his retirement from the city centre pub trade.

I spent much of my early working life in the area, from evenings on the phone at Weatherlite Windows, Abbseal and then later Royal Mail at Holbeck Delivery office, I can still be seen in the area usually playing the guitar at one of the local pubs or clubs with The Mercs many times a year when we are not in the midst of a Global Pandemic. Beeston is in my blood.

My closest friends from the street the Richmond, Giles and Naismith families go back 3 generations, our parents and grandparents were friends since childhood, the estate has been called a few names over the years but in my history growing up it was a close-knit area, many friends from there I have kept to this day, it made me who I am and I would not have changed that for anything.

This page is more focused on my memories of school days, less so on individual pupils but more the type of education we got and the teachers we encountered, I hope when complete others can contribute theirs from their times, most prominently on the teachers at the schools who helped to shape the lives we now live and the ways we learnt and types of lessons.

Tied into this also will be the local clubs I got to take part in and the many great volunteers who gave up their time for us in and out of school, So let’s get cracking and go to Beeston Primary School Nursery. Starting with Key Stage one for today's episode, one thing I am short on is photos of the days, I am in the process of tracking them down and then will update the page as I get them to hopefully create a bit of an archive, the idea of this is to recognise the efforts of the teachers and people in the area who invested the time in ourselves our education but also to allow our future generations to have an idea of how school life has changed so much in a few decades.

If people want to send photos to add to the page from the time feel free to put them in the comments or drop me a Facebook message with them.

Nursery

As far as nursery goes from memory it felt like one day I was spending days watching tv, going out on the Cardinal Field or playing with my pals round at the twins Duane and Danny’s house, then suddenly I was told “you’re off to nursery tomorrow” by my mother, so off I went, I remember first seeing the building, much of which has remained the same to this day with its dark brick oblongs with the white frames and fascias, I used to come up past the old Convent of The Most Holy Cross and Passion on Town Street, where you could see the building in the distance then we would go up the winding path by the terminus to the nursery. In those days we used to be scared of the Nuns as some of them almost had a ghostly appearance but in later life whenever we said a good morning to them they were always found to be most polite.

At this point that was the only “Hut” at the school, the portakabins were still to be dropped in. Of course, the first job of the day was getting your pumps on duly brought in our pump bags, I had the same one all through primary school hand made by my Aunty Diane. We were taught by Miss Holgate and Mrs Allen, Miss Holgate had a patient calm and welcoming manner, at nursery I don’t think I ever had a day when I didn’t want to bound in and look forward to it.

Beeston Primary Reception Class 0W / RW

On my little table, I was sat with Richard Leach (who met his wife at the school who are happily together to this day), Matthew Jeffers, James Ratcliffe, Sophie Grant and Stephen Hullock.

From those days to I can still visually picture how we all looked and were, the top music star of the time was Michael Jackson and Shayn Thomas is always shocked to remember that when I can still picture that he used to have his “thriller” T-Shirt on at school (no uniform at BPS in those days we could wear what we wanted).

The neighbouring class was Mr Johnson's class (later to be the Husband of the aforementioned Miss Barker). Mr Johnson was a big part of the school for many years, he had a great positive influence on many of us growing up, he was keen on his sport and football which i will go into more in later chapters, in his younger days, he had a moustache to rival Nigel Mansell but a lot more hair on top, at playtimes our year group had the little playground facing down towards the hill where we would run around playing “What time is it Mr Wolf” or trying to do the hops skips and jumps on the painted sections on the playground floor, recreate our favourite superheroes by buttoning our coats into capes battling whichever poor soul was nominated to be the baddie. It was also in this playground where I first found out about one of my lifelong passions, before then I only knew of Everton and Liverpool as football teams (I was only 4 years old so only ever saw the cup final up to then, which you may recall was played out by those two teams in 1986), we always saw the old gigantic floodlights and stadium down the hill, you couldn’t miss them, then one day in the distance I noticed some men were running up and down Fullerton Park in white tops, when it was still the training ground, I asked Mr Johnson who was on Duty, in his normal attire of polo shirt and jeans with this white winter coat and coffee in hand, “what's that down there sir” to which he then told me it was a football team called Leeds United, I asked him if they played Liverpool but he said they played in division two, so I credit him with the introduction as from there I looked out for them on the local news or tv when football was mentioned and along with the encouragement of my neighbours from the Wales family i was set to be a fan for life. Nice one sir!

Once we had all dutifully lined up to get our dinners and then take them back to our places, in what became commonplace at the school the dinner ladies would circle the tables armed with their dishcloths, in between wiping up they would be checking first to make sure that no one was misbehaving or throwing food around, but their key function at that time seemed to be to ensure that we all ate properly or as much as possible, once we had reached however far we could manage with our main we would have to sit with our hands up and then ask their permission to “turn round” aka “I've had enough of that can I have my dessert please” in our inner thinking. t was at their discretion if we were permitted to do this unless you had eaten all the lot which meant you could turn round anyway.

A true servant to the school on every level.

#beeston leeds cardinals schooldays LS11 memories

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sylleboi · 5 years ago

Text

𝕻𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝖎𝖙 - 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖈 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖐𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖕 | 24/03/20

Since we are now all self-isolating, we are receiving all of our school work/homework over Moodle and Moodle Forum. For today, the task is to dive into a workshop called “Post It”.

vimeo

Attached was the following text written to us by our teacher:

“Morning folks.

Day 2 of lockdown and I thought I would post an activity that we can all get involved in. Basically, this is a fun workshop that looks at the theory behind how comic book narrative works.

What I want you all to do is use the video (pausing on each slide/task) and imagine I am going through it with my monotone drawl. Basically, if we all take part an upload something I will put together some group comic pages, that we can all be proud of!

All you need is some post-it notes (failing that make some small squares of paper) a sharpie, fineliner, pencils, ink if you have it. Then some resources, books, photos on your phone, your imaginations.

Follow all of the tasks and work the workshop through. Your goal is to upload your post it comic book panel/s by tomorrow morning. I have attached the PDF of the video too. Ask me any questions and I will try and give you feedback as we go through the challenge. I will hold a review session on Thursday.

Good luck team!”

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖐𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖕:

Aims of this session:

Make paneled illustrations based on observations and ideas generated from discussion and sketching.

Create at least 6 drawn and inked post-it note panels, with each one based on a different idea or subject.

Build a non-sequential “comic” using these panels

Make a group comic with everyone else’s panels

Compare the results and reflect

explore & discuss the theory of how we make sense of the world through various psychological elements (Gestalt theory) using comics as a vehicle to do this.

Task 01 – Reach & Sketch

“In order to stimulate ideas for your comic panels, you will need to generate sketches based on some visual prompts, this may be something you already have or you can use the starter topics below. Really there are no bounds here so the content of your panels could be anything you like, but having a place to leap from is always a sound approach. Spend 15 minutes doodling on each of the following topics, trying to communicate your ideas as simply as possible:

Objects & tools

Icons of inspiration

Characters & alter ego’s

Motivational words & wisdom

Emotions and expressions

Weird & wonderful

Use observations, people around you, old photos, a scene from the movie you watched last night and tap into that imagination!”

I began by putting on some music and simply just go at it, sketching whatever first came to mind when I looked at the prompts above. Eventually, I was left with some rough sketches scattered across a page;

01: Objects & tools

I was unsure of what precisely to draw, as I hadn’t warmed up prior to doing this workshop; but I saw a pile of chains outside the door from where I was working; thus this became the first thing I drew.

02: Icons of inspiration

The first person that popped into my mind as a source of inspiration for me was John Murphy (or just Murphy for short) from the TV series “The 100″. I have never connected as strongly to any fictional character as I have with him. It has gotten almost silly since a known party trick of mine is to practically cry on command if anyone does as much as show me a picture of him or say his name; but with that, It just goes to show how much of an impact his character has had on me over the years. He is most definitely part of the reason that I am even here today – his will to forever survive, no matter how much bullshit he has to go through, has been incredibly inspiring for me. I referenced this from an old piece of fan art that I did a few years back;

03: Characters & alter ego’s

Again, I simply drew the first thing that popped into my mind; which for this prompt was sort of viewing myself from outside my own body. (?) I drew myself as a wolf for no apparent reason besides that I creates me as a “character” rather than myself. The alter ego part steps in where I thought about the way I present myself vs who I really am. I may be this tough-looking guy (wolf?), but in reality, I’m no tougher than anyone else. I drown in my own thoughts constantly; often making me feel so worthless and horrible that everything almost seems to be sinking silently.

04: Motivational words & wisdom

This is a quote taken from one of the seasons of “The 100″, where Murphy has a short conversation with another character from the show called Titus, a guy that imprisoned him and tortured him for days before he managed to escape;

Titus: "You do not belong here."

John Murphy: "Really? Why does my blood decorate your floor?"

– in Stealing Fire (season 3)

05: Emotions and expressions

I feel as if this is an emotion I feel quite a lot. Anger, stress, despair, pain, envy, sadness; being so tired of everything constantly piling up to then fall back down again.

06: Weird & wonderful

Honestly, I’m not sure where this came from in my mind. Possibly it has some ties to the previous sketch (05) since it was more of an emotionally driven drawing; the character is hidden away by a darkness that they have put on themselves (the jacket/hazmat suit/coat?”, but they are holding something light in their hands- like a light orb; or perhaps it’s something more hostile and sinister, sharing the appearance of something bright and warm.

Perhaps the light orb is really a light anomaly (when properly identified, light anomalies are said to be able to potentially be the energy of a spirit transforming itself by use of the energy around it.) disguised as something safe, but in reality, it might of something demonic or a poltergeist (poltergeists are spirits with energy levels so high that they can physically interact with the world that we know of).

It’s really just up to anyone's interpretation.

Task 02 – Define parameters

“Once you have created a selection of sketched ideas across a range of topics, take your post-it notes and draw with your fine-liner a loose border about 4-5mm in from the edge of the paper.

That 4-5mm of blank space is called a gutter. The place outside of the frame, where time and imagination, is at its most fluid.

Bordering a panel gives you a range of options of how to compose your image inside of it; draw in freehand or trace over one of your sketches, lining out the details with your black pen.

Composure and consistency are useful here but experiment with your approach to calligraphy and purpose of your line-work.”

I wanted my linework to feel delicate although the imagery isn’t all quite as such; creating a sense of juxtaposition between the relations of the context and the linework, so this I why I used a 0.35 fineliner.

Since I had no post-it notes, I cut out squares of white paper. After this, I traced over the sketches I had done earlier by pushing the sketch and “post-it note” up against a sunny window.

After finishing the tracing as well as the borders (to create the gutters on each “frame”); this is what I was left with:

I am very happy with how they all turned out, especially after they have been inked with a fineliner- It really makes them all tie in together; although each of them is based on separate prompts.

I scanned them all in, the result of this shown below:

Task 03 – Display & arrange

“Once you have created at least 6 post-it panels, from a range of unrelated subjects, arrange these in no particular order on a blank page in your sketchbook (or a large sheet of paper if necessary).

Photograph this arrangement on your phone considering what your brain tells you are the overall meanings of this arrangement. Rearrange the sequence, and see if that meaning changes, record any thoughts or ideas about each sequence in notes to review later.

Now upload one of your panels up to the forum. We can then create a group comic, by mixing them all up. Try this at home too if you have photoshop?”

I have already done the random arrangement of the post-it comic panels, as they are shown above. But what does it tell me? What story does it create in my eyes? Below is my interpretation of what the comic portrays:

Betrayal

The wolf spirit raged in anger, for he had betrayed the realm, crossing barriers no mortal was to ever dare.

“Mortal fool- you do not belong here”, the spirit barked out as if to scare the human away with nothing but one's voice.

“If I don’t belong here... then why does my blood decorate your floors?” He answered in a bitter tone.

“You are nothing but a fool for what you have done! You deserve nothing but–”

A sudden silence overwhelmed the spirit and with the silence, the body of the spirit slowly disappeared into nothingness... creating an orb of light. It floated hopelessly above the floors for a while, until it descended into the hands of a stranger, shadowed by a cloak. Behind the cloaked figure, the sound of chains rattling echoed, until a horned wolf made its way next to the strangers' feet.

“You have done well, human. This... spirit; was a traitor– but no more will it pester you.”

“Who are you?” the human asked, his wounds still bleeding from his previous fight.

“A god. None that your kind has ever heard of. I am Death's brother, Hypnos.”

I also posted all of the frames on the Moodle Forum. ↑

Task 04 - Conclusions

“Look at the comics you have created and then read the following text written by comic book analyst Kaitlyn McCafferty:

“Non-sequitur transitions are constituted of a series of images that are seemingly unrelated to each other in any classic narrative form. Non-sequitur transitions are the most cognitively disruptive; they are the most uncomfortable. Though the curator of these panels may not have had a specific narrative in mind, the viewer will try to draw associations between the images shown. This irresistible human tendency to put elements together to form a complete whole can be explained by Gestalt psychology, which explores the notion that human perception of a whole subject is based on the sum of its parts.” Answer the questions below and present your work and other people's work on the blog:

Do you understand the theories being discussed here?

The Gestalt theory; I understand that this theory focuses on the human condition and needs to find order and pattern, and in this instance narrative amongst images. Gestalt explains that it is common to take a more holistic approach to this, by taking into account the individual parts of the narrative, in this instance the individual images, and only then decide the narrative. In many ways, this task has allowed us to explore what happens when rather than following these theories or playing into human tendencies to expect order, to see what human imagination can create on its own when order is not present.

Why is this interesting?

This task is interesting because it opposes conventional narrative, and forces the observes to use their imagination to try and find patterns amongst the random images, even when no set pattern exists. This, in turn, proves invaluable, because it furthers our understanding of human psychology and the endless potentials of our imaginations to create an infinite amount of stories and narratives, based off of only one set of images depending on which order they are placed in.

How could you use this to help with your own projects?

It always helps knowing how people work psychologically to predict what an audience would find interesting and intriguing say, for some character design. It is already widely used in our society; for example, in books, TV series or in a series of films they often end them on a cliffhanger with the purpose that you will want to continue watching/reading to find out what happens afterward. Our brains instantly start trying to figure it all out, attempting to tie everything together with the information given, but still, we want to be reassured.

Update 1.1:

After looking at some of my peers’ work, I have decided to try and replicate the look of “post-it notes” a little better by adding colour to them. Although I like the minimalistic black and white look, I feel as if it doesn’t completely match what this entire workshop was about; sparking ideas by doing comic-like panels on post-it notes.

Below are some of the work my peers did that I had a look at;

So, I took the scanned files of my “post-it notes” and loaded them into Krita. I set a layer to multiply, allowing me to add any colour I wish to each note. I did this for both the scans;

And finally, here is the finished product!:

Here they are loosely animated together in the same order as above;

And here is another version of that same gif;

Update 1.2:

25/03/20

Our teacher further set a challenge to develop this workshop further;

“Try and read the 'comic', and then consider Scott McCloud's ideas....does this nonsequential set of images "work" together. What is the result of grouping them? Do narratives start to appear?

If you have done 6.....now let's do 12? Remember details are everything. Take your time. We will review Thursday afternoon.

“Here's some pointers for all of you:

01: Work on the stylisation of your written text (typography) as this is vital part of comic book panels

02: Develop and use background tonality more, if you have it water down some ink and try and build a sense of depth in the frame

03: Use hatching/pointilism and other mark making to support this sense of depth in the frame even just solid black fills will work (See the work and get inspired by the work of Mike Mignola/Adrian Tomine/Aiden Koch to support)

Keep going folks, let me see your group comics too, take a panel from everyones and put them together in a random sequence. Test the theory!”

(Matt Tankard / Sylvester Larsen / Bill Martin / Emma Aspris / Bertie Brocki / Matt Tagliarini)

What does the above sequence of post-it notes make me think of narrative-wise?

The first thing that popped up in my mind was; this is part of a dream sequence. The colours, always changing with the imagery that one's brain makes up on the go. I feel as if it closely portrays dreams I have had in the past; all scattered around with no direct links to each other; as if they are all separate glimpses of different dreams. It definitely reflects the nature of surrealism with how unpredictable it appears as a collectible.

I decided to then make one of these random post-it note sequences myself, using stuff that my peers created. Below is how that turned out:

What does the above sequence of post-it notes make me think of narrative-wise?

After looking at it for a while, I established an idea of what this little sequence could depicting narrative-wise.

It begins at the upper left with someone saying “Yo!” and the next frame showing perhaps yourself or another random character. You/They are in a grumpy mood- feeling like there’s nothing much to do and everything feels boring. So the someone leaves you/them with a choice - Are you/they going to take the drugs, or not? It’s now between feeling the same boring stuff, or feeling something you/they have never felt before. You/They answer “Yes”, and so you/they suddenly feel an odd rush of happiness, warmt and colour.

Don’t do drugs. They’re bad. This was just what initially came to mind for some reason.

- - -

Now for expanding the number of comic frames from 6 to 12, whilst keeping the pointers we were given in mind.

To expand on the prompts, I have decided to randomly generate some words by using this website, a random word generator, putting the settings to the following:

I generated the following 5 words:

I looked up the definitions of each of these words, giving me the following to work from:

Inhabitant:

Spoil:

Dose:

Reinforce:

Generate:

Now keeping the definitions of each word in mind, I attempted to illustrate my interpretation of them, using the same process as previously:

I only did 5 this time around, since I did 7 the last time around, making 12.

Dose:

For this one I imagened it being related to drugs. At the time of drawing it, I was listening to some rap music, and it made me think of how it lately has become a trendy thing to take drugs such as xanax. - it’s basically based on how many young people gradually only have drugs on their mind.

Spoil:

I interpreted this as something being damaged. - I wasn’t sure what exactly to do, so I eventually just decided to draw a horse that has been shot with some arrows.

Inhabitant:

The inhabitants in this little frame are centipede bugs, crawling around a humans ear. I felt as if it would fit the meaning of this word well, as it indicates that these inhabitants are not welcome and don’t belong there.

Reinforce:

For this frame, I interpreted the word “Reinforce” as something being supported, so I sketched a mech girl where the reinforced bit is the metal suit she is wearing.

Generate:

For the last frame, I went a little more simple and took the route of just doing some typography, after reading that our teacher asked us to do some more interesting looking quotes/type, so I gave this a drop shadow after going over it with the fineliner.

As I did previously, I traced each frame up against a window with a fineliner, being the same as I used the last time.

After this, I cut each frame out and scanned them in. I added the same yellow colour to them to make them match, but also to make them feel more like real post-it notes;

I eventually found that I had lost the post-it note for the first quote I did, so I redid it, although I then found the original again afterwards.

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