#yes Xid will sing!! :)

[potionomicsgame]

In Potionomics: Masterwork Edition, you will be able to continue playing after the story ends and unlock a special post-game scene with each befriendable character.✨

[unenvs3000w24]

The Melodic Bond Between Nature and Music

Music plays a big role in my life. I listen, discuss, play, and share music with my friends and family frequently. Music is hugely connected to nature in a number of ways including storytelling, interpretation, communication and enjoyment. Stories and teachings are passed down through songs in many cultures (Hooykaas, 2024). This form of storytelling likely outdates any records we have as it is an oral tradition. In a similar way, songs are used to interpret. In my blog titled, “Art in Nature Interpretation”, I touched on the thought that it is sometimes hard to say something in plain speak that can be easy to say when written into a song. Songwriting allows for a certain ambiguity that can be used as a tool for interpretation. Communication is another intersection between nature and music that has been used for centuries. By humans, yes, but animals as well. Birds, whales, bats, elephants, and I’m sure many other creatures that we don’t even know about use sound to communicate (Gray et al., 2001). Finally, music meets nature at entertainment. We use music for communicative purposes but also for fun and for connecting with one another. Nature should be enjoyable and maybe even more so when combined with music.

The fact that every known human cultural group has its own form of music tells us that humans have always been making music and always will (Gray et al., 2001). Humans have been making instruments out of anything in their reach since as long as we have records of (Gray et al., 2001). Drums were made of animal hyde, flutes were made of sticks, and bows were made from hair… and they still are! Humans developed these methods of making instruments years and years ago and continue to use the same materials because they are reliable and more malleable than synthetic products. Nature is present in all music because the sounds we make come from it and literally out of it.

Music often seeks to replicate the sounds of nature. On tabla, an Indian drum that my dad plays, ragas (melodies) are first learned by singing them and then replicating the sound on the drum. The same can be said for other instruments as well like singing a note to establish a key or a call and response between instruments. A lot of ambient artists use electronic sounds to replicate the sounds of nature like Brian Eno and Steve Reich. While the sound of this type of music is not explicitly copying the pitter patter of rain or birds chirping, it refers to nature in an abstract way, replicating the vibe of that environment rather than the sounds themselves. This creates a composition much like the soundscape that exists in nature.

A song that brings me back to a “natural landscape” is Arrival by Dominique Dumont. Sometimes my friends and I like to hang out at the park while ~exploring new realms of the mind~ and I like to listen to this song during these times when I feel most connected to nature. This song I feel fits the name quite well. It makes me feel as if I am arriving to a new world for the first time with fresh perspective. Listening to this brings me back to a sunny day in the park filled with giggles and good food and great company.

Gray, P. M., Krause, B., Atema, J., Payne, R., Krumhansl, C., & Baptista, L. (2001). The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music. Science, 291(5501), 52. https://link-gale-com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/apps/doc/A69270354/AONE?u=guel77241&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=fb9366a8

Hooykaas, A. (2024). ENVS*3000 Nature Interpretation course notes. https://courselink.uoguelph.ca/d2l/le/content/858004/viewContent/3640021/View

[gw-thesis]

Christian Literature & Poetry

“By reliving Adam’s sin, Abraham learns that the Sodomites will be saved only if they open themselves to woman. He prays that God grant these sinners an awareness of their duality.This awareness would lead them to break out of their narcissism, repent and, through suffering, imitate Christ:”

[If You revealed their eternal Image to them … perhaps then they would hear Your lost voice that comes from far away, from a time when The One awaits them The One they must name with every ounce of their suffering The only perfect Name because everything comes together in His Night

Name eternally wounded, true Name of man Christ] p. 114-115

[These laws declared us equal: never have we been more enslaved. These laws say: Let each one receive his daily bread; and never have we known more universal hunger] p.131

“The King controls everything and everyone except for one shepherd, who lives high on a mountain, and whose flute sings of beauty, love, and the human need for God. Since the King cannot lure the “pâtre” [shepherd] into the city, he climbs the mountain to meet him. In a restaging of the devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert, he asks the shepherd first to serve him, then to speak to the people of religion in incomprehensible terms and, finally, to perform a liturgy celebrating his, the King’s, divinity. Unable to conquer the Shepherd, the King crucifies him:” 

[They bound himTo the last pine. The tree’s blood inundates the man,That of the man dresses the agonizing tree’s wounds] p.123-124

O’Neil, Mary Anne. From Babel to Pentecost: The Poetry of Pierre Emmanuel. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. [Ch 3 The Biblical Epics: Sodome, Babel, and Jacob]

Athanasius's Life portrays Antony as a teacher of asceticism. The Apophthegmata stresses this as well. But here he delivers his ascetical message not in long orations, but in terse epigrams: Abba Antony said:

Always have the fear of God before your eyes. Remember him who gives death and life. Hatethe world and all that is in it. Hate all peace that comes from the fl esh. Renounce this life, so that you may be alive to God. Remember what you have promised God, for it will be required of you on the Day of Judgment. Suffer hunger, thirst, nakedness, be watchful and sorrowful; weep and groan in your heart; test yourselves, to see if you are worthy of God; despise the fl esh, so that you may preserve your souls. [p.167-168]

Evagrius is best known for his catalog of the human propensity for evil, what he called the eight evil thoughts ( logismoi ). He lists and explains them in the opening half of the Praktikos : 

Gluttony ( gastrimargia )

Fornication ( porneia )

Love of money ( philarguria )

Sadness ( lup ē )

Anger ( org ē )

Listlessness ( ac ē dia )

Vainglory ( kenodoxia )

Pride ( huper ē phania )

This list should look familiar. It would become, with slight modi fi cation, the seven deadly sins and enjoy a venerable place in the spirituality of the Middle Ages. And, eventually, in Dante's hands, it would come to de fine the very geography of the afterlife, both the Inferno and the Purgatorio. The one who brought Evagrius's scheme to the Latin West was his disciple, John Cassian, who discussed them at length in two works, The Institutes and The Conferences. 

Note that Evagrius calls them “ thoughts, ” not sins. Sin implies consent and responsibility, as Evagrius notes: “ It is not in our power to determine whether we are disturbed by these thoughts, but it is up to us to decide if they are to linger within us or not and whether or not they are to stir up our passions. ” To see something of his insight, let us examine how he discusses three of them. [p.322-323]

Harmless, William. Desert Christians : An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oculocad-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3053377. Created from oculocad-ebooks on 2020-01-16 11:48:24.

R. W.H. Miller (2010) SEA, SHIP AND SEAMAN IN EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE, The Mariner's Mirror, 96:4, 418-429, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2010.10657158

**find online**

Styler, Rebecca, Dr. Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century, Ashgate Publishing, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oculocad-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5293641.

Thirteen Black Birds Look at a Man

1 It is calm. It is as though we lived in a garden that had not yet arrived at the knowledge of good and evil. But there is a man in it. 2 There will be rain falling vertically from an indifferent sky. There will stare out from behind its bars the face of the man who is not enjoying it.

5 After we have stopped singing, the garden is disturbed by echoes; it is the man whistling, expecting everything to come to him.

Rosenthal, Peggy. "Poet of the hidden God." The Christian Century, 17 Jan. 2001, p. 4. Gale OneFile: CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals), https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A70451337/CPI?u=toro37158&sid=CPI&xid=4046219c. Accessed 16 Jan. 2020.

**find online**

Hoover, Joe. "Christian poetry vs 'Christian poetry'." America, 21 Aug. 2017, p. 46+. Gale OneFile: CPI.Q (Canadian Periodicals), https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502121196/CPI?u=toro37158&sid=CPI&xid=0120fc46. Accessed 16 Jan. 2020.

**find online**

The More Earnest Prayer of Christ  Scott Cairns And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly... —Luke 22.44 

His last prayer in the garden began, as most of his prayers began— in earnest, certainly, but not without distinction, an habitual... what? Distance? Well, yes, a sort of distance, or a mute remove from the genuine distress he witnessed in the endlessly grasping hands of multitudes and, often enough, in his own embarrassing circle of intimates. Even now, he could see these where they slept, sprawled upon their robes or wrapped among the arching olive trees. Still, something new, unlikely, uncanny was commencing as he spoke. As the divine in him contracted to an ache, a throbbing in the throat, his vision blurred, his voice grew thick and unfamiliar, his prayer— just before it fell to silence— became uniquely earnest. And in that moment— perhaps because it was so new— he saw something, had his first taste of what he would become, first pure taste of the body, and the blood. [p.11-12]

Imperative Scott Cairns

The thing to remember is how tentative all of this really is. You could wake up dead. Or the woman you love could decide you're ugly. Maybe she'll finally give up trying to ignore the way you floss your teeth when you watch television. All I'm saying is that there are no sure things here. I mean, you'll probably wake up alive, and she'll probably keep putting off any actual decision about your looks. Could be she'll be glad your teeth are so clean. The morning could be full of all the love and kindness you need. Just don't go thinking you deserve any of it. [p.250]

Upholding Mystery : An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry, edited by David Impastato, Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 1996. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oculocad-ebooks/detail.action?docID=273336.