Brain Crash

Because I seriously feel like I'm about to.

Thank you, midterm season.


---------

Things I like about Coffee

• Coffee is hot. 
• Coffee makes me excited. 
• Coffee is good enough to have every day. 
• Coffee smells good. 
• Coffee makes me nervous. 
• Coffee gives me warm and the fuzzies. 
• Even when coffee is too strong or too weak, it's still good.

Things I like about You

• Pretty much the same as coffee.
• And who knows, maybe you taste good and keep me up all night, too. 

^Shamelessly taken from this. 

-------

From Uncommon Women by Wendy Wasserstein:

MUFFET: I guess I should think about sleeping with someone tonight to pass the time. Except it's always creepy in the morning [...] I'm not promiscuous. I just hate going to bed alone. 

(separate scene):

HOLLY: What kind of pleasure? There's someone on top of you sweating and pushing you're lying there pretending this is wonderful. That's not wonderful. That's masochistic. 

-------

Tangled (2010)

Ah Disney. Supposedly they're stopping with the princess stories? Makes sense I suppose. Just about run out of princesses to to write a story about. 

Watched Tangled. It's pretty good. Also pretty predictable because it's Disney, come on. But it's still quite good and entertaining, and it can be heartbreaking at some moments if you're into that kinda stuff. 

It was really interesting to see how Disney adapted the tale of Rapunzel into their own kind of story. Alright fine, I don't know how the Rapunzel story goes, but I know enough that she's got long-ass hair like ridic, and she's locked up in a high tower, and a prince (of sorts) comes to her rescue. 

I'm gonna make a remark about the story/character design that appears at the end of the film, but it's a pretty big spoiler alert (so I think anyways, because hey if someone told me this it'd give away a good bit of the ending) so I'll put it at the end of this post. You've been warned. 

----------

If I there's only one thing I wish I'll get done over spring break, it is this: 

FREAKING. FINISH. LEARNING. LIEBESTRAUM. GAH. 

Once I stopped taking piano lessons, I still played and tried picking up/learning songs on my own, but I had a nasty habit of only learning maybe the first bit of a song, the most recognizable part probably, before stumbling into a melee of tricky finger work, a storm of massive chording, or just what sounded at the time to be an odd, awkward combination of notes that didn't seem to fit together. So my half-ass-ery kicked in and said "oh shit, that's kinda harder than I expected, I'll learn the rest of this later." But did I ever finish learning those pieces I said I would? Nope. 

I learned the first section of Liebestraum, the main theme, so to speak. Had that for maybe half a year or so. Then I decided I needed to learn the next section, where the theme develops right before the first break into the dream sequence finger frenzy (yeah I'm so awesome with music theory terminology, right?) and had that pretty down pat for another year. Then I wanted to learn the next part, which is a modification of the A theme. Got that, and then I got stuck. Why did I stop? Left hand part freaked me out too much.

But goddamnit, in the past week or so I've been kicking myself in the ass to just finish learning the damn piece because really, I love this work by Franz Liszt. Liebestraum apparently means "A dream of love" and I can definitely discern that meaning when I listen to recordings of the song. It's so powerful, so emotive, so sweeping, just so...lovely. 

So, I'd better finish learning this work. I'm so close...

Also, I once did a mini research bit on Liszt, and apparently, dude had some monster, and I mean monster, hands. He was able to play 10ths with ease! Maybe more! Apparently it's because he lacked the tiny bit of webbing between his fingers, so that enabled him to really stretch and reach and hit those ridiculous chords. I can tell, because some of these jumps are pretty much impossible for me (smaller hands, less than slender fingers, wompwomp). 

Another observation I notice is that when I'm just playing alone, practicing a piece by myself, if I know the work well enough/have it memorized, I can really get into the music. I move, sway, close my eyes, breathe, my hands and arms become more animated, all that goodness. But all that craziness only shows up when I'm alone. I've never moved that much if I'm playing in front of people. Maybe I should. I should just block out the audience and go with what I feel from the music. 

If only I could apply that to my acting. Sad days.

---------

Speaking of kicking myself to do things, finally started my foray into ballroom dancing. It's great fun. I wish I'd started learning sooner. I don't know a lot of the dances yet but I did learn the basics of tango, and by god, do I love tango. Or maybe I love the idea that I can be good at tango. Hah. So far I feel like ballroom appeals to me because dance is another form of expression. I don't express myself verbally very often, so nonverbal methods of expression work best for me. Music. Writing. And now dance? I guess we'll see.

HOMG SPOILER ALERT/REMARK/COMMENT/OPINION I PREVIOUSLY WARNED YOU ABOUT:

So yeah. I think Rapunzel as a character looks WAY better with her short/choppy brunette hair than her blonde hair. Then again I'm just biased. I'm more into darker-hair-ed gals anyway.