Songs without Words

My girlfriend came back to campus early this afternoon.  By some stroke of fate, we arrived at South Station from our respective ends at the same time, with the phone call announcing her arrival coming when we were in fact within a hundred feet of one another.  It was a heartfelt reunion, the way her face suddenly lit up (my presence then was somewhat of a surprise, perhaps), and we shared a magnificent hug before I pointed her to the vase of irises and an unknown pink flower, as well as a boot box with my home-baked fruit tart in it (which I had spent countless hours trying to learn and calibrate).  We spent most of the afternoon and evening talking, cuddling, unpacking, and reading a little … blast from the past that she brought from home, shall we say :).

There are severe formatting errors in the version below. Please use this link to see it in its appropriate form. A literal rendering of the poem’s source memory is located at the bottom of this entry.

Singing hair, speaking hair,
the shouting tongue, a lapper and a kisser
but now taking it easy
rolling, blowing as if whispering
“elephant”
laughing

An electric phantasm, but
elusive phantasmagoria
Deeply verdant threads on a velvety specimen of sweater
dyeing the waves
the old-fashioned way:
brush, brush, sweeping the blue out of the blue-green tincture
the purest cerulean-indigo emigrating
to paint white cotton into warm and worn denim –
a subtle approach under the chorus of heavy airs and salts

Ridges in the wooden planks
miniaturized onto shy fingers that seek like-minded accomplices
for a carefree warming spree
a palm of pink, unfolding its wings into a balmy resort
of dunes and layered sands
and a few palms of green

Interleaving destinies hobble along together
wriggling their noses and ears
Smudges on affectionate blushes
adorned with spots and pimples
unwinding with a taut stretch
and wholesome breaths laden with serpentine mirages
Condensing with a cognate gaze
Sprinkles of a yearning blossom of desire
under the chorus of heavy airs and salts

the relentless pursuit of a wretched god.

royalty is a spectacle.  pilfered philosophies and glands of steel.

rivers course by and you can see the Corinthian columns of marble and sandstone ..
.. covered in mildew.

stand by the wayside as blue renews itself with black,

and green renews itself with red,

and the yellowing hearts of ugly men

are scrubbed to brown with copious amounts of whitening toothpaste.

spectacles are orgasmic

but they smell bad.

You know what this school needs? Forget lounges or computer labs or color printers or new lab space. What we need is a scream chamber. A soundproof room with keycard access where we, one at a time, can go in and just scream our f’ing hearts out. Just scream and scream and scream until our voices are hoarse and our throats are parched and all that pent-up agony is splattered onto the walls of an opaque, soundproof wall. Just one small room, with a bit of echo effect. It wouldn’t cost much, and it would feel SO good.

I am trying to logically plan the next experiment, to build a protocol and set of controls that will have the highest chance of yielding a success.

And yet, there is this overwhelming desperation and sense of helplessness and hopelessness that fogs the clear view of logic, and I feel that at any moment, I might succumb to tears, even as my spirit claims that it doesn’t want to give up, and it feebly tries to think of yet another protocol, yet another way to spend the rest of my hours, withering away …

Two years

without success

is too much for my soul to handle

I am already crying on the inside

I wrote a little bit this morning because I couldn’t stand being away from fiction for so long.  This new short story doesn’t really have a point or direction, so I may just break it off at a random point.  It’s a sort-of romance story involving a “normal” girl who falls in love with the 100% nerdy guy in the dorm room next over after an accidental encounter (not of the sexual kind).  I just wanted to try painting this the other away around, with the norm being the “innocent” character falling for the non-innocent one (or being corrupted).  I have ~5 pages so far, but who knows when I’ll get another moment to add to it.

One of the biggest lessons I learned this summer, cooking with my friends, is how critical particular attributes of food are to people’s enjoyment. Prior, I had been of the assumption that people generally agreed on what tasted good or what tasted bad – at least within my family, we were pretty consistent and there was little argument over whether or not a restaurant was good or not. However, I have found that this is not always the case.

When cooking for large groups, one should go with the “least common denominator” of all people present. That means adding the minimum of attributes, giving the option of adding greater amounts at a later time. When cooking for someone personally – a friend, significant other, etc. – I think the best option is to try to take into account that person’s tastes, which one must realize may be highly different from one’s own.

The three major categories of attributes that people are hypersensitive to are: salt, oil, and spices. Oil includes butter and other ingredients that add “richness” and “weight.” Salt, I think, includes sugar often (those who like salty foods probably like sweet ones, too – this is a hypothesis). Lastly, there is the issue of spices – pepper, garlic, cumin, MSG, basil, mint, oregano, thyme, rosemary, etc. What tastes just right to someone might be completely bland to someone else, and intolerably strong to yet another person.

Here are taste profiles for this summer’s group:

Kenny – low salt, low oil, low spice

Chensi – high salt, high oil, high spice

Joseph – low salt, high oil, low spice

Jenn – low salt, low oil, medium spice

Tejia – medium salt, high oil, high spice

Because of this, we generally cook things with low salt, low oil, and low spice — that’s the only way to make sure no one is offended by the food. People with “high” preferences can tolerate “low” foods – it just tastes boring to them. But people with “low” preferences have a hard time even eating the “high” foods.

My own preferences are high salt, low oil, high spice. This derives from my home’s cooking style, which actually achieves such high concentrations of herbs and salt through the removal of water. We boil away the water in curry, fry our dumplings, and very rarely if ever drink any soup. This means that from “ordinary recipes,” we end up increasing the impact of the final product. However, I also have oil sensitivity – I have had a lot of stomachaches due to food drenched in oil, and even if something is deep-fried, I prefer it to be dabbed a lot to remove most of the excess oil.

My academic advisor just invited me to go to a BSO concert featuring Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 2 and Bruckner 9.  HOLY COW.  This is like a dream come true T_______T!!!

Granted, this wasn’t any defining work of orchestration or counterpoint in the first place (and I readily admitted just as much by writing the strings on the standard piano staff using only half notes and whole notes, for the most part). But, this remains, after four years, one of my favorite compositions, and unfortunately it’s one of those that falls by the wayside because I didn’t put in any dynamics into the original (the audio output, in any case, since the appearance and sound were not interlinked then as they are today), and because it’s hard to hear intentions through MIDI (apparently). Well, I think this is a step up from raw MIDI, and it’s not a huge file, so go ahead and have a
listen if you’d like. Link
Faster version w/ reverb 

It’s for violin, but synth violin still needs a lot of work before it can be a soloist. Not that the flute is all that musical either, but hey, I have to suffer through the entire string section, so you flautists can deal with a lone flute, ne? ^^

Finale 2007 is actually really impressive. Ask me four years ago if this sound quality from rendering out the raw clunky numbers of MIDI input would be possible, and I’d say “no way!” In the tremolo section, there’s a lot of swelling that, strangely enough, I didn’t actually put there. It’s a little hokey, but I like how it’s trying to interpret my music, rightly or wrongly so.

As an added bonus, here’s Fugue #2! It’s all muddy now, just the way it should be :).

Colors are like keys in music – they carry with them character, personality, and of course, personal friendships with other colors. They can really define an object, a space, and even an emotion. I find some hues much more beautiful than others, and I wanted to talk about them here.

 Figure: I’m describing the colors from left to right, top to bottom.
My favorite colors, in no particular order:

Turquoise (of a more teal-like shade) — My particular take on turquoise is a beautiful, moving shade of blue-green that is toned down with a hint of white. I know there is a rock called turquoise, but that is a different color than I am addressing here. This color conveys a certain wisdom, a populist take on preciousness. It stands out while never taking itself too seriously. Good for jewelry, site layouts, roofs, and uniforms. Matches very well with white and black, also going well with silver, lighter and darker shades of blue-green, and somewhat compatible with gold and burgundy, although turquoise does not like to be in competition with other powerful colors.
Periwinkle — A downy, gentle blue-lavender that captures the essence of dreams, fluffiness, and childhood blankets. It has a powdery feel to it, almost like fairy-dust. While it is light, it conveys warmth and thoroughness. Best used in bedsheets, curtains, packagings. Matches well with off-white but also with other shades of blue and violet, as well as light grass greens.

Light Indigo — This watered-down form of blue-side indigo has a faded quality to it. It is proud and has heritage, but is not brilliant or spotlight-getting. I think it is a wonderful color for t-shirts and cars, and possibly the sexiest color of jeans as well (on guys and gals alike). It is tough but has a certain feminine mystique to it as well. Goes well with gold, silver, gray, white, and deep reds.

Bright raspberry — A cutesy color with substance. It is brash like youthful lipstick, but also mature and independent. It stands out and makes a statement without being subservient. A nice color for logos and elegant invitations, as well as for cloth napkins and girls’ summer tops. Goes best with gold, but also matches lighter shades of pink, darker red-variants, platinum, black, and occasionally (but prudently) shades of green.

Chartreuse — The color of faded landscapes, bleached by direct sunlight.

Lavender — The color of dreamy wildflower landscapes and faraway mountains.

Slate blue/steel blue — A quiet, humble color that graces stone paths, traditional roofs, and overcast skies.

Goldenrod — The solid-color projection of gold, this orange-infused yellow is much more refined and well-mannered than all other colors in its vicinity. It has the magical ability of matching just about any other beautiful color, owing to its neutrality and metallic origin.

Violet-burgundy — The color of red wine and evening gowns, I can hardly think of a more adult romantic-styled color.

Salmon — A slightly orange shade of lighter pink, this color is creamy and wistful without being outright girly. It is a good color for leisurely clothes and towels, as well as the trim on dresses or ribbons. It also a good color for the fish ..

Aquamarine — The rock itself has many different possible shades. On the net, aquamarine refers to this more greenish hue that is like a traffic light when it’s off but illuminated by sunlight. It is a tender relative of sea-foam green, the ubiquitous yet seemingly mis-named crayon and marker color.

Royal Blue — It’s really a type of purple, but it sounds nice calling it blue. A nice stand-alone color that holds its own as a solid, it is one of those rare colors that fuses many traditions into one. It is a nice color for tunics, blouses,