I am so determined to learn this next. With every fibre of my being. Expect a video of me playing this in a couple years of so.
I've been spending my days reading, going to class, practicing, etc. etc. etc.
List of things to listen to / re-listen to:
This Heat - Deceit
True Widow
HTRK - Nostalgia
Dis-
Magik Markers
The United Sons of Toil / Lars Bang Larsen split (highly recommended)
Jacques Ibert
Beethoven symphony arranged for piano by Liszt (?)
More Liszt
Georges Delerue
Also, I recently re-listened to The Chameleon's Script of the Bridge. I really, really listened to it. Every note, every word, every single change in sound, I tried to catch and piece together. Truthfully, that album is probably one of the most essential in all music. It covers so many different topics just in the lyrics, and if I could choose two songs that could easily sum up an entire generation, I would choose "Second Skin" and "View from a Hill." My favorite lyrics from "Second Skin" are:
It's like you fail to make the connection
You know how vital it is
Or when something slips through your fingers
You know how precious it is
Well you reach the point where you know
It's only your second skin
And from "View from a Hill" (possibly the most beautiful song ever created in the history of EVER):
Pick myself up and take the air
The fragrance of children everywhere
Slowly absorbed into my square
Debating what is and isn't there
Who cares
Ugh, if you ever have doubts about life or just want to lie alone somewhere and let your mind wander off, listen to Script. It holds so many answers in its multifarious layers, and to add to that, it is just so perfectly, piercingly beautiful.
Currently reading: Pnin by Nabokov (along with various Lovecraft fiction). Well, I'm basically finished with it, but I'm now going through it and writing down memorable quotes and other such thoughts that stood out to me. Here are some of my most favourite of favourite quotations taken from the novel:
"The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense."
"Unless a film of flesh envelops us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion."
"My patient was one of those singular and unfortunate people who regard their heart with a queasy dread, a nervous repulsion, a sick hate, as if it were some strong slimy untouchable monster that one had to be parasitized with, alas."
"Pnin of course would have given her a divorce as readily as he would his life, with the wet stems cut and a bit of fern, and all of it wrapped up as crisply as at the earth-smelling florist's when the rain makes gray and green mirrors of Easter day..."
"Pnin would get drunk on his private wines..." (Meaning, Pnin would reminisce about his past and it would fill him with such joy and mirth he would laugh uncontrollably, or smile in some infectious way).
"[The Egg and We] was ... a recently inaugurated and not very successful little restaurant which Pnin frequented from sheer sympathy with failure." (I included this simply because of the magnificence of the sentiment).
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