killedwithkarate

I ask you, what is classier than a cookie floating in a martini glass full of skim milk?

My X-Mas List:

-More hours in the day
-Capers
-A good night's sleep
-To always feel the way I've been feeling lately
-To carry my friends on my shoulders
-Quality moments
-A sense of belonging
-Snuggles
-More night walks in the city
-Interraction with children and critters
-Harder laughter
-A trip to Manhattan

Everyone should fall in love while "Calculation Theme" by Metric is playing in the background.

So, I look like a ballerina right now. I've got my pearl earrings, my hair all pulled back neatly in a bun, but then I've got my Roots sweatpants, a couple of my favourite tank tops, a blue and pink striped men's dress shirt and my favourite flip flops on. To top it all off, I'm eating strawberries. Someone snap a friggin' picture, because I'm ADORABLE! I love moments where you just feel like the cutest person in the world. Well, one of them.

My roommate finally took the hint and cleaned up all her shit, so the apartment is semi-presentable again, which makes me VERY happy.

I want it to get cold and snowy so I can start getting scrappy and wrestling in the snow already.

Party ideas:

-Underpants and Socks Dance Party
-Snow Fight
-Board Games Night
-Gambling and Pie Night
-Decadent Ho Potluck
-Rockstar Dress Up Extravaganza

I've been falling in love with classical music again, which is an amazing feeling. It's not that I don't always love it in some capacity, but sometimes this unknown force picks me up and makes me unable to go a day without taking out my book of arias that I shouldn't really be singing or cranking up some Ralph Vaughn Williams. There's this one aria called "Ain't it a pretty night?" from Floyd's Susannah which just kills me the most. It's a contemporary American opera set in rural Tenessee and it's just SO beautiful because of these huge swelling strings sections and the low brass coming in at just the right moment. But most importantly, the use of a southern drawl as a diction technique is just amazing. "The sky so dark and velvet-like and it's all light up with stars. It's like a great big mirror reflecting fireflies over a pond." Just imagine how she says words like "sky" and "fireflies" with just enough lilt to carry the phrase. You really just have to hear it, because I can't accurately describe how gorgeous it is. Just trust me.

Trystan randomly quoted A Midsummer Night's Dream at the pub last night and I immediately hurled myself into the quiet repetition of a large portion of the act that the line was from in Britten's operatic version of the play. Gah. I love Britten so much. I've been listening to his ceremony of carols lately and I forgot just how beautiful his rendition of "There is No Rose of Such Virtue" can be. I'm such a nerd sometimes.

It's funny. I usually have a little bit of trouble bringing art songs to life because they just always feel like they're about the same thing: love. I mean, yadda yadda yadda flowers kissed on the hand our love will burn always like a flaming golden hawk in my loins... Well, maybe not that last part, but still. It's kind of formulaic. However, I finally figured out how to convey them in spite of their sometimes lacking lyrics. It's all about painting a picture in vocal effects and facial expressions, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the same picture as the one the text is trying to convey. For instance, I'm singing Barber's "The Daisies" right now, and the lyrics go along the lines of "In the scented bud of the morning o, when the windy grass went rippling far, I saw my dear one walking slow in the field where the daisies are..." and all that jazz. It's nice, it's cute, but if I put myself in a mind frame where I felt the same things as the song is trying to convey, it suddenly all clicks. Granted, I was envisioning busy streets and freezing cold and laughing in spite of awkward conversation lulls, but it worked. All the stress was gone and I was singing just like I was walking home in the morning.