Yellowstone pictures

I had planned to upload a bunch of pics from my camera phone but I can't get them off the phone right now. So instead I have put up some pictures from my trip to Yellowstone with Mon and Jin. Click on the picture for the whole album over at Picassa.

Some Yellowstone Pics

Support

At the opera last friday I ran into a friend from my choir. His roommate, also a singer, was there too. We were discussing the opera and I said I preferred to say only positive things which surprised the roommate.

The way I see it, if you don't like a situation you can either try to remove that which you don't like or support that which you do like. I like the latter better. If you support what you like and others agree then this is continued. The rest can either get left behind or support this idea. Those who do get left behind can either attempt to tear down that which they don't like or join back in. And so on. There is some balance between keeping a good thing going and losing freedom and a sense of self, and I don't know where that is.

In music only the supportive approach can work.

At its best, a heierarchical society is like music. It is based upon support, and it is this support that gives peoples relationships meaning. At its worst it is an unstable equilibrium of men standing on the faces of their brothers.

Erin

Interpretation

For those who are wondering, the title "Sunlight on My Face" is from the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name". Here is the first half of the lyrics:

I want to run I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there I go there with you
It's all I can do

I was thinking today that the effectiveness of the line "I want to feel sunlight on my face" depends on how it is said, or sung. Reciting it in my normal speaking voice I find it ineffective, but as sung by Bono I find it powerful. It is a matter of interpretation.

I have noticed that when people try to interpret someone's art without performing it themselves they are generally way off the truth. The only way to interpret music is to perform it. Then you make your interpretation another truth. I've come to find the whole process of criticism and external interpretation, without performance, abhorent. Usually I would be thinking of classical music, but this song is actually a good example, partly because everyone is familiar with it. I read the wikipedia article and feel the authors' interpretation misses the point and feeling of the song. As I said the song is itself the only true source, but I find that Bono's comments make more sense. From a 1987 interview with Propaganda magazine:

Where the Streets Have No Name' is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it’s a sketch — I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making — literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name...

Erin

Aspen and snowboarding

I just got back from a week in Aspen. Believe it or not, there is a physics center there and a few conferences are held each winter. As I said in the last post, the days are long from 8am to 7:30 pm with a break in the middle of the day for skiing or boarding. I decided to try snowboarding. It was a lot of fun and I am now good enough to take on moderately interesting runs.

On the first day I took a lesson and was doing well. Just before heading in for lunch I was tired but wanted to do "one more run". Of course those are famous last words, and I fell and hit my head on an icy part. Normally this sort of fall would be a little painful and somewhat disconcerting, but nothing to write home about, but the weather had been very warm and melting and packing of the snow had left the bottom of the mountain fairly hard. I hit the back of my head and suffered a mild concussion. Pretty harrowing actually, since I was out for ~10 seconds and when I came to I couldn't see for another few seconds. My instructor knew it was a bad day so he had made me put on a helmet even for the bunny slope. He said if I hadn't been wearing it they would have taken me out of there in a helicopter.

Anyway, I was dizzy for about a half hour but after lunch I was ready to go back out and I had a decent afternoon. I also went back a couple of days later after some new powder had fallen and had a great day. I'm defiinitely hooked.

It is a beautiful place, Aspen. The resort where we stayed (at an affordable reduced group rate) was very nice. Here is a view from my room.

Singing & Aspen

I have already seen some progress with my voice teacher. It is coming slow, but I can already tell that there is something to discover just outside of my current reach. These things tend to come in discrete jumps and there is no telling when it will happen, but I'm optimistic.

I'm going to Aspen for a meeting next week. This is one of those meetings that is a ton of work and a ton of play. The days are long, 8am to 7:30pm, but we take a break from 11-4:30 and a lot of people go skiing; and we get a group rate on lift tickets so they are half price. I'm going to try snowboarding. I've skiied a couple of times and it was fun, but I think I'll like snowboarding more.

Voice Teacher

I had my first lesson with a new voice teacher this week. I had been meaning to get a new teacher, but was finally pushed into it by my move from singing baritone to tenor in the choir. I've been singing tenor now for three weeks, and man it was scary at first. I felt much more exposed because I produce much more sound singing tenor. Of course this is the whole point; I get much more resonance in that range, hence the change of section. I need to work on controlling the sound so that I can sing at an F and higher softly but without going completely into falsetto every time. Well, I need to work on that and just about everything else. So much to learn, it's exciting.

Erin