"She Smiled At Me On The Subway..."

I love the way we horse people treat our horses.

We approach them in the comfort of their stalls, walk amidst them in crowded warm up arenas, stroll post them in peaceful barn aisles. We look them in the eye. We smile in their direction. We greet them as a friend, and act as if we expect them to, in turn, tip their hats and offer a salutation; "How do you do?". Of course, in reality, we do not anticipate such a response ... but that doesn't prevent us from initiating the greeting.

... I wish it were so simple for people to approach each other in such a similar, friendly fashion.

"What Is It About A Good Rock Show?"

Wow. I haven't been on this blog in forever. Or any of my blogs, for that matter. I feel bad. I feel like I haven't been keeping anyone updated.

Truth is, there's not much to say.

It's started raining in Washington again. I wake up every morning before the sun rises and often arrive at school before the principal. Playing jazz and concert music for two hours before I start my school day is bliss, despite the early mornings. We're talking about going to Reno for a jazz festival. I might go to Italy this summer. I got invited to a prestigious academic opportunity this summer; explaining such would take up more time than necessary on here. I took the PSAT today; it wasn't so bad. I got to see Bob today, too. It greatly improved a mood which was otherwise .... eh, comme ci, comme ça. I'm learning French. People at the barn are talking schooling shows for the winter. I can't wait to get back in the ring. I've already got an ache in the pit of my stomach, imagining riding at Regionals again ... but I still can't quite grasp my mind around the chance that I'm going to get to ride at Nationals again almost a year from now. I love my Beatles CD's I bought recently. I'm listening to Maxwell's Silver Hammer right now. I have been contemplating my musical preferences lately and trying really hard to get ready for My Chemical Romance's new CD. I can't seem to find the motivation to get excited for an album they're describing as "the dumber, the better". But, at the same time, the raw sound they're going for and the newness of a complete different style is intriguing. I don't know yet. I just finished a bowl of peaches. Sure, they were canned, but they were delicious nonetheless. Right now I'm putting off honors english homework and discovering that the new sweatpants I bought today are super comfy and warm :3

So. I there's a run-down of my existence (: lol

Basically, I'm really loving how my life is going right now. For the most part, I'm extremely content. All's well (: I feel like I've been blessed with a lot of opportunities lately, and I feel like - uncharacteristically of me - I've been taking them all head-on. I'm not backing out of any opportunities these days. It's really a beautiful feeling, this ambition.

Before I go, I want to share with you an ... article? If you will. Written by Steven Smith (pictured; quite largely, I might add :o), Fuse television host and basically an awesome dude ;D He wrote this as a MySpace bulletin and, quite frankly, I thought what he had to saw was remarkable (besides, he's talking about a band I happen to think is amazing). Check it out;

"What is it about a good rock show?
Last night I went to my nth Gaslight Anthem show and as always they delivered.
The biggest change I noticed was the crowd.
Gaslight have gotten popular. Super popular. And I'm way proud of them.
Good music will win out, I've always said, but it's a crap shoot.

I try not to judge, I really do. The thing about the crowd was it got a little fratty. I've noticed the same with Wilco over the past couple of years. And you know what? That's fine. Band's can't choose their audiences, they ask everyone to listen. It's a weird concept. Very capitalist in a way. Money for art.

I absoulutely love the Gaslight Anthem. I have since I first heard them years ago. Do I feel I'm a cooler fan or a better fan than their new fans? I used to - which is rude as balls because I know the school of fans treating bands like girlfriends. You want everyone to know her but not love her like you do. Make sense?

Gaslight are a wonderful example because they are just so damn good the world needs to hear them. I strongly believe it will be a better place. Of course I feel the same way about Strike Anywhere, the Riverboat Gamblers, and Banner Pilot but there's something different about Gaslight. And a slew of other bands.

Is it the X Factor? Is it definable?

John Mayer has a great quote where he says he likes good music no matter what. He doesn't go for genres. Good country is good music, good punk is good music, good hip hop is good music. and so on.

What makes one band more accessible than others?
What is mainstream? Is there a mainstream anymore? I say no.

Enough out of me.
Your turn.
Let's discuss.

Steven"

I thought that was a very thought provoking article. I loved his girlfriend metaphor. So true (:

So. Hopefully I will post more often. ...I know, I keep saying that. But hopefully if I say it enough, I'll start acting on it.
I might hop on over to music.is.life right now and update that. I feel bad for abandoning my "Then & Now" series ... especially since most the bands I've talked about previously on that blog have experienced major changes recently, which should be documented accordingly.
Anyway. Off I go.
Hope you enjoyed this little ramble.

xoxo
keep on living

"It's Been A Hard Day's Night ..."

So. It appears I have survived my first few days as a junior. :o

School's been going pretty great so far. I mean, there's not much to tell ... after only three days in class lol, there isn't much happening. It still sort of feels strange, to sit in a classroom from six thirty in the morning until two in the afternoon ... I have not gotten back into the habit of having so many hours of my life taken up :(

I also haven't gotten back into the habit of running on so little sleep D: Right now it's six thirty in the afternoon, and I'm completely exhausted. I've been awake since five in the morning ... that's what time I get up now, in order to make it in to jazz band on time before school starts. It's a little earlier than what I was used to, but so far it's been fun. I need to seriously work on my trumpet skills again ... but overall, I think I'll enjoy jazz band. And besides, it's sort of pleasant ... waking up early to enjoy two full hours of music before my school day starts; one hour of jazz band followed by my regular wind ensemble class. Excellent. I forgot how beautiful my french horn sounds (:

The weather this week has been very warm ... and as I sit here writing this, I'm hardly able to function from the heat. My house is extremely warm right now and I am currently contemplating something I can do in a part of the house that's cooler than the back room here, where the computer is.

So far, I have been avoiding the heat since coming home from school by listening to The Beatles <3 Caught the last bit of A Hard Day's Night on VH1 :3 While it seems the rest of the world seems to be tuning in to Jay-Z's Madison Square Garden show on Fuse "/ I've also been trying to figure out which of the new remastered Beatles albums I want to order ... I think I want A Hard Day's Night and Abbey Road for sure, but I am still debating on maybe a third. If not, I'll start with those two and go from there (:

I so dearly want to take a nap right now, but resist for fear of messing up my sleep schedule.

And I wish I could say I could sleep in this weekend, but, nope ... I'll be out of town! Not for a horse show this time, surprisingly ... but for an otherwise equine event.

I am attending an equine & canine chiropractic seminar this weekend! x] I am extremely looking forward to it! In case you didn't know, that has become my latest career endeavour, and very very likely the plan I'll stick with lol. It seems that that field of study is finally what I've been looking for; I truly am fascinated by chiropractic, as well as massage and acupuncture treatments - hopefully I can learn more about the latter two in the future (: And the fact that I can focus this study on equines make it even more appealing to me.

So, I'm going to be spending the next two days learning all about animal chiropractic procedures. I can't wait! And feel really lucky that someone my age is able to attend this seminar ... I have a feeling I may be the youngest to show up lol (:

Speaking of my age ... I turned seventeen yesterday xD Happy birthday to me! lol xp I had a great birthday and will probably post more about it soon.

However, I'm off to find somewhere cool to spend the rest of my day and to prepare for my seminar this weekend (: I'll be finished on Sunday afternoon ... just in time to get ready for my first full week of school >.<

Later, everybody!
keep on living xoxo

"When It Rains on This Side of Town, It Touches Everything ..."

The weather is so stormy today!

We haven't seen rain like this all summer. That's the crazy thing about Washington; for nine months of the year, it pours and pours and pours ... but for those three glorious months of summer, it's sunny as can be. It's weird for me, having lived in this environment all my life, to actually find the sound of the rain on the roof unusual .. I mean, it's exactly what I live with every single day. But, after three months without, the sound is new again.

I forgot how much my mood was effected by the weather. I forgot how moody I can get on days like today x] lol. So, I've tried to keep myself locked away today and just enjoy the weather.

Except for my morning outing to church, today has been spent pleasantly alone. I've worked on cleaning up my room a bit and (finally) putting my school stuff all together. It makes me sick to think that this Wednesday it all begins again D:
I also organized my CD collection, something in which I was desperately needing to do. Unfortunately, I'm running out of room in my two CD cases in my car ... new cases are on my birthday list aha. Speaking of which, I turn seventeen in ... four days ;D

Rainy days like this also puts me in a radio-listening mood. I don't know why ... but there's something so different about listening to the radio, rather than your own CDs or portable music player. Maybe it's a lack of control over what's going to play next ... or maybe it's the intrigue of hearing new (and old) songs you may have never heard before. Or, maybe it's just the fact that I also desperately need to clean up my iPod and delete all the old songs I don't listen to, aha. Listening to my iPod anymore is almost frustrating.
But, whatever the reason, I always love listening to the radio, and especially in weather like this. So, while I was cleaning and organizing and otherwise being alone lol, I lit my cherry scented candle (which I have recently claimed as my own after our recent power outage in my house; it used to live downstairs on the coffee table but I used it to light up my room when the power went out. I fell in love with the pleasant cherry scent and it hasn't left my room since), opened the blinds on my window (which I still don't understand; why did I have my blinds closed for all of the beautiful sunny summer, only to open them up to watch the rain pour down?), and turned the radio up. It was pleasant as always and just a few minutes ago I heard a song I never heard before ... and I really liked it.

I take one cause you left me and
two for my family and
three for my heartache and
four for my headaches and
five for my lonely and
six for my sorrow and
seven for no tomorrow and
eight ... I forget what eight was for, and
nine for a lost God and
ten for everything ...

It's titled 'Kiss Off' by The Violent Femmes and I thought it was an awesome song. It actually caught my attention first when the lyrics went, "I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record", which Gerard Way often throws into the bridge of the My Chemical Romance song You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison when the band performs it live xp lol. Leave it to me.

Anyway. I'm going to go continue to appreciate the rain and the radio.

keep on living
xoxo

"I'm Much Too Tired To Fall Asleep."

I think I'm going to start posting more photographs on this blog.

It makes me nervous to post my own work on a site like this, because it's so easy for someone to steal them. It's so easy for someone to credit my work as their own.
-hence new copyright in sidebar-
However, I am going to share with you my art in good faith of my dear readers. Hopefully you all respect what I'm trying to do here; and that is to say, I'm trying to share with you a part of who I am, and what I love.



I've recently found a deep passion for photography. I think it's always been a part of me ... but lately due to opportunities I've been blessed with, I've really had the pleasure to explore this interest of mine. And it's been so much fun.

Most of the photos you'll see on here from now on are probably going to be of some bands I've been lucky enough to see play in the past year or so. That's something else I've really found a passion for; heading out in the evening to a comfortable, cozy local venue, and enjoying live music in a friendly, fun atmosphere. Some of the bands are local and some of them live states away; some of them are kids my age, others are grown men, happily married. No matter the situation, I always feel lucky to have the chance to see these artists perform.

And when those two passions of mine come together, it's really a magical sort of thing.

I could talk on and on about this but, sticking with my new theme of "short-and-sweet" on this blog, I'm going to wrap this up. No doubt I'll be talking about photography and local music plenty in upcoming posts.

But for now, I should sleep. All summers I've been going to bed at my own leisure, and it's not been great for my schedule. And with school starting back up in under a week (D:), I really should get back on track.

So. Don't tell anyone that I plan on lighting a candle, turning on The Used's new album Artwork, and letting Bert McKracken's ever-pleasant screaming and giggling send me off to dreamland.

:)

keep on living guys.

"We'll Carry On."

I realized today that I don't do any blog posts just for the sake of it these days.
I always feel like I have to have some epic topic to speak of ... something big and relevant and meaningful. Something someone else can take to heart.
I miss the days when I just logged on Blogger every day and wrote ... something. Anything. No matter how stupid. Sometimes I even logged on just to say that I had nothing to write about.



Right now, it's 6:08 on a Tuesday afternoon.
...I had to come back to edit this post after I realized it was actually, indeed, Wednesday.
I went to bed at four in the morning last night.
School starts again in exactly a week.
The sun's shining beautifully outside and makes it feel like summer should never end.
I'm listening to Vitamin String Quartet covers and feeling in a very musical mood.
I took the above picture last Friday at a local band concert. I had so much fun.

I've done not much of anything today and it feels strangely pleasant to be alive.

"I Am A Canvas Of My Experiences."

Hello everyone. Me again :) My posts are few-and-far-between these days, but believe me, I'm not going anywhere x] I guess I just haven't been on here as much as maybe I would like. But I've got a brand new post for you here now; a post about passion, about inspiration ... about things that mean things to me.

First off in this little inspirational post, is the title. Unlike the theme which I tend to stick to on this blog, the title of this post isn't a song lyric; it's actually a quote. Kat Von D wrote those words on the back cover of her recent book, and I was instantly captivated by the word choice. And, while she was obviously talking about her tattoos - the subject of her book, but also the subject of her life's work -, I thought the quote sort of ... fit. With what I'm going to talk about today.

So. Lately I've re-adopted the habit of decorating my bedroom walls. Way back when I was young, I would cut out photos from my favorite horse magazines and post them all over my wall ... :) But I took those down years ago and really never had anything else up in my room ... until recently.

I know, it seems like a sort of immature habit; the cutting-and-pasting of miscellaneous photos, to plaster all over your walls. Sort of feels like something a nine year old should be doing ... not a teenage girl going on seventeen. It seems like, maybe someone my age should be growing up a little. Should keep her magazines nice and intact, not butchered, torn and displayed. But I've found something amongst all this "decorating" ...

Some of it is people. Artists. Musicians. Thinkers. Dreamers.

People I love and people I have never met.

People who will never know me. People who will never know that they have impacted who I am by simply being who they are.

Some of it is words. Lyrics, quotes, articles ...
Words which made me stop and think.
Words which help me through the days.
Words that make me smile and words that make me cry.
Words which changed the way I see the world.

A lot of it is music. In fact, most of it is music. But it's not all just songs and sounds. It's everything that music means; feelings and hopes and fears and dreams. It's all the people who come together to make "music" what it is. It's memories and it's good times. It's moments of hope and moments of heroism. Call it the "music scene". It's not just the three and a half minute track; it's so much more than that

But of course, I also have my accomplishments; the tokens of the relationship between my horse and I. A symbol of one of my life's true passions. These ribbons bring back memories of victories won, and all of my back numbers put a smile on my face as I reminisces on good times come and gone.



All in all, I can say that, while these tributes may seem a bit silly, they have provided me with something so valuable; they have given me something ever so important in this daily life.

inspiration.

My bedroom isn't just a room anymore. The walls are a canvas, in which I can express my passions, my inspirations, my dreams and my goals. Within those walls, I can remember experiences past and find hope in experiences yet to come.

These days, when I walk into my bedroom, I feel a sense of self. I can just sit in the middle of this room, and look around ... and become reminded of why I do what I do. I can remember all of the things I have been blessed with in this world; everything which reminds me why it's great to be alive. I step into that room and it's ... me. And that means so much.

And, speaking of inspirations ...



Amy awarded me this inspirational blog award! Thanks Amy! I'd like to pass it along to ...

Amy, of the aforementioned blog, My Pointe of View.

Amy's side-project blog, Our Inspiration.

Savy, of Life of a Cereal Killer.

Savy's side-project blog, the coming of genius.

keep on living.
xoxo