Sometimes we'll sigh, sometimes we'll cry, and we'll know why just you and I know true love ways.

Texas sure was an interesting experience.

That's stage in the recital hall to the right, there. See that organ? Dr. Ring got to hear it played, but Shannon and I missed out! He said it shook the floors. He sent Shannon and me the pictures he took while in Texas and that's one of them.

I still don't feel like it all really happened, except I'm a little sadder and sobered for having done all of it - that's really my only proof. That, and I have a new shirt.

The trip there was exhausting enough, arriving at the hotel at 1:00 in the morning. It was a nice hotel, though, to be sure: the AT&T Conference Center. Overpriced, mediocre pastries and too-friendly, laughable baristas were typified in the mornings, it seemed.

We had auditions the morning following our arrival, at 9:00 AM. I wouldn't have slept Tuesday night for how nervous I was, but I was so tired I couldn't help but just pass out the second my head hit the pillow. I think Shannon was feeling the same way, even though she didn't seem to get nervous about auditions until the next morning, but I could be wrong.

The audition process was brutal and brutally unorganized. Two kinds of brutal.
I sucked bigtime, but that's when you get when you don't practice. Even if I had, though, I'm pretty sure I would have been dead last in the auditions.

But I was there anyway. I remember thinking beforehand how that would be a nice, consoling thought. But, when you're actually confronted with being worse than everyone else around you, it mostly just hurts.

It's my own fault, I guess.

The first day of rehearsal was awful. I was having serious trouble keeping up.

That sort of thought process continued throughout the trip.

I'll talk more about that trip later, and all of the wonderful things I experienced there, instead of just complaining.

END.

I have no lid upon my head, but if I did, you could look inside and see what's on my mind.

I want to write music. Badly.

END.

And by the way...

Guess we'll never see poor Madelaine again.


My new shirt I just ordered last night.

Excited.

It was a white crane... with an arrow in its wing.

I have stretched out every single emotion in my body until it's completely taut and strained and I can barely feel it anymore. Even the good ones. Sometimes you can take things too far and that's one of them. I'm bad about dwelling on things, whether they're good things or not. That usually just makes them worse. And it makes the good things not seem so good anymore.

Thank God for the good things.

It's as if I've found a song I love and want to listen to it a thousand times. But really, after you've done that, the song doesn't give you chills anymore, and it doesn't quite feel like the same song. Does that make sense? Probably not. But I've found what I have to do with those songs is leave them alone for a while. And when you come back to them after a few days, weeks, months, years, whatever, it's the most refreshing thing in the world to hear that familiar tune.

Every word of this song feels new to me right now. I've listened to it more times than I can count, more times than iTunes' "play count" can count, and it's still the most beautiful thing I could hear right now.

I guess that's what I need to do with the good things. If I leave them alone, they'll seem a lot better than they are.

I feel like I'm trying to be deep right now and it's not working. I don't care - nobody reads this anymore anyway, so only if you who are reading this happen across it will anybody know what a bad writer I really am.

This post is riddled with comma splices and poor subject/verb agreement and tense changes and RUN-ON SENTENCES.

I'll leave this where it is.

When all I ever meant to do, was to keep you.

The Crane Wife 1 and 2. and click on the "Crane Wife part 2" bubble when it ends.
Go listen. It's worth it.

END.

I look out the window - the birds are composing. Not a note is out of tune, or out of place.

I love my friends, and I hate seeing them hurt, especially when I know there is not a single thing in the world I can say to them that will make them feel better. There are some things that are just untouchable. I don't know how they feel, and I'm so fortunate because of that, but I do wish I could empathize with them a little, at least. Sympathy only goes so far. It's the kind of thing that's always in the back of my mind when I'm doing something else. I just want everything to get better.

I hope everything gets so much better for him. I hate to leave that where it is, but there's nothing else I can say.

I'm so lucky, in so many ways.

Last night I emailed Heidi Lucas, the woman who I assumed to be the horn instructor at Southern Miss. If only that school was closer to home, it would easily be my first choice. I'm lucky, though, in the fact that I have a lot of family in Mississippi, and even a cousin who would be getting her bachelor's there at the same time I'd be studying.

I was so nervous about sending that stupid email. I haven't gotten anything back yet, but for all I know, it could be USM's break.

I hope I can at least correspond with this woman and learn something about the programs there.

Time for the Mason/VCU game.
Go VCU!

END.

All I do the whole night through is dream of you. And with the dawn, I still go on dreamin' of you.

You're every thought,
you're every thing,
you're every song I ever sing,
summer, winter, autumn and spring.

I'm not even watching "Singing in the Rain" right now.
Check it out:
A Night at the Opera

I think the Marx Brothers are one of the most under-appreciated groups of comedians these days. Their brand of humor is just so unique, so classic, so witty. They're just one more of those wonderful things my dad exposed me to when I was young.

I'm watching "A Night At The Opera" right now, which is what that above link is from. I used to watch these movies when I was like seven years old and tell my dad how I wanted to play the piano just like Chico Marx. He would laugh at me and tell me I'd never learn how to do that from a piano teacher and that I'd have to just do it myself.

And now I play the horn. Le sigh. Goodbye, old dreams. Hello, new dreams.

I'm going to post a lot of these, so if you watch any of them, watch this one: A Day at the Races
I feel that this is really what his piano routines come down to. There is obvious talent, but it's exhibited in a way that leaves you feeling giggly. I love how he just slams his hands down on the keys and somehow music comes out. He's the only one who can actually pull it off. I think the orchestra helps out with the theatrical aspect of the music as well. I also apologize for the corny beginning and end of that video.

Monkey Business

At the Circus

Go West

Horse Feathers

One of my favorite things about Chico is how I watch him and feel the chemistry he has with the piano. That's one of the many things I love about being an instrumentalist, really. I feel that, through music, I can have a relationship with this inanimate object that would otherwise be meaningless.

I think everyone should watch a Marx Brothers movie as soon as they get the chance so the world can remember what real comedy feels like. Not the raunchy, sexy, unsettling comedy that everyone loves so much these days. I'm guilty of that too. I'm a more-than-frequent watcher of Family Guy, a big Will Ferrell fan, and I've even been known to laugh at South Park whenever I watch it (perhaps my deepest point of shame). But when it comes down to it, this kind of humor is what got everything started. It's really the foundation for everything that came afterward.

I guess you could say that about anything. But everything about the Marx Brothers feels so pure and robust, and I feel no shame in laughing at it, because it's clean and it's funny.

I think I should watch old movies more often. They make me feel better about humanity.

I'm done with this post. I know I said I would write about important things, and maybe this isn't important because of its depth.

I think it's important because we would be bored without music, and we would all die without laughter.

END.

We're lining up the light-loafer'd and the bored benchwarmers. Castaways and cutouts, fill it up.

Come join the Youth and Beauty Brigade.

I deleted my blog after it caused me more problems than I could afford. It was doing very little good for me and very little good for anyone else, so I decided to just scrap it. I decided, however, to make a new, almost-identical blog. It's still "The Youth and Beauty Brigade," but I have an infinitely better URL. "http://boredbenchwarmers.blogspot.com"

I know, right? Pertinent! The other URL was obviously a product of impatience. I plan to put a little more love into this blog than I did into the last one. I plan to talk almost strictly about music, and possibly write something occasionally. Hopefully it will startle the creative side of me until I can actually produce something worth experiencing. I am hoping this to be the result.

I'm also going to try very hard to avoid talking about my personal life. I burden my friends with that enough as it is and it's just another form of self-absorption, and that's a luxury that I (unlike my other blog-writing comrades) cannot afford. Perhaps if I view it that way, I'll be less focused on myself and more on the things that matter anyway. God, music, and writing. Gossip will be a thing of the past on "The Youth and Beauty Brigade."

Also, if you haven't heard that song, go purchase it now and listen to it. Now. I don't care who you are and how much money you have. Just do it. You will not regret it.

"California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade," by The Decemberists.

Musical and lyrical perfection are well worth ninety-nine cents on itunes, in my opinion.

And now it's time for me to enjoy an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece.

END.