Saturday, August 29, 2009

Maine!

Ahhhh in my bedroom. Maine. So nice and clean. It's incredibly how AT HOME I feel tonight. I haven't been here in so long and it's great to have a taste of the summer I really didn't have this time because of classes and everything at Berklee. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had a great time this summer but I'm gonna eat this week up. I'm still unwinding though, wow. Agh, I'm working on it. My EP (my short album called "Refresh") is still not finished and I just want it to be done and the best that it can be. It's frustrating with music or any other art that I have created how imperfect it always seems. But the beautiful thing is that I am getting closer and closer to how I want my music to sound. It's getting nearer to how I hear it in my head when I'm writing it. Although fine tuning is much more frustrating than the first young stages of sloppy tuning when I didn't have as many tools. Now almost everything is here for me and I just need to find the best way to use it all. Then again, it's not all here for me yet. I'm trying to learn how to produce and mix myself well so that I'll have more power and can mix anything I want. The fine tuning will be tedious, yes, but I'll have both horse reins in my hand.

There's my spattering of ideas for the night. See ya went the sun decides to show it's shy face again!

Stoddy.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Last day in 1175

This is an epiphanic moment for me. It's amazing a big event can be made out of sitting in a small, moderately messy room complete with three empty glasses on the desk, open drawers and books ready to fall of the shelf. This is the last time I'll be in this room after midnight. I will never live in 1175 Boylston again. All those late nights, working hard, writing music, editing my short films or sitting bored, too scared about my future to do anything about it will never reoccur at this very spot. On those intimidating, frightful nights I usually found myself leaving and taking a semi-dangerous walk down Boylston, passing begging drifters who always made me feel careless and spoiled and into Shaw's where chocolate milk temporarily eased my mind. I often walked back with a dread that had no home, no reason but still interrogated me, going as far as to stop my legs from walking any further once I reached the steps and convincing me to wait another five minutes until I "figured out" whatever I needed to solve. Then there were those days that even the sunlit sidewalks outside the doors of 1175 Boylston seemed given to me, not by a god or anything someone might call a higher power but by perfection, an ideal I had suddenly come a step closer to. Even the McDonald's at the corner or the Burger King a block away, even the intrusive signs looming above me, whining like children to be the one to persuade me: they were all welcome. Life was put together. It all made sense. And I would come home to my small, approx. 15 by 12 room and feel safe, happy and comfortable. Whether a teacher recently told me my songwriting was up to par or I believed I had a chance with my current crush sitting by me in class, those days ended under this roof. Less than two steps behind me sits the invisible bed, the futon that disguises itself as a chair so that anyone new who comes into my room always asks, "Wait I don't get this. Where is your bed?!" One of these people was Whit, my brother. I always get a kick out of it and wait a few seconds so that they feel stupid or simply dumfounded as if they got the chance to stand on stage at the Carnegie Hall magic show.
My nice Roland piano at this very moment, and like always, seduces me when I catch a glimpse of its shiny keys and buttons that have given me so much promise and purpose through hours of awarding struggle. Goodbye to the posters on my wall, Pink Floyd "The Wall", The Bealtes "Abbey Road", Pink Floyd "Dark Side of The Moon", a sexy picture of Scarlett Johanssan which is basically lifesize, a black and white Beatles poster that has a unique endearing quality about it, and yet another Beatles poster, the most colorful of them all. I will keep these posters but they will always remind me of this pathetic room. It is cozy and now part of my life but I will never desire a room like this again. I will strive for bigger, expansive rooms if I can get them, more accommodating, livable. But like many things that get left in the past, becoming only furniture in your brain's memory cavity but nothing more, I believe there will be times that I desire backwards, wish for the days of smaller things, more tangible problems. It's funny how the older you get, your problems don't necessarily get harder. To a child, a big problem might as well be a ripped doll that will no longer say "I love when you hug me!" The older a person gets, I think problems just get further away, harder to understand, to grasp. Problems become more abstract. And I think when I'm bombarded with tangable, stupid problems like ripped dolls, a sea of abstract difficulties and everything in between I'll be struck with nastalgia and like everyone else on this Earth, yearn for the youth I can't have. So this is why I feel a strong sense of passionate dependancy for this room, an affection that has no real logical grounds. I will miss it dearly because it represents everything this last year has meant for me. Everything from meeting John Mayer to playing on stage at the Berklee performance center to submitting a video for a Chipotle competition with Luke Holloway, to working out at the YMCA, to playing music for bigwig Sony entrepreneurs in my Singer/Songwriter workshop class. However, this room would have barely any significance at all if it weren't for my two roommates, Tim Mulcahey and Luke Holloway who lived next door to me all summer and Tim who has been my roommate for even longer. Both of them make this apartment what it is. They make it a landmark in my life, a milestone. Without these two guys, my best friends, I wouldn't be the same person I am now. And this room would only know me. Hey room, aren't you glad you've met my friends and all these memories? I bet you are. And I'm sure you have thousands of other stories that I don't know about. I'm glad I could add to them. I hope they made you smile. Cause even though you aren't great, you still make me smile. You always will.

I'm off to Greece in a week and two days! I've studied some Greek in these last weeks! I hope I'm ready for this leap into a crazy life change! I know I am. Whit did it and with more grace than a cat springing up to a windowsill. So pretty much, he just did it and wondered why we were concerned in the first place. And that's how I want to be.

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