Work and toil

I worked a lot this week. Nothing excessive, but more than I usually do. The last three days have been pretty intense. I went to Montreal for some testing on thursday and didn't get home again until 01.20 am. Then to sleep, then up again for more work on friday. And today I went back to Montreal again for some more work. It was nice to work somewhere else for a change, the variation is always welcome. I must say that it was a bit tough to get up at 6.30 this morning... But I should get a relatively fat paycheck next week. One can always do with a wee bit more money, especially with the not-quite-opulent salary that I have. I've found that the money is enough to live a decent life, but it seems nearly impossible to save any money. I'm not even spending that much money. All I spend it on is food, rent and bills, but still I have no money left at the end of the month. Hmm...

I played some more flute today. I only played for about half an hour, which is far from enough if I want to regain the level I had four months ago, let alone improve, but it's a start. Before I graduated, I was practising for about three to four hours per day on average. If you're curious about what I sounded like four months ago, you can check out my website. There are a few sound clips from my graduation concert there.
But now I'm enjoying playing again. Now I can play stuff I like because I want to and because I like to play, not because I have to. Though it kind of pisses me off how much I've lost during these four months. I sound like shit and feel like a beginner. Oh, well...

I've also gotten started with writing music again. So far I've only written a couple of songs in Swedish, but I'm working on some more electronic instrumental stuff too. I'll try to figure out a way to put it up online after I finish something more.

Music music music...

I played the flute today for the first time in quite a while. I played for maybe half an hour, so not so long, but still. It was pretty nice, I haven't felt like practising since before I graduated. And I didn't really practise today either, I mostly just played. But holy crap have I've gotten out of shape... You really lose it fast when you stop practising. I'd need to play for a couple of hours every day for at least a few weeks before I would be anywhere near where I was before I stopped playing. Anybody know a good pianist I could play with?

My Swedish friend sent me some Swedish candy, I got it in the mail yesterday. Whee! Plopp... So good... And she said she was going to take one of those stiff cardboard tubes that you send posters in, and jam it full of lingonberry jam and send it to me. I have no idea if she was being serious or if she was joking, I really couldn't tell. I guess I'll find out...

I'm going to work in Montréal tomorrow and on Saturday. We're going to work on a game consol that we don't have here at the office in Sainte-Adele, so we need to go to the game developers' office and test the game there. I hear it's a pretty big place with lots of people. Should be fun!

Songs and stuff

I talked to my Swedish friend again today. I finished writing a song to her, so I sang it to her on skype. She was typing something, and I was just playing around with my guitar while talking to her, and then I started singing without telling her anything about the song. When she realized what I was singing, she abruptly stopped typing and went dead quiet. She was completely stunned and didn't know what to say for several minutes. It was hilarious! I haven't seen her speechless like that before. She liked the song though, so good deal. :)

I feel like I'm starting to want to play music more seriously again. I haven't really felt that since well before my graduation concert in May. It might be time to dig out the flute and the sheet music and start practising again soon. I'm also going to start practising and singing more seriously with the guitar. Sucks ass that my work permit only allows me to work at Enzyme while I'm here. Otherwise I might start looking for gigs to get some extra cash.

I don't get that whole work permit thing. I'm already here, I already have a job. Why would it be a problem if I was working with something else on the side?

Tomorrow we're going to Montreal to listen to a concert with Matt Ward. I haven't heard any of his music before, but Stephan tells me it's good stuff.

Ow...

I fell while climbing a little more than a week ago now and hurt my leg and my shoulder, so I've been taking it pretty easy lately. It seems now that I might have hurt myself a bit more than I thought. A couple of days ago I noticed that the scratches on my leg were almost healed, but that I had a big bruise below the scratches that wasn't there the days after I fell. I seems to have showed up several days after the initial injury. And my ankle is kind of swollen. I put some ice on it, and holy fuck did that hurt... Is it supposed to start aching like hell when you put ice on it?
My shoulder is also in not so great shape, it seems I might have gotten some kind of inflammation in it. It has been aching since I went climbing on tuesday, thinking it was ok. Now it aches even when I'm not doing anything. Annoying... I'm going to take it as easy as I can for a week and take ibuprofen to relieve the inflammation and aching. If it hasn't gotten better within a week, I'll have to get a doctor take a look at it.

Today was a pretty lazy day. My housemates went to the Osheaga festival in Montreal, so I was home alone. I cleaned up my room, talked to some people on skype and tried to write some music. I got some ideas for songs that might turn out to be useable, but I didn't finish anything yet.
I bought a new pillow yesterday. It's so much better than the one I had! Now I can wake up without pain in my neck every morning.

Poetry? What's that?

There are huge amounts of poets in the world. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just plain weird. Some write songs, some write rhyming poems, some write prose...
I like Tankas. A Tanka is a short, originally Japanese form of poetry. It has five lines, usually with the syllable division of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. They are often very interesting to read because of their brevity. They can contain an entire world of ideas, condensed into 31 syllables. A mood, an idea, an atmosphere... Kind of like the essence of a novel in five short lines.

Above the ocean
a feeling of loneliness
carried by the wind
Lost by someone long ago
Does it feel unloved and sad?

The Tanka has been around for about 1300 years, and is considered the most important of Japanese poetry forms. Every man and woman of class was expected to know how to compose a good Tanka to conclude special occasions with. It wasn't actually called a Tanka until after the Meiji era, or 19th century, when it was given that name to distinguish it from Waka poetry.

Poetry is a peculiar thing. What is it? I dare you to give me a good answer to that. Why is poetry poetic? What is the purpose of poetry? What makes good poetry good?
I'm sure everybody has heard the famous 18th sonnet by Shakespeare:

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This poem is written in the form of a sonnet. A rather complex form, not so easy to write. Is this a good poem? I'm pretty sure most people would agree that it is. But why? Because it's beautiful? Well written? Thought provoking? Because it rhymes? Because it has some kind of emotional impact on the reader?
How about this one:

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

This is an excerpt from Dylan Thomas's And death shall have no dominion, a classic in it's own right. Now compare these two with this one:

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

Life, love, sorrow, death... Universal themes of life, from quite different angles, don't you think? This last text is an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's Une Charogne, A Carcass, translated to English by William Aggeler. So what do these three poems have in common? What makes them good? Are they any good, really? I say three, the first tanka doesn't count since it's written by me. I wouldn't presume to compare myself with Shakespeare, Dylan and Baudelaire. Ha! What a joke... Anyways, think about it. I'm not here to give you any answers, only to provoke thoughts in you. Figure it out for yourselves!

Only thinking what others tell you to think is just as bad as not thinking at all. So start thinking! Have fun! ;)