This Blog is a Lie

            In the early 1930s Shostakovich wrote his second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. This opera was his redemption. When it was performed for the first time in 1934 it was immediately a hit. Various journalists and music critics praised it as true work of a composer brought up in soviet culture. Everything was going perfectly until early 1936. On January 8, 1936, Stalin took a rare visit to the opera to see Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District with Shostakovich directing. After the 3 rd (of 4) act Stalin and his entourage left without speaking with Shostakovich or anyone else. The next day in the paper called Pravda there was an article written, ordered by Stalin, that was called Muddle Instead of Music . The article claimed that the opera was "deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds...(that) quacks, hoots, pants and gasps." Because the rules word was law the other newspaper companies and music critics who enjoyed Shostak...

I’m LATE! But there is a reason… The night before last I attend a concert at Krannert by the Jupiter string quartet. I have known the members of the quartet since the beginning of their time as Quartet in residence at the University of Illinois and I have attended many of their solo concerts and masterclasses but I have never been able to make it to one of their quartet recitals. The level of excellence that they achieve in their performance as a group is, in the true sense of the word, awesome. The concert opened with one of my favorite string quartets of all time (no not the quartet for the end of time but that would have been a great pun), Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8. This elaborate work starts out with a deceptively slow and peaceful opening that lulls the listener into a false sense of security. I had heard this piece before many times and so I knew what was coming. I sat in anticipation, for once sitting up straight (sorry person who was sitting behind me), with ...

                I am an extremely unhealthy person. I don’t sleep enough, I don’t eat enough, I don’t exercise enough, I never stand up straight, I slouch when I sit, I practice music for hours without a break, and in most other ways I am not kind to my body. So how am I alive? What is the secret to living the mildly idiotic lifestyle I enjoy daily? The answer, dear reader, is symmetry.                 I confess, to draw you into reading this essay I may have said a slight lie. I did tell the truth but not the whole truth (so I guess I will help god? Isn’t that how that goes?). To become the moderately functional human being that I am I always balance my terrible decisions with slightly better ones. In this way I am able to enjoy the nonsense while still living and growing as a human being.        ...

                I could live without a phone. I didn’t have a phone until last summer, my parents and I both didn’t see the need, but I had always wanted one. When I was much younger, around 3 th or 4 th grade, I asked for a phone for the first time. I had no understanding of the amount of money that a phone costs and so naive me thought it was a perfectly reasonable request for a present. When my birthday came around I was mildly disappointed.                 I don’t know if anyone remembers the first-generation iPod Shuffle, but that was the gift I received. This was the rectangular generation before the square generation that everyone remembers most people don’t remember anyways. The additional half in inch in the 1 inch by 1 inch square of metal allowed the battery to last for almost a whole day of playing. This ended up being te...

            In my household there is a rule about pets. They must produce something or otherwise beneficial to our family in some way. I had always wanted a cat but I never could get one because of this completely reasonable rule my parents put in place. I was terribly distraught about the idea of waiting until I was living on my own to get my own cat, and so one night after asking for the umpteenth time if I could get a cat I exasperatedly asked, “Well what pet can I get then??” My dad responded snarky with, “Oh I don’t know, why don’t you get chickens? I hear they make great pets.” And so out of spite I set my heart on obtaining the thing he suggested. I wanted to own a chicken.             Later that week I was at the library with my mom who was picking up a movie for us to watch when I stumbled upon the first step in my quest. There is a series called For Dummies that explains complicated things ...

Do you wish you could return to a moment in your past?            Ever since I was very young I read books. My parents, being the overly supportive people that they always are, read to me and with me for every day of my childhood. As I grew older and entered school I never really had to study for grammar and wording tests; I could just read the sentence out loud and if it sounded nice it was correct. During my sixth-grade year we took a sixty question test about analogies and similes and per usual I didn’t expect to do well. Our teacher was intensely engaging but the class was very difficult. Because of this, when the teacher announced that I had gotten the only perfect score in the class I was astounded.             I was a young and naive 6 th grader who was in a position I had never been in before. I had gotten a perfect score on a test; outperformed my entire class. Later on, I did what I usual...