For that, I am very grateful

A friend of mine from uni composed this piece a while ago, and I love it, and it's so beautiful, and I'm so proud to be going to a uni where this kind of work is happening just all the time! We had another fun day yesterday performing the piece below too, in our silly way, giggling over catching eyes and sharing squares of Crunchie chocolate between us, sliding the block back and forth across the room (a sweet little gesture of our teacher's, an effort to endear us to 10am starts...)

The barista at our uni cafe knows my name and proceeds to make my coffee without having to ask how I take it anymore, and yesterday I only just realised how lovely that is, to be a 'regular' (or perhaps not so great considering how much money I spend on coffee every week!) 


I mean you guys know how it is; we usually feel lots of things at once, cycling feelings in and out like the kind of meditative breathing I've been told to do...but it really is  wonderful to be 'breathing in' contentedness, and 'breathing out' negativity, y'know all those zen things that I believe in, even just for a little time. To actually reach the point where I can go through my entire day feeling that way (cool calm in-control), seems not entirely impossible, like it did once. 


I've been learning to distance myself from the things that cause me to scrunch my face up, which includes everything from eating Burger Rings, to reading One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, to scoring on Sibelius 7, to listening to songs that I used to listen to when I was dancing on the graves of dead relationships. I prefer to laugh about the poor patch I am never-endingly in (often accompanied by my artist family), and run for stupid amounts of kilometres and eat my little sister's brownies, and buy presents for my Mum for her birthday and teach little kids about music, wearing my flower crowns and my colours and my little birds.


I suppose to summarise this whole thing - I've been trying to live as though it's the middle of summer in the middle of winter, and, importantly, writing music furiously, trying to silly things, like capture what stars sound like. I'm in over my head as always but right now it feels, well, it feels OK.


Anyway that was a tangent and a half. Here's another one: remember those amazing home movies from Disneyland that I posted I think last time? Well for some reason in my head I put these two together, probably the whole theme park thing...I've been looking at all these pictures of Shamu, that killer whale in captivity, and some others that I don't know the names of. It's pretty awful, but the pictures, creepy screenshots from the Shamucam, are weirdly beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I support the whole Free Willy thing, that's for sure - let them go! But in the meantime, look how freakily beautiful these are...

I also recorded this work in progress today. If I had listened to Steve Reich's Piano Phase for two weeks non-stop and gone a bit weird, this piece would be the result. 


http://soundcloud.com/eilishgilligan/hello-demo