An American in Paris

mmmm that gyro was soooooo goooooodddd. :) SO worth it.
came home with it 10:29pm. killed it by 10:40pm.
RIP, yo. you served me well. :)

how to describe today? like my other sabbaths, it was full of unexpecteds. last night, as i was thinking about what to do today (something that i was not supposed to do, but did anyway. :p), i figured that i would probably end up going to either iv or livingwater large group. i did neither. rather, i ended up going to the university symphony orchestra concert (yay LH!! :D).

after playing some guitar (and learning how to play "shadow" by warren barfield...what a song!! :D), getting a large cup of coffee at a cafe on bancroft and finishing "life of the beloved" by henri nouwen, i went to the ticketbox of the concert hall to get meself in. (yay for student prices!! $5! what a deal!! :D)

it turns out i was the first one there, so i had the luxury of picking WHATEVER seat i wanted. i sat (DEAD CENTER, mind you :D) for a good half hour, and as people started trickling in, i imagined what the coming two hours would bring. i got all excited and my heart started beating faster (...then again, it might have been the coffee. :p).

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and this is how the concert went:

1. 'practice' by edmund campion.
the first piece of the night. caught me off-guard, as this was like 12 minutes of straight-up what-the-heck-is-this. it sounded like a whole bunch of random noise instead of a well-constructed musical piece...which, it turns out, was exactly the point. :p according to the concert program: "practice opens with a cinematic flare as the orchestra explodes into a noise-filled scene. old forms of expression wash by as the music cyclically erupts into new configurations. fleeting and ungainly musical surfaces drown in a sea of rehearsing musicians (hence, 'practice')."

i suppose this is music. wayyyyy over my head, but whatever.
it's cool. as a total classical music noob, i guess i'll just deal with whatever goes. :p

2. 'an american in paris' by george gershwin.
the only gershwin song i knew was 'rhapsody in blue', but i was pretty excited for this one. and i was not disappointed. that was some GOOD stuff!! :) the way gershwin could tell stories through music....mang. that's something. :) (tap into the youtube clips at the end!! :D)

3. 'ameriques' by edgard varese.
another dude i didn't know. his piece was pretty weird too. i'm not too into percussion or brass instruments, but considering it was a piece about new discoveries...i guess it's ok. :p

4. 'la valse' by maurice ravel.
i've heard some ravel before, so it was cool to hear the familiar style in this piece. i forgot to read the program for this piece beforehand as i did for the others, so i didn't know what it was about, but i still enjoyed it nevertheless. :)

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throughout the whole concert i was thinking about what to write on this blog. i jotted down a whole bunch of things that i thought were UBER profound (astoundly AMAZING btw :D), but as it turns i've written a whole bunch of things already, i'll spare you and write about just one thing:

an orchestra is experienced at its fullest glory
when the listener is actively engaged.

in other words, if the listener isn't really paying attention, the most he will get out of the performance is to just have pretty notes go in one ear and out the other. the greater his attention, the more saturated his experience. i suppose it's the difference between hearing and listening.

i noticed this as i wavered in and out of attention (the coffee was starting to wear off :p). when i was paying attention, the music was OMG SO GOOD sgjsldkfjsldfjjldfjsdfldfj (and not in terms of level of skill, cause i don't know such things :p), but when i was distracted with other thoughts, the music was still good, but it wasn't as. capiche? :p

anyway. to translate this into christianese. :)

God's presence is experienced at its fullest glory
when you are paying attention.

for sure, God is present in your life, but do you notice it?
for sure, God is doing something in your life, but are you paying attention?

be engaged. be immersed. listen actively. once you do, you will experience something so much more glorious from the Divine Symphony than if you were to just settle as a simple passerby.

don't settle for less when there's so much more you can receive,
when there's so much more God offers.

it'll blow the caps off your mind. :)


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just fo you. gershwin's 'rhapsody in blue' put into animation by disney for fantasia 2000 (which is AWESOME btw. i heart and recommend!! :D).



and part 2.