What a week...

Hard to believe it has been a week since I blogged. Well I guess not too hard, but it shows that I´m really losing my sense of time here. Each day has been really long and a lot has happened this week, so throw that all together and you get for my lack of posts.

Monday had class. Nothing unusual I think, but I honestly can’t remember the day. Oh, yeah, started off with me editing the choral piece that was due that day, other than that, I can’t remember what I did.

Brought the George MacDonald Book Lilith to read here because I haven’t read anything in a long time. Great book. I think I started reading it on Sunday night and Finished it Tuesday morning. A great book with some excellent lines. Good food for inspiration.

A few favorites:

"No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself."

"The still face might be a primeval perfection, the live eyes were a continuous creation."

"The part of philantropist is indeed a dangerous one, and the man who would do his neighbour good must first study how not to do him evil, and must begin by pulling the beam out of his own eye."

'In this world never trust a person who has once deceived you. Above all, never do anything such a one may ask you to do.'
'I will try to remember," I answered, "-but I may forget!'
'Then some evil that is good for you will follow.'
'And if I remember?'
'Some evil that is not good for you, will not follow.'

"When a man dreams his own dream, he is the sport of his dream; when Another gives it him, that Other is able to fulfil it."

Tuesday – Bastille Day. As opposed to last year, I didn’t get out. I haven’t had a chance to work on my thesis and I NEED it to be done. So I took most of the day, worked on the piece. Realized that what I had written didn’t work. Deleted it. Improvised something real quick and found that it actually worked way better than what I had in the first place. It also gave me the form for the section I’m in, so I should be ready to go from here on out. I think the creative process is sort of like garage sale-ing. Sometimes you have to wade through a ton of junk to find the one good thing.

That night I headed over to West Country Girl to meet up with Josh and Claudia. It was Country night and some GREAT country music was playing. Also visiting was the group She Keeps Bees and Josh had gone to a show of the group called Here We Go Magic the night before so they stopped by. Around 11:30 the different groups played some of their music and all the tunes with a little country inspiration. Josh closed the night off. Really good night of great music and good conversation. I got on the metro and got back home around 1:30.



Wednesday was slightly less because of the Holiday the day before. Can’t remember what went down except it was busy. Oh yeah, I did go to the old Paris Opera house and do a little touristy photographing and shopping. Sweet place.



Thursday was my comp lesson. Went well. Had some good aesthetics conversation and realized that I had to write more for my string quartet as well as add in more articulations. Lasser gave me some great advice. I’ve really been enjoying my lessons with him. Worked on the String Quartet to show Lasser on Saturday. Concert for Lasser’s music with Dr. Clayton (the chamber department head) performing flute. Got back late, worked on the piece more.

Friday was class all day, getting to school late, realizing that the time I spent in composition kept me from some homework and that I didn’t know some of the stuff in class where I really needed to know it, somehow getting the parts that I sort of knew, and taking frantic notes on the stuff I didn’t, working on the String Quartet. Staying up until 1:30. Or maybe that was Thursday.

Anyhow, had Saturday off, except that I worked on the Quartet to show Lasser, showed Lasser, finished the rest of the quartet and edited the parts. I went grocery shopping as well.

Oh yeah, totally missed hanging out with some friends on two occasions. First, because I forgot the definition of tomorrow as meaning the following day, redefining it to mean two days from then. Next, I said that something that was that same day was the next day.

In other news, the choral piece I submitted was selected as one of 4 to be performed in the final concert. I’m really excited and super grateful. It’s a peculiar experience because I’ll actually be singing my own piece. I set the text of a friend of mine who is a fantastic poet. Her name is Ashley Seitz Kramer and she’s currently shopping a manuscript around. I hope it gets picked up because it is really good. I’ll find out if I can get permission to post her poem on my page, but until then, the title of the piece is Tonight I’ll Shave Your Face.

Went to Hillsong Paris today and loved it. Real refreshing place.

Anyway, that was this week. It feels like a blur. I feel like the tone of this blog has been a little frantic, but life here has kind of been that. Not in a bad way. Just really busy. A really good year though.

And the weather has been amazing. We had a crazy storm Thursday night and the temperature dropped 15 degrees for the next day and today. I’m SO grateful for how cool it’s been.

I’ll try to post some more blogs this week. Cheers!

-Brandon