"Why do I keep on hitting myself over the head with a hammer? Maybe, because it feels so good when I stop..." What a brilliant line, stole it from Grey's. Maybe thats what college is... Wait, maybe, just maybe that is what life is. HA! Anyway I am on one week winter break of which I will sit around, do work, watch the entire first season of Grey's Anatomy, compose (I am ecstatic I started my Italian catalogs on Friday!), go to Boston, see Animal Collective, go snowboarding, trying to watch the olympics as much as possible, not only for the events but to see ITALIA (Ohhhhh I miss it), do whatever I can to do work but chill out enough and get ahead so after break I can get out of the gates and around the track half way. Okay so Mr. run on sentence how long were you going to be?!!! ;-)

Perspective my dear readers, yes this is what this Meg is looking for. That and the understanding of Balance. School Job Life whatever drives me and somewhat unbalances some things. Interesting overall. I have so many huge opportunities and things on my plate right now I must keep my ducks in a row. Its incredible, its exhilarating, this realization is overwhelming at times. But no, step back realize and let it all happen, interact with it and move on. That concert, all that work leading up to it really has put me in an incredible place.

So what? Now it's the next thing! We have decided to shoot a movie of the concert, another run on Monday, I look forward to it. Who knows where the movie will lead. My new project is going to cover the composer Stephen Hartke. I have quickly realized that this is going to be a new kind of research for me. Hardly anything is written about him, so I suppose I will have to go to the source! Very interesting, and will help set me up for my view on an Italian composer later this year and early next. As for class projects I am trying to pick a Beethoven late string quartet, either 127 or 135, though I might change my mind. For Music Sem it's back to Monteverdi. I had a really great topic on friday but quickly shot it down since the gombert influence wasn't as apparent as I hoped within the Vespers. It might be, but overall a cloudy topic. What now? Humanism and Monteverdi? Venice and Monteverdi? Monteverdi and the Gonzagas? Well, it looks like I have my work cut out for me tomorrow before I hit the hill! Oh what else.. Feature Writing has really gotten my writing tight. To write all the time and edit and edit other papers and experience the workshopping process has been awesome. I am starting and incredible project in Advanced English Comp where I am looking at Ray Kurzweil's idea of the Singularity through nanotechnology AI and how just maybe this little computer might some day exceed the power of my own brain. Sure where does that leave us! I hope to investigate these ideas and their possibility as well as social impact.

Electro-Acoustic, the class I am TAing for, is incredible, really gets my composing muscle going. Artists like The Books, Animal Collective, Psapp, Imogen Heap have really influenced my idea of sound and have opened up a whole new approaches to taking what I hear in my head and some how expressing it to the world. And of course Stockhausen, Cage, Reich are all there constantly on my mind as well. I am delving into Max/MSP a little as well as Live. I am really looking forward to using Max this week, using some of the objects i can find on the net create some great sound. Very interesting time. I started the framework for the first song in the Italian Catalogs (I think its going to be one of the last in the grouping of pieces, because I am using a sample from Rome). I feel like a rip off of Eno and Liszt! Who cares! I already ripped off the BACH, thats what composing is! I was sitting up in the music lab and I heard these two cars honking at each other. I replicated the intervals and rhythm on the keyboard and quickly recorded it. (Thank you Mr. Cage...) Then Jennie came and visited me and listened to the very rough sketch track and approved highly when I talked about how I wanted to arrange it for string quartet. She also offered her quartet, Mt. Blue String Quartet, to possibly premiere it. HA! There's something to shoot for! Jennie and I are also going to start an electro-acoustic violin duo, I have a lot of ideas and she was incredibly taken by the idea when we came up with it making paper machet masks at the Art Renegades. The Renegades are awesome, seriously the Art/Music/Creative think tank of the university right now. So many ideas so little time! My neighbor and photographer extraordinare Melissa has asked me to possibly compose a guitar work for her Senior Art show at the gallery. Still up in the air but wonderful. So yeah, all of a sudden I've become really popular at the whole music thing. HA! I know I shouldn't even say that! But! It's incredible, Ive never had this life before! Never had such a busy yet - managable, I can think things out and absorb - life before. It's nice.

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I have been so busy to even touch this with a ten foot pole. Last night after eight months of work I had the One Hundred Years Ago concert with Steve. Wow, I mean seriously wow, it went incredibly well. Steve played absolutely incredible like always, completing each of these technically trying pieces with the most talented style. Its bad enough he had to prep for such a big concert and on top of it deal with me, I give total kudos to this awesome guy! Ives, Janacek, and Scriabin you have enriched my life beyond what I ever thought was possible. After the glory and the huge ego trip, ehhh, of just having the best week ever (Steelers win the Super Bowl, seeing Sigur Ros kick off this American tour, getting interviewed for a magazine, having my poster picked for an upcoming concert, then interviewing a role model and writing a paper on them, then this concert.... YES, THAT WAS ALL THIS WEEK!) I am just sitting here dumbfounded. After the concert I had a retired musicologist come up to me, who just happened to be in the crowd (as well as a bunch of my current/former professors, friends, parents and the president of my university), told me I did a great job and as she tells me she's a musicologist and I reply "I want to be you!" Classic Meg, the Muppet Lives on!
Nonetheless, I cannot write completely about this experience because - 1 I am so full of many ideas and emotions right now that I might just explode on my poor iBook (oh yeah and this is the morning after too, I am considerable more tame than I once was!) and 2 There is so much more to do now, new projects on the horizon. This might be the well first major time, looking back at symposium last year, that was nothing compared to this concert, but it isn't the last so I better get busy!?... I do want to take a step back now and really enjoy every day here at UMF, it is incredible. Possibly thank the people who push me to be who I am and what I am more. I am incredibly thankful for all of this, I don't think most people realize their impact on a person.
So now I have the rest of this semester, NY trip ahead of me, possibly a few NY trips actually! Then the Joyce concert next fall!? Also now I really want to (since we got the new grant!! More toys!!) to compose a lot more. I want to finish four2minutes and start the Italian Catalogs. I REALLY want to set the Italia piece to a string quartet, maybe I can get some friends to play it for me when I am done. I might originally do it MIDI and then work out the kinks and have it recorded with the quartet. The EA class I am TAing is fostering so many new ideas. It's incredible to have an open forum with peers to create music then talk about it. You know what!?!?!?!?! I can just fall over go into a seizure and start writhing on the floor right now I am so happy and in the music place in my heart it makes me so incredibly happy. Okay gitty, I know I can't help it but I am here finally! And boy is it great!

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