Last night, I couldn't fall asleep for a long time because I couldn't stop thinking. About my own validity as an artist, and potential for success.

I know how good I am better than anybody else, so I shouldn't judge myself on how others view me. The thing is, many others view me in high esteem that I know I do not deserve. I am a relatively tiny fish, and I'm about to enter a giant ocean of talented and amazing people, and it's scary as fuck.

My guitar and writing skills are both lacking. I am usually unable to express raw emotion. I don't know why. I've become guarded and scared of myself, I guess. I mean, look at those songs I wrote when I was getting over Mairead. You can hear in the music so much raw emotion and sincerity. Why can't I replicate that today? I want to be able to, but I don't think I feel as much anymore. It worries me.

My guitar skills have surely been helped by my obsession with The Mountain Goats (which I admit is coming to a close), but in a way, they've also been hindered. It's placed me into an unhealthy habit of replicating his singing style and guitar style, even with the songs that I write. This is not sincere. This is not honest. This is not me.

I just don't think I deserve some of the praise I receive, and I worry that those who know that I do not deserve it think that I believe I do deserve it. I don't want people to think that way. I know me more than anyone else, and I am suffering no delusions as to how far my talents stretch.

There's more, but Siri is messaging me. I might keep this up later if it's still bothering me.

A brain dump

I need to write one of my college essays today. I'm totally tired, though, so I figured I'd write a blog post to clear my foggy mind.

I am not used to posting. When I did post in my blog, it allowed me an opportunity to organize my thoughts. Everything was clearly in order, with all the details clearly defined in my head. Lately, though, I haven't thought like that. It's because I haven't been writing in my blog I feel like it's also caused my memory to be not as good as it once was, since I have little incentive to remember the details about what happened to me during the day or what I thought about.

It's effectively a brain dump, this blog. Is it actually helpful to my writing development? Not sure about that. I do tend to ramble and not think about what I type when I'm writing on my blog. It's not like I have an audience. This is just a journal.

It provided an great medium for which to vent on, or clear my head with. There's something comforting knowing that a piece of information or a thought or opinion is written down, rather than just left spinning in my head.

I am right now listening to Modest Mouse's Gravity Rides Everything, and I'm wondering how many times I have written n my blog while listening to this exact song. Surely it must have been a ton. Modest Mouse was my go-to band while writing. I know the music so utterly well that it's just background noise that I can't be distracted from. Its unobtrusiveness allows me to think un-self-consciously.

I haven't been ignoring channeling my writing abilities. I've been still writing poems, though it's admittedly not as often as I once did. Lately, I've been concentrating on trying to write some original songs. I'm slowly amassing more and more, some being better than others.

Whenever I feel dissatisfied with a poem or song I've written, I think back to John Darnielle, my favorite artist, and his first album. He made it in his early twenties and it's god-awful. I then realize I'm only 17 and I'm already producing material better than him. and look how amazing his music has got with dedication to his work, leaving all of the old projects behind him. It inspires me to write songs even if they are not perfect, and at this stage, constant production is the only thing that will allow me to get better.

This has cleared my mind a little bit. I feel a little bit better, more mentally energized than before. I'm going to do some exercises now to wake me up further.

Later, Bloggy,
Austen

I RETURN

Well, hot damn, it sure has been a while. I gave up on writing in this so long ago, and I'm not sure if this post marks the end of that streak or not. Regardless, here I am, and here' I'm posting.

For some reason, I had a great desire to upload some of my old poetry (which I've produced a lot of since last post) to the internet, specifically sending it to Siri. It's much quicker than typing each poem out by itself.

I've been bogged down with college applications and audition materials lately, as well as four AP classes and daily swimming practice, so I've got hardly any time anymore. Thanksgiving break is starting, though, so I'll get a little bit of a break. Maybe I'll decide to sit down and write myself a blog post.

Surely I, the sole reader of this blog which is my own, know of this already, but just in case some future civilization stumbles across here and is interested in me, here are the websites where I currently post the music that I've been covering/writing:

soundcloud.com/austencloud

limebooth.com/profiles/brask

youtube.com/noiro09

Been making a bit of a name for myself via the internet. It's helped me to become much less self-conscious about my own music-making, and encouraged me to keep it up. Sometimes. Sometimes it discourages me, but usually not.

Writing songs and producing them has become a major part of my life lately. It's comforting to know, also, that I'm technically still a kid and an amateur, which gives me some room to experiment and not feel too bad if the result is crappy.

I suppose that's enough for right now. I might write more later tonight if something striking comes to mind.

Half-assed attempt at a post.

I've been trying to write a song.

I really truly think I'm capable of making great music and writing beautiful lyrics. I know I'm a person with something to say. It's just so goddamn hard to say things. I get so self-conscious about my lyrics. Ugg. I don't even want to talk about it.

That's really all I had to say.

But I'll continue anyway.

Today was a fairly good day. Compared to yesterday, at least. Yesterday, I did not have my coffee, so I was pretty annoyed and tired most of the day. But today was good. Successful day was successful.

Paul Reisler, a local musician who leads Kid Pan Alley, was in the music room writing a song with the first graders during when I'd normally have a lesson. It was pretty fun to watch.

Fuck. I'm so tired. I can't even write effectively.

...Ignore this post.

Update on Wakeifield.... and other stuff.

It's amazing how time flies. "The weeks, they pass like seconds, but the days all pass so slow."

Here I am again. Trying to write a post. This time, I have put on some Modest Mouse, hopefully increasing my motivation to write. It always seemed to work in the past. I'd turn the lights down low, burn some incense, and put on Modest Mouse in my room. The words just flowed out easily from there.

I don't know where to start. It's intimidating to know that I haven't written in so long. It seems like there is an incredible amount that needs to be written about. Let's start with something simple.

I've been trying to write some music lately. The same old process still applies - I write something, spend a couple days loving it and thinking it's awesome, and then think it's absolute crap. I'll come to appreciate it eventually.

There are so many reasons to begin writing in this. First of all, I feel like my writing abilities have diminished horribly. I'm scared of that. I notice when writing essays or prompts for school, that I have trouble creating a definite thesis. Organizing my thoughts to the point where I can write them all down in a compressed, coherent way without jumping all over the place. Perhaps I've grown reluctant to give the whole picture, because I don't think it will be accepted well. My problem in writing used to be over-explaining things, because I wanted every aspect of my points crystal clear and understood. Now I avoid that, intentionally censoring myself to give a more simple, easy-to-understand answer. Grr. This is frustrating even to think about. It's still fuzzy in my head, even now.

Wakefield is... coming along. It is what it is. That is more or less what I tell people when they ask the frustratingly general question "How's Wakefield?" I say there are some good things and some bad things, which is the simplest way to wrap up my thoughts on the school without going into a long monologue.

My teachers are, for the most part, very good. Mrs. Zanchettin, the English teacher, truly knows what she's doing, and I think I'm doing well in that class. Mostly because I'm actually putting forth great effort to read the required materials. I feel more compelled to. I'm sick of bullshitting, which is what I did much of the time in English class back at RCHS.

I led a discussion on Robert and Elizabeth Brownings' poetry the other day, which went pretty well. We just wrapped up reading A Tale Of Two Cities. It was difficult to commit myself to it, but once I got into the book, I found it very interesting. We're studying the end of Victorian literature now, which is where the Browning poetry came from. In the other English class, we're reading the graphic novel, Persepolis, which I'm also enjoying. It's a serious matter presented in a humorous, easy-to-read way.

Latin is also going fairly well. I suppose I should be spending this time studying the new concept we're learning. Psh. I don't even remember what it's called. But, yeah. It's not nearly as hard to assimilate myself into the class halfway through like I thought it'd be. Mr. McMahon, the teacher, has grown on me. He's no Mr. Sharpe, but I like him.

Singing lessons, which take place Monday and Tuesday during first period, are also going extremely well. I'm starting to really learn how to conceptualize the shape of a tone, and apply that to the way I sing. For instance, puckering the corners of the mouth produces a much darker, rounder tone than otherwise. Thinking in vowels (a strange concept) without actually mouthing them improves the overall musicality of a piece.

The class is taught by Mr. Knisewski, who graduated from Shenendoah University. He's young, but not as young as Deboer. We're both instrumentalists, him on the clarinet, me on the French Horn, so we can often draw analogies and understandings relating to instrumentalist and singing, which is useful. Every day, I grow more and more respect toward him. He has beautiful vocal technique, which I've been waiting to learn about for many years. He's been having some pretty serious health problems lately, though. Not quite sure how to describe it, but his insides have holes in them. He says it's mostly because of stress lately, but also due to his malnourished childhood. Hardly anybody in the school knows about his condition, except for the Chorus class that I have eighth period. He trusts us with it, and also he wants us to know why some days he feels less able to teach than others. Yesterday at the end of class, while I was still packing up my things and everyone else had left, he asked me if I'd help him carry his stuff out to his car, since he was feeling particularly weak. I did, which he appreciated greatly. He didn't want me to wait in the front office for him, though, as he went to the teacher's lounge to grab something, presumably because he didn't want anyone to know about his condition.

Physics class is also going well. The teacher is named Mr. Popkin, and he's delightfully nerdy to the point where it's laughable. He's also a very good teacher, and, like Latin, I'm not having as much trouble as I anticipated entering the course halfway through the year.

The only class that truly frustrates me is AP US History. At RCHS, I had no idea how lucky I was to have a teacher as proficient and knowledgeable as Mr. West. After teaching for something like 30 years or more, he truly knew how to form an effective curriculum and how to make class time as productive as possible. The fact that it was a small class full of Juniors also helped.

The history teacher at Wakefield, Mr. Day, is young, and in his second year of teaching history. It's partly because the class is in a room packed to the brim with loud and obnoxious sophomores, and partly due to his inability to explain anything clearly from start to finish in a linear and interesting way that I feel I'm not getting anything useful out of the class. His questions on tests are pathetic, factual-driven questions that don't stress critical thinking and don't accurately prepare the student for the official AP US History exam at the end of the year. But I'm not blaming it completely on him. He's really trying, and just the other day he checked up on me alone to see how I was doing in the class, if I felt I was learning to the best of my capacity, and if there was anything he could do in his teaching to help me along. It was a hard question to consider. I couldn't exactly tell him that his ability to explain things sucks, more or less, and I couldn't suggest a complete curriculum that I was used to at RCHS. That would be horribly inappropriate. So I didn't say much.

And a great deal of what frustrates me about the class is the other students in it, who, to put it bluntly, are immature and disruptive. Whenever we are set up in groups to talk about things, much of the focus of the conversation is directed at Mr. Day's teaching inabilities, which is somewhat justifiable, because they are very frustrating. But the class brings their own ignorance upon themselves when they constantly talk during Mr. Day's lectures, and consistently make stupid comments while the class is actually discussing material. Mr. Day hardly even chastises these students for this, which makes it even worse. Gah.

Another good ol' fashioned list.

Hm. Almost a month slipped by since my last post. I'll try to keep this somewhat short. Let's do a good ol' fashioned list. I can expand on these later.

@ I am living with Toni Egger and her husband, Rob Taylor now
@ I am going to Wakefield Country Day School.
@ My hair is short. Too short. I look... normal and stuff.
@ I'm on the swim team. The final competition is this Saturday.
@ I'm taking singing lessons with the Music teacher, Mr. Knizewski (...something like that)
@ I'm in Wakefield's chorus. We're singing The Phantom Of The Opera.
@ I've met a girl. Who is fantastically awesome. We are trying to make plans to get together. Her name is Abigail McNeely.
@ I've learned a considerable amount of Mountain Goats songs on the guitar.
@ Let's see. I could have sworn there was something else.
@ Ah, yes! I am involved in Peter Horbostel's Proof by David Auburn. It's coming along very well, except the lead still won't kiss me.
@ Also involved in Wakefield's A Midsummer Night's Dream. I am playing the part of Bottom. I LOVE HIM.

Well, I suppose that's it right now. The bare bones. I probably won't fill in the details of all of them, but at least this is a start. Have a lovely night, Bloggy.

Weighing the choices.

Well.

Life keeps changing. Today I went to Wakefield with Toni for a tour of the school. I saw Bret, who played Jack in The Importance Of Being Earnest. That was awesome. I miss that guy.

I also say Katie, the girl who played Gwendolen, and HOT DAMN she has developed. She's grown about three inches, too.

Long story short - I still don't want to go there. Far too conservative for me. Painfully so.

The school board meeting is going to be tomorrow night. I just received word from Dr. Boone (the superintendent) today that I can only bring 3 people to the meeting, contrary to what we were told before. Mom and I have already rallied a great many people to come to the meeting in support of me, and I hope I won't have to tell them all not to come. It'll all depend on what the Board Chairman decides.

Sometime this week, Toni and I plan to schedule a tour of Highland, which is my other choice. I'm much more leaning towards it right now, but I don't have much of an impression about it. Maybe I won't like it at all. Maybe it'll be even more conservative than Wakefield.

But they do have a good drama and band program. There's a plus.