Well, Taisia (http://ablogofmusicstoriesandart.blogspot.ca/) has tagged me...please bear with me, this is the first time I've done this. I'm supposed to state ten random things about myself. Here goes!
1. I absolutely love music!
2. I absolutely love reading!
3. I love maps--especially old ones.
4. I dislike math, but I like reciting the quadratic formula.
5. Tolkien and LOTR are AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
6. I can write in the Feanorian script.
7. If someone handed me a big bowl of fish chowder at six in the morning, I'd happily eat it. Fish is delicious!
8. Though I've been told I'm completely insane, I actually like the music of Stravinsky.
9. I've translated the Tears for Fears song "Mad World" (actually, just the chorus--I couldn't get the verses to fit the metre) into Latin.
10. Hardingfeles are awesome.
Snip, snap, snout, this tale's told out. That's all, folks!
20 April 2013
The Orthodox Celts
I love Celtic music, so when a friend shared this video with me, I had to share it. These guys are actually Serbian, and they're Greek Orthodox (as I and my family are). They're really good! And I never noticed the similarities between Irish and Serbian accents before . . . who knew? Anyways--enjoy!
19 February 2013
16 February 2013
The Modernistic Values and Technical Significance of Consistently Discordant and Contradictory Jargon, as Explained by the Acclaimed Calvin
My dad sent this to me, and I just had to share it. Incidentally, I just learned about jargon in school. Enjoy!
15 February 2013
George MacDonald Quote
I was paging through George MacDonald's The Princess and Curdie the other day, when I came across this quote. I think it's really quite beautiful.
"The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born."
"The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born."
04 February 2013
Language, Legends, and Music
"...'Legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition." ~J.R.R. Tolkien
I recently came across this quote in a collection of Tolkien's letters, and it set me thinking. I quite agree with Tolkien; language and legends are closely entwined together, and a language without legends and fairy-stories is a dead one. However, I think that there is another thing that is entwined with language and legends, which Tolkien has forgotten: music.
As one cannot imagine a story without words, or words that tell no stories, it is impossible to imagine a song without music. For a long, long time, stories were told with songs. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the Medieval English, music and story-telling were closely connected.
Close your eyes and imagine an ancient Greek poem being recited. Listen closely, and surely you will hear a lyre being played. Now imagine Beowulf being told; nay, not only told, but sung by a bard, as you will surely hear if you but listen closely in your imagination. It is hard to picture a story being told in ancient times without music.
In other ways, too, is music connected with stories and words. Stories, words, and music are all capable of creating feeling. As a story can paint a picture, or make the reader feel joy, sorrow, hope, despair, courage, cowardice, &c., so can words--and music. Perhaps the only difference is that while words and stories paint, for the most part, the same pictures and create the same feelings for everyone, music is more personal. A piece of music might mean something different to all who hear it. Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony" paints for me a stag leaping through deep green woods, a fox running through the underbrush, a bear suddenly crashing through the bushes. It makes me feel, at different times, joy, fear, love, and sorrow. But doubtless for others, the "New World Symphony" paints much different pictures and creates much different feelings. However, for all who hear it, it must create some pictures or feelings--just as words and stories do.
Music, stories, words--all are entwined together in a tight bond that cannot be broken. The relationship between these three things brings to mind the ending of "A Celtic Tale", a recording of a retelling of the legend of Deirdre by Mychael and Jeff Danna (narrated by Fiona Ritchie). The tale ends with two trees, growing from the graves of the ill-fated lovers Deirdre and Naoise, becoming tightly entwined together over time. Except that the trees of legends, language, and music, are three, not ill-fated; and the trees grow not from the graves of dead and forgotten things but from living traditions.
I recently came across this quote in a collection of Tolkien's letters, and it set me thinking. I quite agree with Tolkien; language and legends are closely entwined together, and a language without legends and fairy-stories is a dead one. However, I think that there is another thing that is entwined with language and legends, which Tolkien has forgotten: music.
As one cannot imagine a story without words, or words that tell no stories, it is impossible to imagine a song without music. For a long, long time, stories were told with songs. From the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the Medieval English, music and story-telling were closely connected.
Close your eyes and imagine an ancient Greek poem being recited. Listen closely, and surely you will hear a lyre being played. Now imagine Beowulf being told; nay, not only told, but sung by a bard, as you will surely hear if you but listen closely in your imagination. It is hard to picture a story being told in ancient times without music.
In other ways, too, is music connected with stories and words. Stories, words, and music are all capable of creating feeling. As a story can paint a picture, or make the reader feel joy, sorrow, hope, despair, courage, cowardice, &c., so can words--and music. Perhaps the only difference is that while words and stories paint, for the most part, the same pictures and create the same feelings for everyone, music is more personal. A piece of music might mean something different to all who hear it. Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony" paints for me a stag leaping through deep green woods, a fox running through the underbrush, a bear suddenly crashing through the bushes. It makes me feel, at different times, joy, fear, love, and sorrow. But doubtless for others, the "New World Symphony" paints much different pictures and creates much different feelings. However, for all who hear it, it must create some pictures or feelings--just as words and stories do.
Music, stories, words--all are entwined together in a tight bond that cannot be broken. The relationship between these three things brings to mind the ending of "A Celtic Tale", a recording of a retelling of the legend of Deirdre by Mychael and Jeff Danna (narrated by Fiona Ritchie). The tale ends with two trees, growing from the graves of the ill-fated lovers Deirdre and Naoise, becoming tightly entwined together over time. Except that the trees of legends, language, and music, are three, not ill-fated; and the trees grow not from the graves of dead and forgotten things but from living traditions.
02 January 2013
Some Christmas Musings
I know that Christmas was a week ago, but it is still the Christmas season, so I shall post some thoughts I had after listening to a lovely dramatization of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol is a perfectly charming story. It has been beloved by generations of readers, from when Dickens actually wrote it to the present. There are few, I think, who do not know the names of Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and of course, the story's main character: Ebenezer Scrooge.
It is Ebenezer Scrooge that my thoughts centered around after listening to A Christmas Carol. If one looks up the word "scrooge" in a dictionary (I used the Oxford Dictionary of English), one will find a definition similar to this: "a person who is mean with money". Ebenezer Scrooge has gone down in history as a curmudgeonly old miser, who cares for nothing but money, and calls Christmas a humbug. But is this really the right way to think of Scrooge? Yes, this is his character in the beginning of the story, but A Christmas Carol is a tale of redemption and repentance. At the end of the book, Scrooge is a changed man; he has been shown the consequences of his actions, and has repented. He raises Bob Cratchit's salary, thus saving the life of Tiny Tim, to whom he furthermore becomes "a second father". He stops neglecting his nephew, Fred, he raises the salaries of all who work for him, he becomes a benevolent, kind, old grandfather figure.
I wonder why the Scrooge of the end of A Christmas Carol is seemingly forgotten. The changed Scrooge is a much nicer character than the unchanged. Perhaps, though, it is because change is hard. As fallen men, we find it much easier to judge someone and say that we will not be like them, rather than to accept a story of repentance, and repent of our own sins. That, I think, is the real lesson to be learned from A Christmas Carol. In this new year, let us try to change ourselves, repenting as Ebenezer Scrooge did.
Merry Christmas, and "God bless us, every one!"
A Christmas Carol is a perfectly charming story. It has been beloved by generations of readers, from when Dickens actually wrote it to the present. There are few, I think, who do not know the names of Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and of course, the story's main character: Ebenezer Scrooge.
It is Ebenezer Scrooge that my thoughts centered around after listening to A Christmas Carol. If one looks up the word "scrooge" in a dictionary (I used the Oxford Dictionary of English), one will find a definition similar to this: "a person who is mean with money". Ebenezer Scrooge has gone down in history as a curmudgeonly old miser, who cares for nothing but money, and calls Christmas a humbug. But is this really the right way to think of Scrooge? Yes, this is his character in the beginning of the story, but A Christmas Carol is a tale of redemption and repentance. At the end of the book, Scrooge is a changed man; he has been shown the consequences of his actions, and has repented. He raises Bob Cratchit's salary, thus saving the life of Tiny Tim, to whom he furthermore becomes "a second father". He stops neglecting his nephew, Fred, he raises the salaries of all who work for him, he becomes a benevolent, kind, old grandfather figure.
I wonder why the Scrooge of the end of A Christmas Carol is seemingly forgotten. The changed Scrooge is a much nicer character than the unchanged. Perhaps, though, it is because change is hard. As fallen men, we find it much easier to judge someone and say that we will not be like them, rather than to accept a story of repentance, and repent of our own sins. That, I think, is the real lesson to be learned from A Christmas Carol. In this new year, let us try to change ourselves, repenting as Ebenezer Scrooge did.
Merry Christmas, and "God bless us, every one!"
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