The other night I went to my step brother’s orchestra concert. I really had a spiritual experience there. I don’t know what it is about classical music, or music played classically, but it truly is one of life’s real gifts and phenomenons.
After the first song performed by the junior high symphony group, I was all teary eyed because I was jealous that I am not asian and that I don’t play violin and that I grew up in a town where we don’t even have an orchestra. As the night went on, I just kept thinking about how cool it was that the sound being produced was a collaborated effort, and how easily the conductor can change the mood of the piece by a flick of her wrist.
On the drive back home, I just stared out the window and thought about how the culmination of situations and decisions make our individual lives like a song. And how the whole world was like a song, each musician doing their thing, interacting with one another and passing cars on the highway. I’m not a violinist for a reason, I’m not asian for a reason, and there is a reason why I grew up in a small town.
I think if I were to slip into another extension of this world and instead of see myself overhead, hear my song, I would hear something like Green Day’s “Wake me up when September ends.” Not because I have a particular distaste for the song, but because I sleep a lot, and I do a lot of waiting around for the next best thing.
As I am writing this, I am listening to Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” I encourage whoever might be reading this to give it a listen (I’m attaching it to this post.) When/If you listen, my challenge to you is to turn it up and think about how human free will and destiny coincide with one another.
When I say that, I mean think about each day as if when you wake up, some fanciful music teacher extends his arm out to you with a new movement of a song he/she has been working on with you since the first day of your life. You don’t decide what you’re handed or what song you have to play, but your job is to interpret it. You can make the song sound however you want it to. You can hold those notes that have a little curve above them, and you decide what blue notes to play. You can pick when you repeat certain sections of the piece…
If there were a way to hear my song, I would hope that it doesn’t suck as much as “wake me up when september ends.” I hope it would sound more like Vivaldi and how he skillfully weaves notes around one another and consistently resolves the tune.
Its a rough analogy, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about. Live a beautiful song!
“can be a joy of conversation, joy of eating, joy of anything one might do… And joie de vivre may be seen as a joy of everything, a comprehensive joy, a philosophy of life”
The French get a bad rep for a lot of good reasons, but what they do have is good philosophy. In my art history class on Friday, we were talking about some painting (and there I was trying not to fall asleep) and how the artist really embraced the French phrase “Joie De Vivre” and attempted to paint people enjoying themselves in a way that had never been explored before in history. Suddenly I was struck by how coincidental it was that I had just resolved to be more intentional about taking joy in the little things (It’s amazing how God remind you he is real and really interested in the little details of your life). And while the name of the artist and the name of the artwork we were studying are of no interest to me until test time rolls around, I am interested in this term “joie de vivre” because it describes the mindset of a happy person I crave to be.
Not a few hours later, I found myself super bummed. Even though I had put time in and studied for my history class, I arrived at the sinking feeling that I would have better odds if I just marked “A” for every answer after the first page and a half of the exam. By the end of the test, I wanted to punch someone in the face and bawl my eyes out simultaneously because I felt so dumb. Though there was still an hour left of the class period, I grabbed my things and walked out of class. Staring at the cement, I walked quickly to my car. Then I felt the breeze and I remembered “joie de vivre”. I stood up straight, I walked slower, I smelled the air (trying to ignore the smell of weed and cigarettes) and by the time I was off campus I had decided to be like the french and get myself an iced caramel macchiato. Its amazing what putting your hair up, drinking a coffee and sitting in the cos parking lot with your windows down and feet on the dash can do for a person. I wondered why I didn’t do that every time I did miserably on a history test.
Sometimes life is like a refrigerator. In the morning, you groggily get up and go to it and look inside. For the first few minutes while you’re still trying to wake up, it appears as though you are just looking into a messy, unorganized white box with shelves and “nothing good to eat” inside. Then, once you realize you are hungry, your imagination kicks in and you make yourself a tasty breakfast burrito that you enjoy with the last little bit of the orange juice.
It’s about the little things.. the tabasco in the corner that gives the burrito a kick. The caramel macchiato after history class and before psych class. The poetic but mathmatic way the wind blows through your hair and catches your clothes. The French artist who’s name I can’t recall. If we literally “wake up and smell the coffee”, there really is so much life waiting for us out there to live. There are so many “coincidences” that God sneaks into our lives whenever we humble ourselves enough to talk to him, and sometimes I think its those things that make life worth living for and remind us that there is a strangely wonderful God that wants to remind us of the “joie de vivre” potential in each and every day.
Even if this new blog that I am starting gets zero followers, it will be okay. My life lately has been quite bland. I get mad and frustrated that I am not making art, I’m not writing, and I’m not thinking. Most times, I blame it on the government. Other times, I blame it on my community, my school and my family. I am slow to recognize that the reason why I’m not being creative and using the brain that I have been gifted with is because I am not being creative and using the brain that I have been gifted with. The start of this blog is to provide an outlet for myself to break out of the discouraging thought patterns and to start DOING. The title I chose for this new adventure is called “Finding Joy in the Mundane.” I am sick of waiting for more exciting days, for more world travels or more friends when all I need is right in front of me. I want to explore that phenomenon and expose the lies of self worthlessness that can be associated with young people living with their parents, with people not knowing what to do with their lives, and the state of humanity that compares self to others and allows depression to step in and form problem based thought patterns instead of a solution based mentality. I want to live my life in the potential of the present instead of the empty promises of the future.
These are some sketches I made tonight. It feels so good to sit down and draw.
