how do certain combinations of notes produce such sublime beauty?

and yes, i did use sublime there knowing full well what it means in literary terminology. i am an english major, after all, and i am in an american literature class this semester. but last night as i was walking home from campus, i was listening to my ipod.

short side note here--i recently become a fan of ipods but i thought i would never have one because they are way too expensive for my "i continually leave the country and have cut my meals down to 1.5 a day" college student budget. but through luck, or chance, or the spaciness of my sister, i came to inherit a free one for christmas. i guess it was more of a gift than an inheritance, but inherit sounds better in this context. and since then i have used it extensively, involving the 10 minutes it takes to walk to campus in the morning and the 10 minutes it takes to walk home every day.

really, listening to my ipod while walking to campus has changed my life. i usually walk alone, as i get to campus so early and leave so late that most of campus is still asleep or has already left for the night. but ever since i got my ipod, i no longer walk alone. sometimes i walk to campus with Sister Hinkley, and sometimes with Elder Holland and President Eyring, and sometimes when it is really cold and my breath freezes and smacks me in the face as i walk along, i walk with my friends from hawaii. or any place tropical, really.

but last night i was walking home with todd mccabe and april moriarty. they have these beautiful, magnificent hymn arrangements for piano and violin, and they are spectacular. some of my favorites include "in humility, our Savior," "He is risen," and "beautiful Savior." the songs have beautiful melodies in and of themselves, but something about the lilting rising and falling of the violin brings the beauty from my mind to my heart--as though the violin bow was playing on my very heart strings and the music is resonating through my spirit.

as i was listening to "beautiful Savior," i started thinking about note, chord, and cadence combinations. there is one musical phrase that is my particular favorite in this rendition, where the violin repeats a musical phrase "fair are the meadows, fairer the woodlands," and the second phrase rises a thrid higher than the first, with the violin doing a little grace note. it is my favorite phrase in the whole song. why could something this simple be my favorite phrase? how is this chord sequence different than those directly before and those after? and how can a chord sequence inspire such thoughts of beauty, of reverence for my Creator, of worship and devotion?

then i started thinking about the chord structures and cadences that are deemed "naturally" beautiful (it was a long 10 minutes...). take the circle of fifths, for example. that chord sequence is so universally pleasing, it doesn't take any musical training to realize that when a cadence ends in a circle of fifths it just sounds "right." but why are these musical elements so universal, even eternal? it is just because note values mathematically add up correctly? and does this work with our other senses?

it does. first i thought that it doesn't work with anything but music, because i thought to myself, no one looks at a combination of numbers, say 68429, and thinks, oh, wow, what a beautiful sequence of numbers! that sequence of numbers makes me want to serve my neighbor, or worship the Creator, or do my visiting teaching, or feel the love of the Savior in my life. but...then i thought about sunsets and sunrises. there are certain color combinations that are also deemed universally beautiful. sure, a few people may differ, but most would agree that when the sky is filled with the colors of a late summer sunset, as wordsworth said, their heart leaps up when they behold it. the same thing happens with taste, though to a lesser degree in my opinion.

so, what is it? what is it about certain chord combinations that are so inherently appealing to the mind and especially the heart? how do some songs sound so familiar? and how can we rise on wings of song--rise to the heights of the heavens, and change our lives, and become more like the Savior...all though chord and cadence combinations?

is it wrong to want to do everything...all at once?

so recently I have been thinking about grad school, and recently meaning for the past three or so years. but recently i have been thinking more about it. with 2 majors and 2 minors, i have several choices. just yesterday, i was thinking that i am really interested in religions...how do people worship and why do people worship? this is after last week realizing that i wanted to get my masters in comparative semitic literature...because that will change the world! and then today i realized that i love my english classes and i love my english major...maybe i should go to grad school in english literature, or creative writing so i can improve my blog posts. but then yesterday it struck me...maybe i should work for the CIA, or at least intern for them! i mean, how exciting would it be to be a CIA agent? and with my mad language skills, i would have a ball. but would i really fit in with all that excitement when i am such an academic?

and then i realize that i am sick of the academic world and i am ready for some high class action...chasing spies, legally (or illegally, depending on which country's point of view) trespassing, having a job so secret that i can't even tell my family what i did for work that day. and as Lina said, i am already really really good at lying, and i never stay in one place for more than four months anyway, and i have lived out of the country, and i know hebrew and arabic and i dream in farsi and i attend russian classes...and i can play the "inbetweener" with taking sides with everyone and no one at the same time...

and then i think about all those literature classes i would miss. and the endless hours of memorizing thirty thousand ways of vowelling semitic names, and guessing which ones the professors will use on the test. and learning how to vowel arabic documents. and dealing with professors that think they know everything and you know nothing, because of the letters beside their name. and falling asleep while i am doing my homework--8 times in a 10 page article--because it is so boring. and laundromats a block away and cinderblock apartments and too many roommates and too few bathrooms and mold and riding my bike with crooked handlebars in the ice, and getting boils like Job and viewing the glorious summer from the dirty window of the library. and losing my vision from studying too much.

can you see why i have a hard time deciding?

and then today, i re-realized my dream of becoming a photo-journalist. i want to tell peoples' stories. i want to tell the stories of the west bank and gaza and nigeria and cuba and every other place that has a story to tell with photos--story-telling photos, ones that make you think and feel. and dream. and take action against the horrors of the world. and then i want to write all of the stories of my photographs. and then i want to translate them into cuneiform and hieroglyphics and carve them on the walls of ancient temples that are buried under mounds of earth. and then i want to sing those stories for the world to hear. and then i want to start all over again, but this time do everything i didn't do the first time around.

is that too much to ask?

An apology for my boring blog, or in other words, why my life is so naturally uncreative

So today I randomly stumbled across someone's blog while I was supposed to be doing homework. I saw on Facebook that my friend, whose opinion I highly respect, had stated that she had fallen in love with said blog. My curiosity was naturally piqued and I looked it up. I was amazed, astounded really. There was so much personality in the blog--even the colors contributed to this sense of personality and uniqueness. And none of the letters were capitalized, ala ee cummings. She even had a poem by ee cummings. I read some of her posts and I thought, I want to be like her! There is so much freedom in her expression of these brilliant thoughts--why don't I think this way?

Then I realized what it was. I started forming a blog entry that was brilliant. The thoughts just seemed to flow out of my head, free-expression style. I pictured my blog becoming famous from this one post. And then I pictured putting it in blog format: with semi-colons, commas, periods, and structured sentences. The free brilliance of the blog crashed down along with my dreams of sounding brilliant.

And then I realized my problem--I am too structured in public! I have a brilliant idea and it sounds wonderful in my mind, but then when I try to put it into practice, I realize that I would look like an idiot, and I can't afford to look like an idiot. Not with the jobs that I have, not with the people that I know, not if I want to get into grad school...I must use topic sentences and periods and semi-colons in the correct places, with no run-ons and no fragments! My life must be a beautifully structured essay!

And then I realized, I am an English major! When have you met an English major that was normal, even at BYU? My English major friend (whose comment led me to said blog) just recently shaved her head and when her hair started growing back, dyed it turquoise! And she was telling me about her BYU English major friend, who had to shave her short hair because she is being recruited by lots of prestigious grad schools and her hair was blue...not the best way to represent BYU!

So, I realized, it is time to make my life a poem instead of a structured essay. I don't think I am ready for the blue hair or shaved head yet, but maybe I will have run-on sentences every once in a while. maybe i will even leave off my capitalization--it will give me character. maybe i will write with pen and, instead of leaving room for error, i will keep white-out with me. and maybe i will leave some of the fragments and come back to them later--maybe they will fit in better with my poetic life as opposed to my structured essay!

But maybe I am not ready for poetry yet...perhaps "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" describes me more than I am willing to admit...

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons..."