love, read, write

Not often do I write personal things on this blog anymore, other than an excuse of why I didn't post, but this I must share.
This whole month, starting from maybe the last week of last month, I had a piano competition/recital every weekend. I had only the least hope in doing well in any of them, because I rarely practiced piano--what with all of the homework to do, sleeping late and all--piano was becoming less and less a part of my daily routine. Before, I had been practicing nearly every day for at least, and at least meaning only on days when I was very tired or didn't have time--thirty minutes. Now, I had come even to the point of practicing once a week, maybe even never, until my piano lesson where I would put myself to shame as I practically sight read my piece in front of my teacher. (Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad, but you know what I mean.)
I would only practice half to death on the day before the competition (practicing-to-death on either a Friday or a Saturday, depending on whether the competition/recital was on a Saturday or a Sunday) and somehow manage to push through the piece at the audition without making a major mistake.
All of the other competitions that I have gone to until today were regionals--they weren't that difficult, because often times, I thought I had played horribly and the people gave me good results and good comments (which really surprised me actually o.o).
But today, it was a state-wide competition, which is a lot more difficult than the regionals, meaning you actually have to practice. (So I practiced a very long time yesterday heh.)
Also meaning, the people who also enter the competition are very high level-yness (excluding me, probably--I didn't even practice that much T.T).

So here is what happened at today's audition. In narrative form.

I stepped out of the car, and jumped onto the concrete of the parking lot ground. I jumped a few times, adjusting my feet, having just put on the uncomfortable dress shoes in response to my father's "We're almost there, guys! Get ready!" as he pulled the car into the vaguely familiar parking lot.
My brother stepped out beside me, adjusting his tie, uncomfortable, probably, just like my shoes.
I tugged at the bottom of my dress nervously. My father called out, "I'll be waiting in the car! You go in with your mother. Good luck, guys!"
So we nodded and waved and then turned around, me clutching my piano bag tightly and half hopping-hurriedly and half walking nervously to the entrance (which was, I tell you, very far from where we parked, more than we thought. I thought my legs were freezing).
We went inside of the very small and cramped entrance room that was filled with nervous students (I guess you can call them students, because they're not exactly pianists, you know? Or are they?) drumming their fingers on their piano pieces, younger siblings hopping around and wishing them good luck, parents anxiously waiting for their children to emerge from the audition room doors, and high school volunteers awkwardly calling out kids' names to escort them to the right audition room (which were dispersed about the building, from second floor to the basement--that place must have a lot of pianos).
We squeezed our way through the nervous students and the anxious parents and hyper siblings and managed to get to the end of the room, where the two adults with the attendance sheet were waiting for students to check in.
"Judge number?" One woman asked, obviously English not being her first language.
"Umm... He's judge 7," my mother said, pushing my brother (who was behind me) in front so that he could give them his Audition Sheet that said his name, what pieces he would play, which number judge he had, etc.
"Oh, she has judges 6 to 9," the woman said, gesturing towards the other woman, who seemed to be in her sixties, perhaps, and had a very wide smile on her face.
"Hello! And now, which judge do you have?"
"Judge 7," my brother muttered timidly.
"Let me see your paper," she smiled.
He dug the Audition Sheet from his piano book and gave it to her.
She murmured his name as she slowly checked it off.
"And you, honey?" she asked me with a smile.
"I have judge 8," I said, and she nodded.
She flipped the page and with a shaking hand (she was an old woman), she checked off my name after viewing my Audition Sheet as well.

My brother had been scheduled for 1:30 and I had been scheduled for 1:40, but apparently, things don't always go as exactly planned, and perhaps my judge's line of students had been going pretty quickly, because while my brother wondered why they didn't call him up yet at 1:29, a high schooler (in their black uniforms--perhaps that was the dress code for them) emerged from one of the back doors and called out, "[My name]!" in a half-hearted voice (what can you expect, they'd probably been guessing the pronunciation of names since this morning).
I, quite surprised at the earliness of my call, jumped up and pulled off my jacket hurriedly. I grabbed my piano books and squeezed back to the back of the room and he took me down some stairs, down a hallway, right into another hallway, into a small corner scattered with many doors on the walls. One of the doors had a piece of paper taped to it that read "Judge 9" and another "Judge 8."
He told me to sit down on the chair next to "Judge 8" and left me, probably to attempt to pronounce another kid's name.
I sat down, putting the books on my lap, drumming my fingers on the image of an abstract painting of a piano--the cover of my piano book. I waited, and from "Judge 8" suddenly came the sounds of someone playing the piano.
Of course. They wouldn't call me up exactly when it was my turn, I realized. They'd call me up when the person before me started playing. That would make the most sense.
So in my nervousness, I listened to the person play the piano.
And that person,
was very very good at it.
I could tell. They articulated the notes so clearly it made me shudder and--oh! It was indescribable.

Another high schooler suddenly appeared around the corner with a little girl about the age of perhaps 7 or 8, wearing a red bow clip and a white turtleneck shirt with black dress pants (or whatever the black pants are called). She was very cheerful and outgoing--I could tell, because instead of nervously dragging along behind the high schooler as most 7 or 8 year olds would do before an audition, she was jumping around and hopping behind him with her books in her tiny hand.
He told her to sit down and left.
The girl looked at me and smiled. I awkwardly smiled back.
"Hi!" she said.
I replied with the same.
She jumped up from the chair and bounced to the door of "Judge 8", where music was still flowing out of the crevices of that door, and she jumped up to try to see through the window of the door that was apparently too high for her to easily look through without some sort of elevation.
She jumped a few times to look through the window, then sighed.
She sat down on the chair, jumping so that she could move her back to touch the back-support of the chair and so that her feet were dangling from the edge.
"That's my sister, you know. She plays that piece so much. It gets annoying if you hear it ten times a day."
I laughed.
She rocked her feet back and forth, her feet far from the ground, her arms holding the edges of the chair and her books slowly sliding down her lap.
She caught the books before they slid onto the ground.
She jumped up again to look through the window, and then sat back down.
Then, Judge 9 appeared from behind the door and beckoned for the little girl to come in. She slid down onto the floor and hopped into the room.
I was alone again, and having been blessed by the presence of such a cheery girl, being alone with my desolately nervous self was a little nerve-wracking. I rubbed my hands together, feeling the sweat on my palms.
I returned to listening to the little girl's sister, who was still playing the same piece.
She was playing Chopin. I knew that. It was in a minor, so it had that darker feeling to it. I also knew that it was a Nocturne (are Nocturnes capitalized? Nocturne, nocturne?), because I had heard it before.
In fact, I had attempted to sight read that piece before, when I was bored and wanted to try to play another Chopin piece.
But never before had I realized how beautiful the piece was.
(Okay fine, maybe I did. But it didn't strike me that much. I liked other nocturnes better.)
But this person, the little girl's sister--she was playing the piece so clearly yet so nocturne-y, and so beautifully, I was swept away, touched by the beautiful music. (But after I played my piece and was going home, I realized that it would probably be bad if the person before me was so good at her nocturne--I had auditioned with a Chopin nocturne as well...)
Especially the ending-- the clear high notes that she articulated ever so--
AHHH
Well I went home, easily found the piece (I had attempted to sight read it, after all), looked it up on youtube, listened to it a few times, and tried playing it again.

And I envied that girl--I could still see her as she emerged from behind the door of "Judge 8", her short hair and grey business suit (I don't know what to call them, business suits, jacket thingies,,, !!!), slumping down the hallway, holding the books in her left hand, her eyes to the ground. She was an ordinary high school girl, just like me, just like all the other kids, but her music! !!! Hearing just her music, it was so beautiful and seamless and effortless and awesome that I just had to picture this amazing pianist with a natural glow like in the movies and---
but she was a high schooler. Yet she had the power to make a bunch of black dots and lines into this melancholy, slow and peaceful, almost slightly saddening nocturne.

It might seem creepy that I liked this girl so much, whom I do not know, whom I shall never see again (unless I magically get in and see her at the recital), who, with her music, made that piece my favorite Chopin piece.

I listened to it again at home, and it's such a great piece! I love the ending. I love the ending, and the trills in the beginning, and
!!!!
You should listen to it, too.
That piece of music that I wrote this whole post about--
you can hear it, too.
It's Chopin's Nocturne Op. 55 No. 1.
You can find it easily on youtube. I prefer Rubinstein, but you're entitled to your taste.

I am going to practice that piece. It is too awesome to be just listened-to.


So yeah.
Bye.

"Now, class, does anyone remember how long the Information Age was? When did it start, when did it end, and why?"
The class is silent for a second, until suddenly brains begin to click and you hear the tap-tap-tapping of the fingers on the desks. The room glows that familiar eerie blue of artificial screen light, and you can see the faces bent down towards their interfaces, glowing that same blue.
"Come on, guys! We went over this yesterday. None of you remember? Not a single thing?"
A shy light goes up. Of course, because they can't bear the silence and the fidgety teacher.
"Yes, finally. Tana?"
"Was it that thing, that uh.. That era where people went away from the thing called, uh, uh, reli--religor or something like that? Like, uh.. you know. When they stopped believing in fake things and they started to look more into science? I uh.. I think it started in the 2400s? I don't really remember..."
"Oh, are you talking about the Renaissance?"
"Oh, yeah! The Renaissance. Right. Whoops. Heh.."
"It's okay. And just me being a Cultural Evs teacher, all OCD, I'll correct you with some things. The Renaissance was in the 1400s, a thousand years before the 2400s, and yes, you were right. They started to depend less on religion. But they didn't completely go away from religion. This 'religion' stayed around for quite a while longer. The Scientific Renaissance--I'm sorry guys, I know the names are similar, you'll just have to get used to it--the Scientific Renaissance happened thousands of years after the first, original Renaissance. And guys, does anyone remember from Cultural Ev 4--what Renaissance means?"
The class looks up. Well, the people who weren't already. A few kids raise their hands. The few who paid attention in Human Ev 4 back in 4th grade. The few who have the courage to raise their lights. Green lights bob in the air above their desks.
"Hmm.. who didn't I pick on today... How about, you? Wyatt?"
He looks up from his little hacking game. The volume isn't muted, and you can hear the soft click, click, beep. "Uhhh. Sorry?"
"I see you've been indulging yourself in some hacking activities in our very inspirational Human Cultural Evolutions 9 class. Since you were so kind to pay attention in class, let me ask you another question. Do you know when hacking became a legally accepted job and which Amendment enforced this?"
"Isn't the amendments from like, third grade? The amendments--they're like, from the Second World Era. That was the whole bombing and war era, wasn't it? Amendments. Was that an army? I don't know. But yeah, Renaissance means rebirth."
Of course, Wyatt manages to startle the teacher again.
"Well I'd like to tell you that you are right about the amendments being from the SWE, but they also carried onto the TWE, Third World Era. And hacking was legalized in TWE, in the 230th amendment. As for the Renaissance, it does mean rebirth. It was the rebirth of mankind to think and begin innovating and creating in a completely new direction and meaning."
He looks up, remembering, his head lifting out of his clouds of passion in the subject--he remembers what he was initially intending to drive towards.
"Yes. So, class." Claps his hand in a clear-cutting sound that wakes up the attention of the class. "The Information Age. Anyone?"
Green lights bob up in the air.
"Now, that's more like it. Let's see... that light over there. You're so far back. Who--oh yes! Harper, let's see what you found."
"Well," the small voice echoes from the back of the room. "It says here that--" she swipes her screen onto the front of the classroom. "Can you see it?"
"Yes, thank you, Harper. Continue--Oh, I love this website! The Worldwide Human Cultures Website! They have so much here! I love it. Sorry. Continue?"
"Heh. Yeah, so anyway. The Information age--nobody's really sure when it started, but people say it started somewhere near the mid 1900s, and it ended actually a while afterwards--it's one of the longer eras of the Second World Era--it ended near the 2300s. That's like, four hundred years. Anyway. It started, Human Ev Pros say that it was because they just started to learn how to harness electronics, and molecular technology. A huge advance was nuclear technology and also in robotics. Oh, and also in science. Look here! It says that they had a huge advance in science in the 2080s. That's also when they started to wean off of religion, like what Tana said."
"That was perfect, Harper, thank you. Could you swipe your screen back down, please?--Thank you. Okay. That was a perfect summary. The Information Age. It's the advancement--are you guys Thinking this down? It's the advancement of science, math, and technology. It is, statistically, when you look at it cumulatively, the most improvement that we humans have gone through in a single era. Well, of course, it was a pretty long period of time--you can't ignore 400 years of development, but it was an astounding amount of information gained at that time. Some scientists near the end of the era, sincerely believed they were reaching the end of what they could reach and learn from as humans. Of course, we now know that is wrong. But at the time, it was a massive, monstrous amount of information for humans to digest in a mere--yes, I'm using the word mere for this--a mere four hundred years."
A green light.
"Yes, Danika?"
"Why did it start? Why did it end? Sorry, I didn't really get to Think it down."
"It's fine. And I will clarify--it's really important. Maybe I didn't mention this. The Info Age was started because there were many diseases--which is when your body does not function normally due to a hereditary mutation or an acquired mutation (if you guys remember from biology). Lots of doctors--the people who would fix these diseases--it's a lot of vocab words from a while ago, I know--lots of doctors wanted to improve or find a way to prevent these diseases. It was also the curiosity of many, and also the hardships of life and the willingness to improve the state of life.
Green light. But they don't wait. "Are there still diseases today?"
The teacher looks up. "Ah, no, Brice. There may be a few lingering around, but that is in the lower parts of the Earth, and they have immediate treatment, where they fix the disease. It's only minor ones, too. You guys know those yearly shots? They're to prevent you from many diseases that may still harm you."
The students murmur in their little thoughts of recalling their recent shots.
"And why the Info Age ended. Why did it end? Well, people began to notice that too much info would be worse than having too little info. It became more dangerous rather than helpful, and too revealing rather than quenching our thirst for knowledge. At a certain point, we went into Microinformatics--whose meaning has changed after quite a while, but our definition of microinformatics is finding out more about the subjects and material we already know--knowing in more detail and precision of the things that we already know."
The class is quiet, save for the tap-tap-tapping of students Thinking down their Thoughts.
"Fun fact. Did you know that the Information Age was the age with the most information discovered that contradicted each other? At one point in the time period, people found out about things that contradicted material found in some point in the time period before. People kept getting confused, and it made for lots of arguments between scientists."
The teacher sees that less and less kids are paying attention and more and more are going back to their paused hacking game (or whatever those kids play these days) that they had been playing in math class.
"Alright!" He jumps up, which quite naturally brings the attention of the students. Screens change color back to the usual blue glow instead of the orange glow from the game, and eyes avert from the screen back to the teacher, standing at the front and bouncing on his heels.
"I'm handing out a worksheet. It's a chart of the ideas at the beginning of the Info Age, or before. Then the next column is what the scientists found out and how they changed that theory. For example--the most common one that we all know it the heart and the brain. Before, we used to think that the heart was the main part of our body that held life. We now know that in humans, there is a mental and physical core--the brain and the heart. I know, you guys were probably thinking of that. But you're going to have to look another one up. It's too easy! Challenge yourselves.
"The back side is about contradictory theories made throughout the Info Age, and indicating which one is correct. Put a star next to it, circle it, highlight it, comment it, whatever.
"This shouldn't be too hard, since you have your library online. Work with partners--I'll be assigning them."
The teacher pulls out the randomizer. It is a little square 3" by 3" panel with four colors on it--blue, green, red, or yellow--each in a corner of the square. It's funny, he thinks, that they would put these four colors to make you feel like you're the one choosing your fate or choosing the randomization, when no matter what color you choose, it just initializes the randomizer and randomly pairs the class--not that each color has a different combination of pairs in it. It doesn't matter what color you pick, he thinks--you'll just get the same randomization.
But he stops thinking to himself and looks up at the class. "Which color should I pick--blue, green, red, or yellow?"
"Yellow!"
"Green!"
"Anything!"
"Blue!"
"The first one!"
"Yellow!"
A chorus of colors and replies spring into the air.
"Well, I guess I heard green the most."
Some kids groan.
The teacher taps on the green area of the randomizer.
Instantly, each student meets the hologram of their partner in their V-screen. Instantly, the teacher's views of the students is disturbed by the translucent, hovering screen that is in front of each student's face. The students put on their Earplug Earphones and the built-in microphones. Each student hears, now, only their partner and nothing else. Perhaps the beating of their own heart. But nothing else.

Welp. Here I am.