well the semester from hell is over and although I realize that we will be starting another one before anyone reads this, I have come under great pressure to update (thank you, gardner and mom :P). the title of my blog is more fitting then ever, if we assume that the place that is over the hills and far away is my FUTURE. my FUTURE sits over the hills of the upcoming 4th year and most of all over the hills of a great many decisions that must be made soon because my FUTURE is actually not far away. not far away at all. i'm now a "fourth year" at uva, and suddenly all the vague musings of my life beyond wahoo-wa are solidifying from hypothetical half-assumptions into concrete decisions. whereas i used to say, "oh i think i might go to law school" there are now many many important details that i have to decide, not least of all as in do i want to go at all, and if so when, where and why? i've never offered law school as a way to make myself sound important or driven, but I have offered it as the next step in my education that I would most likely take for some vaguely entertained reasons. words, arguing, 3 years, good degree. where else can i get all those interests combined? but now as i actually look at law school web pages, damn. was soll ich machen? i guess moving to germany or stalking robert plant aren't viable options? damn.
i find myself missing uva this summer more than i have before. i wonder if it is because I had no time for closure at the end of the semester. I had the last possible day and time for a final and i had a meeting that night from 6 to essentially 11. the next day was the beach, and I didn't realize how rushed i felt until we came back from the beach and i got to wander around grounds for a bit. so much of my time at uva is insanely busy and fulfilling, i really need to take that time at the end of each semester to marvel at my school and all that i can do and do do there without actually doing it. now that i have just one year left, and people and places are growing more and more precious. i really don't know. i still can remember how it felt to be a senior in high school and i cannot comprehend how that same cycle is continuing but only in college. i can remember when i heard that my cousin was in college, i was like in 3rd grade or something, and i was like, wow, that sounds old. now i'm that old, and i have so much going on, as do we all. it makes me wonder (not a reference to stairway to heaven) what this will all lead up to. i suppose "stage manager" for zoso is not an option, either.
so this blog update is really not exicting at all. but not everything has to be busy, exciting, and spasm-like. i'm still trying to process all i did this spring, all i have done the last 3 years, and what i'm going to do in approximately 12 months. because that scenario of my FUTURE starts today, as frightening as that is to admit, with little tiny decisions, like visiting certain west coast law school home pages :P
- posted by Rachel @ 10:03 AM

 
As I trudge off to the library on a glorious day, I realize that studying is precisely the last thing that i want to do. To honor this rift between the fun-loving me and the working me, I offer the following lyrics. So fun, so naughty, and exactly the attitude to have when your afternoon could not possibly be any farther from this suggestive interlude. Thes are some insanely clever lyrics:

Greasy, slicked-down body
Groovy leather trim
I like the way you hold the road
Mama, it ain't no sin
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout

Ooh, trouble-free transmission helps your oil's flow
Mama, let me pump your gas, mama, let me through your door
Talkin' 'bout love, ah, talkin' 'bout love, ooh
I'm talkin' 'bout

Dig that heavy metal underneath your hood
Baby, I can work all night, believe I got the perfect tools
Talkin' 'bout lo-ove, talkin' 'bout lo-ove, talkin' 'bout

A model built for comfort, really built with style
Special list edition, mama, let me feast my eyes
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout

Factory air-conditioned, heat begins to rise
Guaranteed to run for hours, mama, let me pull your tires
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout

Groovin' on the freeway, gauge is on the red
Gun down on my gasoline, believe I'm gonna crack your head
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout love, I'm talkin' 'bout
I can't stop talkin' about, I can't stop talkin' about
Oooh, yeah, yes, a-drive on

Oooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, I'm comin' through
Come to me for service every hundred miles
Baby, let me check your points, fix your overdrive
Talkin' 'bout love, I'm talkin' 'bout love, I'm talkin' 'bout

Ooh, yes, fully automatic, comes in any size
Makes me wonder what I did before we synchronized
Talkin' 'bout lo-ove, talkin' 'bout love, I'm talkin' 'bout

Ooh-ooh, feather-light suspension -- Konis couldn't hold
I'm so glad I took a look inside your showroom doors
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout low-oh-hove, talkin' 'bout
I can't, I can't, oh, I can't stop talkin' about love
I can't stop talkin' about love

Ooh, let me come down, come down
Comin' down, comin' down, come down, yes
I can't stop talkin' about
I can't stop talkin' about lo-ove, baby
I can't stop talkin' about love, a-my baby
I can't stop talkin' about love, my baby-ah
My baby, my baby, yeah
Push, push, push, push, yes, push, push
Ooooh

-"Trampled Underfoot", Led Zeppelin
- posted by Rachel @ 9:56 AM

 
It's been a long time since I did my blog!
hello friends :)
i've had the strangest feeling all day after my wind ensemble concert last night. Every concert I've ever played in for my 11 years with the trombone has given me a true high. I love music, I love playing, I love being in a group playing, and I love to show a side of me, my more creative, emotive side, that often takes a back seat to the rigors of the Daily Routine. My glow from last night, however, has yet to leave me. I can't get certain parts of songs out of my head, and I just keep replaying (bad pun) in my mind over and over again how fun it was to play and how fast the time went. It's like a really cool morning after (random: i'm in charlottesville, and the sun just came out for the first time since Tuesday) or something. I think it's because my various trombone activities at UVA have not been a mere continuation of my the love I had for music in high school. And I truly just realized this. I certainly have not gotten any better technically (perhaps even I'm not as good), but I still have my tone, and I just love playing. This love for playing was not something that Robinson band nurtured my last year there, in fact, it killed it. When I picked up the trombone 2 falls ago for wind ensemble, I hadn't touched it in 14 months. Something about that total break, that total loss of good technical skill, made it truly fun to pick up the horn and to just *play* because I wanted to play and wanted to Capture the joy that is the essence of playing. Add no chair competition, outstanding muisc, and a really fun winter in the basketball band, and you have Rachel four semesters later loving her trombone like she never did in high school. It's like reviving the past, but completely moving beyond it, possibly to the field of Scott Stadium next fall. My high school playing and my college playing come from two totally different lives, one in high school and one in college, and the one in college needs that musical release. I love playing, and I'm still pretty good :) I was the loudest trombone in the basketball band ;)
Another "love" of mine that has resurfaced lately has been ROWING. I never thought when I graduated from Robinson or when I quit (retired from) rowing at UVA that I would willfully sit down on an erg (the rowing machine) again with the intention of imposing physical pain upon my person. Much like the trombone however, this time the ergging is on my terms. There is no score to record, no seat to fight for, no race to get psyched about, it's just me on many an afternoon, some good, some bad, and some repressed for various reasons, that I go to that machine for its complete and total physical and mental release. The erg works every part of your body, so even if I feel that the rest of my life is in complete disarray at least for 40 minutes the mind and body can work as one. The best part is the complete indulgence in nostalgia. Those beautiful and warm spring afternoons, when the sun makes everything so brilliantly green, and the sky is blue with puffy clouds, and I've sat on my ass all day in class, I must go to the river, where I can be me, a complete and functioning unit. With a more firm butt. While my days on the Occoquan have long since ended, and my brother's just began today, about twice a week I walk down the hill by the boathouse in my flip flops, gap bag hanging out of my spandex shorts, letting the boat bump down on my shoulder, talking to yassi, flip the boat "up and over", climb into seat six and row, just row, before theses, research, law school and days of self-introspection were a part of me. If anyone wants to go for a row, I need someone to fill yassi's seat up behind me in five, and Mem Gym does have two ergs.
- posted by Rachel @ 2:55 PM

 
Muchas personas han me decido que yo debo escribir en mi blog. Asi el dia ha llegado pero quiero que tu tengas que trabajar un poco para aprender mis pensamientos "deep" y humor que todos quieren compartir. Yo soy tan popular!
Un blog en espanol no es una manera para mi demostrar tan inteligene que yo soy oder wie ich konnte diesen Aufsatz auf Deutsch schreiben. Nein, ich schreibe in Spanisch para que yo pudiera reconocerme porque yo me estoy matando por la escuela. Yo tengo una semana muy ocupada y a veces yo dudo que yo puedo hacer todo que el mundo requiere. Y tambien yo estoy enferma. Ich habe mich noch einmal erkaltet und ist sehr schlecht, wenn ich sehr beschaftig bin. Kann ich wohl schrieben? Buena pregunta. este ensayo para mi clase de espanol es muy dificil. Yo tengo analizar un libro escrito en espanol sobre la filosofia de America. Yo escribo ahora sin mucho mas pensar en lo que el libro de hecho dice. Si yo no lo entiendo ahora, ich will nicht.
- posted by Rachel @ 9:10 PM

 
2004 Sketchy Guy of The Year Award
Yes, everyone it is only march, but don't worry, I found him. The young strapping fellow at the zoso concert who pushed me, put his face in mine and rubbed my butt with his hand. He was so enthralling, he visited me three times during the show! Let me tell you, he's a real winner. Look for a guy, obviously on some drugs, that never blinks and likes to leer at you. what a turn on.

- posted by Rachel @ 11:20 PM

 
Hello friends,
while everyone is away on trips, I am living on my couch, enjoying doing nothing more than hitting a select few buttons on the remote control. notice how I didn't say enjoying watching tv. that's because 95% of whatever is on tv is complete Scheize. I never watch TV during school, and I find that once I have time to do so, it's a most repugnant activity. I guess I could care about sports or the news, and when I do care, watching a good team blow the game or watching how sick our world is disturbs me. What i do not ever care about is any sort of sitcom because they are all disturbing. Is there anything truly funny or genuine on tv? I just now was channel surfing and found some awful movie "Jason X". It looked most riveting, but the suspense overwhelmed me when Jason broke Svenn's neck and attacked the space army blondes, and I had to turn it off. I don't know how the Academy Awards overlooked the acting in this film. Or I could have watched some music video and seen more cleavage than in a Victoria's Secret Catalogue. The other choice option was some sitcom that was talking about the dad and mom screwing behind the couch.
So apparently in order for anything to be funny it has to be about some bodily function or some sexual deed or misdeed. No longer can we use humor to foster an appreciation for the unique qualities that define people. Star Trek was a master of letting the audience find humor in its unique characters. For example, since Data takes everything at face value, it was funny to see him cheer at the end of a decisive battle scene. Worf was always so efficient and showed no emotion, so the crew always poked fun at him. Since the characters had depth, we saw them as vibrant dynamic interacting personalities both on the screen with each other and between the screen and the audience. In today's media, however, every character is reduced to bodily functions. We all fart, shit, burp, urinate and screw, so now everything can be funny just by letting the body run its course. No plot or intelligenc required on either the producers' part or the audience's part. What do people LEARN from the elevation of sex and potty humor as our societal standard for humor? They learn that maybe it's ok to grope some girl's butt at a zoso concert. Since she has an ASS and i have a HAND and I want to screw her, and any other woman, it is therefore REAL and COOL to RUB HER ASS AS THOUGH I WERE WAXING A WINDOW.
Violence is also out of control in our shows and movies today. I don't know which is worse, the realistic violence or the fake violence. Either way, people are dehumanized to the fact that guns and physical battery cause suffering, suffering that in real life often extends beyond the immediate victirm to include families, society and other friends. Realistic violence "shows it like it is", advertising in fact that guns can kill. This realistic portrayal of violence, however, still shelters the audience because the character is often some sort of hero figure or bonafide bad ass, and he's either on a justified mission or a rebel streak. And when the credits go up at the end, it's all a film. In real life the only credits after death are in the eulogy. In the more fantastic violence like in cartoons and in outlandish movies like "Jason X" the audience is even more distanced from suffering because the violence is not real. The ideas of death and violence are shrouded in the fantastic plots and situations. This is just so out of hand, how violent things are. No wonder people are so dysfunctional. Even the crime shows like CSI, how many guys will try and get off with the girlfriends tonight by putting their heads in plastic bags while screwing? The ideas that saturate our media are so dysfunctional. The kind of ideas that allow a guy to think that molesting a girl at a concert, leering at her all night and getting in her line of sight of robert plant are allowable, just because he wants to. There is no understanding of personal space or integrity when so many countless people die each day on the television screen, in the movie theaters, and in countless basements and living rooms on video games.
Sex is also out of control, but i'm tiring myself out, and really none of what i said needs saying. I haven't even mentioned the reductionist intelligence behind "reality tv shows". our media's shallowness is so obvious. i can't stand TV, unless it's for the news, CSI, maybe ER if it's not a bad episode, or the foreign language channels. Yet I also like the occcassional bad violence-for-nothing movie, even as I recgonize how dysfunctional it is, and how wrong its values are. I don't know what to do about it, except not watch. But what about the people that do watch? I feel so sorry for kids today, the extenuating and dangerous situations that they encounter in the relatively sheltered forum of media (movies, tv, print, music, entertainment, advertising) hit them when they are so ill-prepared to deal with them or understand their significance, and most likely leave them even more perplexed and vulnerable to the forces that present them. so wrong. what have we become? stupid sex-depraved losers? i think not. but the TV guide is not giving us a favorable Farmer's Almanac forecast.
We need the days of John Donne, when language was used to persuade, distort, convince, parody, get laid. The richness of language is largely brutalized today because it's so neglected. Cheap humor and sallow plots inspire a less-than Renaissance interest in how we can project ourselves to others and the world, for the same motives of sex and revenge.

- posted by Rachel @ 11:18 PM

 
Top 10 signs You know My Room is too Small:

10. Rachel lives in a perpetutal state of social seclusion because she cannot open her door all the way without throwing it against her shelves.
9. Purchasing a Cd Player actually saves her money because she has no need to buy one that comes with a remote controller.
8. She has the Air Conditioner on as high as it can go during the middle of winter, because she sleeps 5 feet from the heating vent and her room has the capacity to heat itself like a black body.
7. She is forced to make the existential choice between having an unobscured window to provide light or a place to hang her Zeppelin flag thing because she has no more room on her walls.
6. She can stand pretty much anywhere in the room and turn 360 degrees and get to the desk, the door and the bed without taking more than one step.
5. She fails to fit her person, her shakespeare anthology and her gym bag through the door without knocking over and breaking her fake plant's pot.
4. Getting her foot caught in the blanket of her unmade bed and running into the desk chair is how she starts her morning.
3. Realizing that no matter how she grabs at it, the desk chair never provides the stabilization she needs when she is in the process of tripping and grabs it.
2. While entering her closet and stepping forward, she steps into one of her shower shoes that is lying on the floor, somehow gets her foot caught in it because while she moves her foot the shoe remains stuck against the carpet, trips forward, narrowly misses the wall because she grabs at the clothes bar. this was a new one, even for me.
1. Delaying packing til the last minute, because there is nowhere to lay aside the stuff if she were to pack in a more timely fashion.

i love my room! it will be the death of me, and anyone else who exceeds the 1 person maximum capacity.
- posted by Rachel @ 3:13 PM

 
it's saturday morning, and I rolled out of bed around 11:00. what is the first thing i do? put in a Cd. I came home last night, after a bad day. What was the first thing I did? put in a CD and cranked it up. I have several very musically inclined friends (jon and big g), more so and more pretentious than I would ever dare to hope to be, and this entry is NOT going to be about how I'm so "in" and "cool" because I listen to and love several awesome groups. because if it hadn't been for them (jon and big g), I would barely know they existed. did you ever realize how groups transcend their CDs and become your friends? they really do. after my wretched day I cranked led zeppelin because robert makes me feel better. This morning i listened to the doors because they are so good, and i had mundane house cleaning to do, and they are anything but mundane.
this is where my english-major way too introspective mind set takes over. Since these groups are my friends, and we are on a first name basis ("sing it robert!" "jim morrison, ugh what a VOICE"), I am concerned for their well-being and happiness, as I would be for any other real-life friend. and I find these musical gods to be extremely extemely fascinating, the dichotomy between their stage pesronal and their real self. like what did jimmy page do on a daily basis? what was robert plant like when he wasn't wailing away? if you were jim morrison what would you even do as a mere mortal? the tragic thing is that I know a large part of the answer to these questions consists of self-destructive behavior and misery. and this is really sad to me, because I feel some sort of maternal duty to protect them. I don't like the fact that jim morrison was miserable and afraid and drugged up most of his life. the music by the doors that I so love is a reflection of the anxiety he felt in his life. it's almost as if he's a martyr, screwing himself up to share his music with everyone. every word he sings that makes me feel good stems from his own internal turmoil. I hate seeing the pictures of him all bloated with alcohol at the end of his life, even as the doors made "touch me", one of their sweetest and best songs. it's just sad. the same thing kind of goes with zeppelin. I don't like that *my* robert and jimmy and the gang were so into the drugs. like jimmy page, it destroyed him, and he hated heroin but he couldn't stop. and bonzo was a very violent alcoholic. and robert plant had such tragic events in his life-the death of his son, the near death of himself and his wife. yet these 4 men were the THING back in the day largely because of their THINGS and their voices and their sheer presence. how many women have been done by led zeppelin? yet there were people behind these musical icons that suffered from their wild life style and had their own personal tribulations. they need protecting. :)
i don't know how to reconcile the disparity between the stage icon and the real-life person, and this mental exercise never gets old for me. i think is one of the main reasons that i so love their music, the difference in the life they sing from and my daily life is HUGE. how boring does my life look compared to theirs? midterms? papers? going to the gym? what would they have thought of me? would they have laughed at my love for their music? would they have thought it cool? what would they think of an english/spanish/german/ergging/trombone playing tall girl as a fan? how did they raise their children and treat the people that they loved, people who weren't part of their wild musical realm? what serves to heigten my fascination is the comparison to today's musical society, where most "musicians" make horrendous "music" with NO feeling, NO thought, NO intensity, YET every single detail about their lives, the lives that supposedly lead to their musical creations, saturates the media. we know how britney is now the "bad girl" because her heart was broken by justin :( we know that she married for 36 hours because she's a bad girl :( oh and she kissed madonna too :( ooh! nick lachey now has a musical career because he married jessica simpson, now his career will take off. if you watch the superbowl half time you can see janet jackson's nipple, oops! ooh J.Lo, she may have left the bronx, but you can read any article and discover how her bronx roots ground her in a career of mediocrity.
give me the intrigue around pretty much any rock and roll group from the 60s-70s, where tabloids and tv did not rip open their lives to expose what makes them tick. you know why they didn't? i don't think they dared to and they would not have understood. you can fit britney, justin, jessica into any mold, any article, any role because they are so flacid and stand for nothing. just try and make robert plant look like a "bad boy" because his dad didn't want him to sing. no, he's robert plant. you can't say much more than that, and even if you tried to, he would not have cared.
i love my friends, and what is even more sad is that half of the guys that i love are dead, usually after some tragic self-destructive incident. i guess you can argue that they died being happy and doing what they loved, but sometimes i doubt that. i think they were sincerely unhappy at least some of the time, like anyone is, but their music is such a public venue to vent or excise their demons. so i see listening to my favorite groups as the eternal remebrance not only of their music, but of the fact that they were people too, maybe not with concerns as mundane as midterms and cleaning up a very small room, but with the very personal struggles that illuminates their music. the dichotomy never gets old.
so listen to your favorite group today!
- posted by Rachel @ 12:17 PM