Reileen van Kaile

I love going down the music practice rooms late at night, because that means I can hog a room for hours on end without worrying that someone's going kick me out in the middle of playing a song.

***

I'm still working on "Queen of Denial," but it's starting to come together a bit. There's still a part in the chorus that I can never seem to sing right, and a line in the second stanza that gets fucked up if I try to sing it with the piano accompaniment I have for it, which I think means I gotta fix the lyrics there a bit. And there's also some piano stuff in the second stanza that I have to figure out. But overall, it's complete enough to be performed...though I can't guarantee that the results will be pretty. I'll try working on getting a decent recording done.

Much to my surprise, I also came up with a possible motif for another song of mine called "Triskaidekaphobia." No actual song melody, but I've had the lyrics for a while. I wrote it while bored off my ass during a lecture at a bioinformatics seminar I had to attend for work. Technically, it's probably more of a poem than a song, but I liked the lines to it and thought it would be cute fun to try putting it to music. I'll definitely have to fix the lyrics a little, though.

Triskaidekaphobia

one chance at life gives you the second sight
threefold karma returns four times the bite
this five-fingered star means not thrice six at the end
i've swallowed seven deadly sins for the magic 8-ball to mend
for these nine lives lost, i hang myself ten
justice delivered at midnight in the faerie glen
to that, my love caught in my poison gaze
thirteen hells your death shall be, to freeze within the icy blaze

No, I don't really have a clue what this is supposed to be about - this was mostly me playing around with a theme and imagery. I could go postmodern on y'all and say that the song means everything and nothing at the same time. That would be fun.

***

Time to clean my dorm room. Yes, you heard me right. Not "time to go to bed"; time to clean my dorm room. I'm having a one-night stand with a 24 fl. oz. can of Amp Energy Drink. Because I know that if I go to sleep now, I am never going to wake up.

-Reileen
c'est la vie here in my lonely

So. Uh. Yeah. Today was the first day of following the schedule that I described here. Or attempting to, since despite setting my alarm for 6:00am, I ended up waking up at 9:30am.* Yup. I fail. Barring having to make earth-shattering changes in my sleeping habits, though, winter quarter 2006-2007 promises to be a very, very good quarter for a number of reasons.

First off, ANI220 (Animation Pre-Production Art) and ART106 (Beginning Drawing) are already made of major win - I can see that one ten miles away without my glasses. ANI220 is taught by a professor I've had twice already for other ANI classes, and he's pretty good. We'll get to work on the pre-production art for our own personal animation projects, which makes me mucho excited since I already have an (original! ...or semi-original!) idea in mind for that. ART106 just looks to be a fun, relaxing class, while polishing up the basics of my drawing skills. Yay art. My art muse has been dead since the beginning of September, so maybe this'll bring her back. (Trust me, I tried waking her up when September ended. She was dead as a dog in a log.)

JPN102 (Beginning Japanese II) was also predictably fun, but unfortunately I'll have to switch around my times because it takes place on the Lincoln Park campus about 15 minutes after my ANI220 class, which takes place downtown, and there's no way I can make it to there on time without killing myself in the process. (Plus, I'll need time to eat lunch and then drag all my supplies for ART106 over to the other campus.) I have one last class today from 5:45pm to 9:00pm, CSC382 (Applied Image Processing), but I'm going to have to drop that class because otherwise I can't fit in my class change for JPN102, which takes place on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:45pm to 8:00pm. And I kinda need JPN102, considering I'm minoring in Japanese language...

Also, if I can't fit any Honors classes into my schedule once I switch around the classes I need to switch around, it looks like my Tuesdays and Thursdays will be mostly free time during the day. Huzzah!

***

In music news, I think I have most of the notes down for "Queen of Denial", so once I get my microphone from home I'll try to make a listenable recording of that. (Mind the emo and the possibly eardrum-shredding voice, though.) I also randomly transposed Vienna Teng's "Lullabye For a Stormy Night" down a half-step from its original key of B major (or at least I think that's what it is) and played it like that, which I also may record if I can ever figure out how to sing the chorus without losing my breath. I can sing it just fine when I'm not playing the piano, but once you throw piano into the mix it fucks everything up. Le sigh. I have, however, found out that apparently a couple of Lifesaver breath mints coupled with a bottle of water help the voice a little. Let's hear it for accidental discoveries! Which is what creative ventures are all about anyway.

-Reileen
crashed on the floor when I moved in

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*And since I had a 10:10am class and I also had to pick up my U-Pass from the DePaul Center, I had little time for a decent breakfast like I originally planned, instead succumbing to the allures of a bottle of Mountain Dew. Double fail.