piano, half empty glassed mom
@ 9:59 a.m.
sometimes i can't really seem to decide whether i should keep things to myself or if i should voice my thoughts or opinions aloud. i'm specifically talking about in situations with c. i learned the hard way with my mother about things i shouldn't say, though even now i sometimes have to keep myself in check. an example is the fact that i'm super excited to say that i spent a big chunk of sunday watching youtube videos about piano playing. i had started playing when i was 7, and did for 10 years, in which around my senior year of high school, i more or less stopped. i'm now 25, it's been about 7 years and i haven't touched the piano in a daily/practicing routinely sort of way since then. and i've always been sad when either at a musical store that sold a piano, or when visiting someone's house that had a piano, that i couldn't recall any piece by memory. there's one piece by debussy (sorry i can't remember the name) that i can play the intro too, but i can't recall the rest. i mostly end up resorting to playing one note at a time melodies, as if i was a first year piano player playing mary had a little lamb. anyway, during my day looking at these youtube videos, i learned a lot about myself, about piano, and about playing it. i've always had the desire, but i was always frustrated because i didn't know how to go about it. i'm an OK sight reader, and i've always been great at playing pieces so long as the music was in front of me, but i'm terrible at playing by ear, and although i've done musical theory and studied it enough that i've passed the level 10 music theory test, it's almost as if i've treated music theory as a different language from actually playing music. i suppose it's sort of like learning a math formula, and while i can understand all that and memorize it or whatever, i cannot understand how to actually use the formula. when does it apply, and when doesn't it apply? i feel like watching these videos helped me to understand things that i could never seem to understand when my music teacher taught me. especially after watching a video entitled 4 chords hundreds of different songs. there's many variations of it, and it's easy to look for on youtube. i do recommend taking a look at it, and then looking at the band axis of awesome who made a song about so many songs that have the same chord. it's really profound to think about the fact that a lot of music is created about in a same manner. the second manner in the reason for my frustration is, i have had this notion that perfect pitch only exist in certain people and that you have to be born into it. wrong. everyone has perfect pitch, but we lose it past the age of about 5. and i think that may be why my brother has a had an easier time of it then me. my brother started playing around 5. i started playing around 7. perfect pitch is essentially the ability to think of the sound of a pitch (say hum a note) without any reference and of course be right about it. it sounds really hard and impossible, and for me, i think it was, but i realize now the problem is because i had never trained my ear. i never practiced hearing, because my teacher never taught it to me. but i'm now including it in my practice. i think i'm starting to be able to recall the sound of the middle c note on command. if i train my ear, i can still get perfect pitch. and it's also because of my poor pitch and ear training that is causing my frustration in being able to replicate music i hear. i think it's also the reason why i sometimes have a tendency to sing off tune. anyway, with all this unnecessary info said, i've started playing piano again. the problem is that i'm using c's shitty probably $100 synthesizer keyboard. it's the kind of keyboard that one would more likely use together in a garage band. it only has about 48 keys and it is, in short, awful. i'm looking into buying a digital piano now, as i obviously do not have the space for a regular piano, considering that i don't have the money to buy or be able to move a piano, and i don't really have the space for it. but i've found a really good buy. it's a 3-year old casio digital piano, with (weighted) 88 keys, and he's gonna give me the stand and the bench altogether for $300. it's a pretty good deal, consdering some stands cost $100, and looking for a seat was going to be troublesome too. one of these pianos is about $300-$500 depending on where i buy it. the only problem is that he lives all the way in hollywood, so traffic sucks, which also means that maybe i won't be able to buy it until this weekend... but oh boy did i go off on a tangent. (i suppose it's okay though because i was going to talk about playing piano today anyway)
the point is that i'm super excited about it. i've already started working on playing a song by ear. i had some help via a youtube video to get me started, but i'm doing a lot of the work by myself too by ear training. it's coming along decently, but i'm maybe only 1/4 to 1/3 of the way done. i've also downloaded some sheet music so i can practice some other pieces cause i haven't done that in a long time. but anyway, i bring this all up because i'm excited and i was thinking about telling my mom. well, since my mom paid for my piano lessons all throughout my life... and we've had many close calls with me quitting and getting frustrated about not wanting to practice, not to mention we had argued about it, and i remember that i was glad to have it all over with when i passed the highest level of piano proficiency, my mom had said that it would be okay if i didn't practice. the piano stayed there at home and my mom never said anything, never pressured me to play it, though i know and she has said to me that maybe i could play it once in awhile when i was home or something. i said okay though i didn't really play... not really at all. and if there were a few times that i did want to play, i never did play it, because i know my mom, it can't ever be "oh she's playing, how nice" it would be, "it's such a shame that she never plays it anymore, what a waste" and she'd more than likely say "what are you playing? it's all a bunch of nonsense cause you never practice." and even if she says nothing to me, i know that's what she'll be thinking in her head. i don't think she understands just how negative her comments are, and that she is the reason why i wouldn't play it. it's ironic though, because sometimes when i was younger and i was practicing, when i was playing badly, my dad would say something similar, that i was playing badly, or it sounded like a bunch of nonsense, and he might further emphasized that i needed to practice more. and when my dad said these things, my mom always scolded him. i suppose my dad did tend to say it in a way that sounded hurtful, while my mom tended to try to say it in a more neutral tone, but still, a lot of times essentially my mom were saying the same things, and yet when she said it, it was okay. i don't think my mom could ever understand that just because you say something like "you're fat" in a neutral tone, it doesn't change the insult that you still called someone fat. i suppose the problem could be that my mom never had learned how to say anything in a nice way. i don't think she understands that it's not always about how you say it, or the tone you use, sometimes she just needs to use better word choices. thinking about all this is why i'm hesitant to tell my mother i'm going to or that i want to start playing piano again. given our background, our situation, any mother would be pleased and happy to hear that all their money they spent on their child didn't go to waste and that she is doing something with those lessons, but my mother would not be able to convey this in to me in the right way. my mother would more likely bring up the fact that i didn't touch it for so many years, or that it's such a waste that i had time to play while i was at home, but now i have to buy a piano just cause i want to play now and not before. she must be the epitome of the phrase that the glass is always half empty. i can already imagine this conversation perfectly. she'll say one compliment, and then delve into all the things there is to regret about not playing sooner or recall on the sad past about how i didn't want to practice and almost quit (which would eventually lead to her saying that i was right to listen to her to keep playing). ugh, thinking about it now, it sickens me, why does she like to bring up the past so much. i keep saying maybe it would be different, maybe i should tell her, but then i have to mentally pinch myself because this is my mother, and what would happen is one simple 3 or 4 word compliment, and then an endless paragraph of everything i did wrong.
sadly she's still like this in everything else. just the other day, she called me again to more or less remind me of a mistake. so the story is that she's trying to get a new tenant to move in to the back of the house cause the current one is moving out. on chance, someone who applied was someone she used to know. i'm not too sure how they knew, she told me but i forget. anyway, i guess they started talking about my brother and what school he's going to and whatnot and i guess my mom ended up telling her the whole story about what happened. my brother unknowlingly applied for early decision to nyu without really realizing what it meant to apply early decision. i had never applied early decision so i didn't really understand it, and i didn't realize that the ramifications of apply early decision. i just thought it meant that he would find out a decision from the school earlier. however, it seems that my brother new about early decision. he was just so sure he wanted to go to nyu so he felt like he was making the right decision by applying early decision. later on we found out he got accepted and i realized what it meant to apply early decision. it's great that he got accepted, but then we couldn't go to any other school. and then we realized of course that money was going to be a big problem. we have no residence aid because we are from CA, and we tried to apply for fafsa, but all we got were loans cause my parents make too much money, and yes, applying early decision probably doesn't help, since the university would be less likely to give you money. my mom blames me for the whole thing. that's right she blames me for the whole thing, and she has not let me forget it at all. and it pisses me off. i do see my part of the fault, but it doesn't change the fact that she's the fucking parent and that the responsibility of it shouldn't be falling on me. whenever we talk about it, i get so pissed off because she completely babies my brother. nobody babied me and i made my own mistakes and figured out my own shit. my brother went to a small ass shool and was sheltered like fuck, so yeah he never developed his brain to figure out what a stupid and bad idea applying for early decision was in this situation. and he wasn't smart enough to figure out that maybe he should consult someone (maybe multiple people including teachers and counselors) about whether applying for early decision was a good idea in his case. and maybe my stupid mom shouldn't have been so dumb as to say that "money is not a factor" to my brother, who is dumb enough to believe that money isn't a factor. of course money is a fucking factor! but my brother is too dumb, undeveloped in his thinking brain to realize what my mother meant when she said "money isn't a factor" and my mother is too stupid to realize that my brother might actually take that literally. fuck, we're not making over a million dollars a year, of course money is a fucking factor when you've got to pay $60,000 a year to attend school. so fuck you mom, the whole thing wasn't my fucking fault. just because you said to me, "you have to watch out for your brother and make sure he does everything right" doesn't mean you get to pass the fucking blame to me when shit goes down. and if god forbid, everything did work out properly, all i would've gotten was a fucking pat on the back and thank you and you would not remember that i ever did any of this correctly. i fucking hate that about my mom, you do one thing right, it's mentioned once and forgotten, you do something wrong, and it's a lifetime of remember how you fucked up that time. and yes, some of those mistakes i made, i fucking remember, i don't need you to point out again what dumb mistakes i made. but god, own up to your own mistakes for fucking sake. maybe if my brother wasn't so coddled and sheltered, and had everything handed to him on a fucking plate, he'd realize how to develop some critical thinking skills so that he'd actually survive in the real fucking world. ugh. i hate that i've gone on this long fucking rant now but whenever i think about it, i just get so pissed. well, back to the story, so the lady spoke with after explaining my brother had applied early decision and that he didn't get any financial aid, so we couldn't afford to go to the school, the lady says that well of course he didn't get any aid. fiancial aid isn't given to people who apply early decision. i wanted to explain that what this lady said wasn't completely true, that we applied for fafsa and that's not how fafsa works, but i didn't want to get into a long conversation with her about it, because it would end up with me feeling angry and i wouldn't really be able to say the things i wanted to say anyway, but yes in a way it is true, i imagine that the university would not have provided any financial aid to my brother he had applied early decision, but in a way, part of it is moot since some of the money he would've gotten would only be there if he had been a ny resident, which he wasn't. and even the money that universities give, they take into account the parent's salary. so it's not as simple as "oh you applied early decision, that's why you got no money." but what's the point in arguing with her over this crap, especially since it'll all just lead back to the same conversation about how i was the one that fucked up for letting my brother apply early decision. and then of course, my mother says at the end, "well i don't really want to discuss it because there's no point in discussing about the past or things we can't change, but i just thought that i'd let you know what truly huge mistake we made by your brother applying early decision" (okay so she didn't actually say this ending bit, it sounded to me like that was her intention), and then she adds on at the end as if this is the justification for bringing it up, "We can't make another mistake like this one again" (as if she hasn't said that line over and over again)
well, i've went off on a tanget again, this time about my mother who loves to bring up the past to not hurt me of course (ha), but for some other reason unknown to me. okay, let's go back to my original topic, whether to express thought and opinions to c. sometimes it's a similar way with c, that i try to refrain or don't say anything because i want to avoid a further discussion with c. i suppose it's not like my mother's situation in the sense that c's comments doesn't make me so angry. god, whenever i think of the anger my mother makes me feel, i can honestly just imagine myself bursting and telling everything that i have bottle up over th years, so great that it wants to spill out. i fear that one day i won't be able to keep it corked any longer and i'll just explode. on the other hand, with c, sometimes i feel mild irritation, and sometimes i'll feel some anger, but it's passing and nothing like that of my mother. luckily though c is nothing like my mother, and sometimes he can take reason, unlike my mother (whom i think is close minded) and i bring this all up because of last night. c is taking 5 classes this semester, of which includes 2 general education classes. unfortunately, c is terrible at ge classes. and he got all pissed off and frustrated last night because he has a midterm today and he hasn't done any of the reading, and haven't gone to a huge chunk of the classes and therefore obviously not ready for the test. he talked about maybe taking a withdrawal and taking it next semester, but after looking at his schedule next semester, it would be pretty packed. he already has 2 ge classes, so adding in another would be tough since as i've said he's terrible at ge classes. a big reason is because he is terrible at reading. by that i mean, he is a slow ass reader and has trouble concentrating and easily gets distracted and generally feels listless if he has to read for any set time. after much grumbling about and getting angry and frustrated, then wanting to die and then saying stuff like i want to give up and drop out of school, and also he was mentioning that he had no time to do all these readings and the work, i was starting to feel frustrated with him and i was getting angry at how spoiled he was sounded. he has no time because he spends a good portion of his time playing lol, or doing whatever else. i asked him what he did for office hours, and he stated that he wasted 3 hours doing much of nothing, and spent 40 minutes doing work and another hour talking to someone. this past weekend when he could've spent time to study, he did not. and he spent a lot of this time doing nothing. so he has fucking time, he just can't manage it. and plus, he's taking 18 official units, plus unofficially taking a class that one of the teachers he likes is teaching and plus he wants to learn to program this language that iphone uses so he can make iphone games if he wants to do that. unfortunately, it doesn't fit his schedule (timing conflict), even if it did, i don't know if he might not be able to take it anyway, cause i don't know how schools deal with someone taking 21 units. so i pointed this out to him, that he's doing work that expects him to be super busy, how can he say he's taking all these classes, and yet expect to do say 12 unit's worth of work, that's not how that works. c also has this notion that it's better to just give up then try and just do the bare minimum to pass. it's a thought that he recognizes is crazy but can't seem to shake the mentality. hopefully we'll get through this year so we don't have to deal with this kind of thinking anymore. i pray that perhaps he gets 30-40% on his test, so that there's still a chance that he can pass the class. all he needs is D, which is like 60% ? and with the final and the two essays, hopefully he'll do well enough on those so that he can get a D. I'm glad i ended up speaking up last night. i think it helped him, and he did stop acting frustrated. got a small bit of studying done, and he had a review/discussion second this morning, so i hope that helped him enough to get a decent failing grade. he can't seem to understand that 30 or 40% is better than 0%
oh yea, i guess i'll update on that chris thing. after the second day of talking to him, i realized what a dumb mistake i made. i don't think that we can be friends, not in the sense that i had hoped. i am not really attracted to him, like i had thought, and before, i thought that maybe i'd like to meet up with him, but then i remember that asshole fickle side of chris and realize that if i did see him, nothing good will come out of it. chris is definitely different, but not in a good way for me. i'm not saying if i meet up with him i may feel a panicked moment of maybe wanting to kiss him or something, it's just that it will be awkward, and no, i won't have a pleasant conversation with him. it would not end up that way and i was crazy to believe that it might be that way. chris is great in that he's not into facebook and don't do anything mainstream and he's great at his music and stays motivated, but he's also purposefully oblivious and doesn't get subtext or being subtle about it. no, i can't imagine that c would ever be comfortable with me being friends with him, and the truth is, i don't even think i could be comfortable. i think he thrives on awkwardness. and he's most comfortable in awkwardness.