Potential

"They all await the day when they can be taken seriously. They all await a scientific answer to their own powers (and in my opinion I do not think that is the solution). Many hide their potential and end up suffering – because they could help the world, and they do not manage to. Deep down I feel that that they are also waiting for the “official pardon” for being so different.

Separating the wheat from the chaff, and not growing disheartened by the giant amount of charlatanism, I feel that we should ask ourselves once more: what are we capable of?

And then go out and seriously develop our immense potential."


From Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light. www.warriorofthelight.com

Afternoon at the K

Quintessential Whitacre

A couple indicative quotes from Eric Whitacre's forum.
www.ericwhitacre.com/theforum

About being a minimalist:

I don't really think of myself as being a part of a school of thought; I just try to write music that is honest, and part of me. When I truly look at my music as an outsider (difficult for me to do) it seems to me that there are dozens of influences, from minimalism to impressionism to cinematic film writing to 80's pop.

About tone clusters:

The clusters are just the way that I think about music, but my approach to them is like the rest of my writing: all intuition, no theory.

Ocatvio Paz said it best, in Spanish:"inocencia y no ciencia" (innocence and not science).

The Battle of Every Artist? Every Person?

"The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."


From Yann Martel's The Life of Pi
p. 162

How did I love?

Matthew offers us a classic description of the Day of Final Reckoning: the Son of God sits on a throne and like a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep. At that moment the great question for human beings will not be: “How did I live?” but rather: “How did I love?”

The final test of all quests for salvation will be Love. No account will be taken of what we did, what we believed in, what we achieved. None of this will be asked of us. What we will be asked is how we loved our neighbor. The mistakes we have made will not even be remembered. We will be judged for the good we have failed to do. Because keeping Love locked up within ourselves is to go against the spirit of God, it proves that we never knew Him, that He loved us in vain, and that His Son died to no avail.”

From Paulo Coelho's story of Manuel in Warrior of the Light
www.warriorofthelight.com

Site Feed

I can't say I really understand the ins and outs of RSS and Site Feeds, but I put a link for a Site Feed of this blog on the sidebar.

Here is a brief explanation of the possibilities from blogger.com:

When a regularly updated site such as a blog has a feed, people can subscribe to it using software for reading syndicated content called a "newsreader." People like using readers for blogs because it allows them to catch up on all their favorites at once. Like checking email—without the SPAM.

Blogger automatically generates a machine-readable version of your blog that can be picked up and displayed in a variety of ways, including newsreaders, web sites and handheld devices. There are already a bunch of newsreaders that support Atom, including NewsMonster, NewzCrawler, NewsGator, NetNewsWire, Shrook, RSSOwl and BottomFeeder. You can find a growing list of newsreaders at AtomEnabled.org.

Enjoy!
m

Comments

Oh how I love comments on my blog. They make me happy. :)

Do What You Wish

"[Bastian] asked ' "Do What you Wish." That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so?'
All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed. 'No...it means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.'
'What I reallly and truly want? What do you mean by that?'
'It's your own deepest secret and you yourself don't know it.'
'How can I find out'
'By going the way of your wishes, from one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.'
-Michael Ende, Neverending Story

Word and Wikis.

Respect for life, resulting from one's own conscious will to live, leads the person live in service of other people and every living creature.

From the Wikipedia article on Albert Schweitzer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer

Paradise Lost

For all of you who have heard me rave about Eric Whitacre's Paradise Lost: Opera Electronica:

www.myspace.com/ericwhitacre

Listen to Paradise Lost Live. It was recorded in a cathedral in Berlin, choir of 350, packed house of 2200 people.

Birthday girl.

Birthday festivities

Megacopter

Thomas Friedman on Osama and Katrina in the NY Times:

These are people [Bush administration] so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.


I hope the link works for awhile.

And by the way, this is an article that resonates we me personally. That in no way means other organizational affiliations that I've mentioned on this blog agree or disagree.
As always: read for yourself, ask questions, decide for yourself. Word.

Moblogging

Ok. The coolest thing EVER. I can send pictures and texts (like the Morning at EMKF post) to my blog from my phone AND it's super easy.

go.blogger.com for more details.

Expect this blog to get a lot more interesting. ;)

Morning at EMKF.

Forbidding Mourning

During the next few years, I will witness many dear friends leave KU for new adventures while I wrap up my studies. In a way, I've already started this process of transition and good-byes by leaving KU for an extended stay at Kauffman (though I'm told people actually see me more). But these experiences (both Kauffman and KU), have been "not a breach, but an expansion / Like gold to aery thinness beat."

I'm so lucky to have loved so many people. :)


A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
By John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
"Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
- Whose soul is sense - cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
They soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begin.


www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/mourning.htm

Cloudburst

*** This song changed my life. Period. Anyone who has ever heard my Eric Whitacre gushing...this is where it all began.
I know it's probably ridiculously illegal, but I love this so very much that I wanted to share. ***
Meg

Cloudburst
Text by Octavio Paz (set to music for choir in the original Spanish by Eric Whitacre)

The rain...

Eyes of shadow-water,
eyes of well-water,
eyes of dream-water.

Blue Suns, green whirlwinds,
birdbeaks of light pecking open
pomegranate stars.

But tell me, burnt earth, is there no water?
Only blood, only dust,
only naked footsteps in the thorns?

The rain awakens...

We must dream with our eyes,
we must dream with our hands,
we must dream the dreams of a river
seeking its course,
of the sun dreaming its worlds,
we must dream aloud,
we must sing till the song puts forth roots,
trunk, branches, birds, stars,
we must find the lost word,
and remember what the blood,
the tides, the earth, and the body say,
and return to the point of departure...

The rain...

Birthday request - 9/9/05

Hey everyone - I'm turning 22 soon (September 9). If you would like to give me something, here is my request:

A original sketch/drawing (completed by you) answering the question, "If I could give Megan anything in the world, this is what I would give her:"

All I care about is sincerity.
Medium, time invested, and artistic quality are not that important to me.

I would love if you delivered it to me in person!

Hugs and kisses to you all!
Megan