Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Sparkyrie's LiveJournal:

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Friday, October 19th, 2001
8:55 pm	How does Elise possibly have time to write her journal while she's in Cambridge?? How does anyone have time to do anything like this in Cambridge?! oh my god, I've never been so busy, inspired, challenged and even happy in my life!!! I'm home now for the weekend - well, actually going to Paris for a family wedding. All is well. I've finished my German essay. I have new and wonderful friends. I have apple pie flavour cookies to eat. I love Max. He loves me. Better go, too much to do even here... Current Mood: giddy Current Music: Some sequence, I think it's Handel, can't think what. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 19th, 2001
11:32 am	Waltzing I can't wait til tonight! Last night we taught Saul how to waltz in preparation for the ball, which was surprisingly successful. After mastering the basic steps he danced with Max while Mum played things like "I vow to thee my country" on the piano, because real waltzes are so much too fast (!), and then he danced with me while Max played the Blue Danube of Death, less than half the speed it's meant to go and with the left hand doubled at the octave, complete with glissandos up and down the piano...Then Mum played faster waltzes while I danced with Max, and when it got too fast he just picked me up and whirled me round the room in my huge silk ball skirt, and we danced like that... Saul looked absolutely gorgeous in white tie. I can't wait to see what Max looks like. Current Mood: excited Current Music: The Blue Danube of Death (J. Strauss, arr. Max Webster) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 17th, 2001
11:37 am	Why do some people feel the need to be gratuitously vindictive? Without any provocation, suddenly to turn pointlessly, needlessly, pettily spiteful and bitchy? Do they get some kind of kick out of it? Do they need a quick fix of bullying someone else now and then to beef up their ego? Is it like some kind of sport, or something? Perhaps it would be easier to understand if there was anything - any tiny little thing - that could be construed as provocation for this person to behave in this way towards me. But when I haven't even communicated with them for over a month? and the last time we spoke it was in friendship? It's incomprehensible to me. Maybe Gothslut would understand it... she claims that she does it, at least. Maybe she can enlighten me. Oh, well, it's hardly worth puzzling over. I'm making new friends, I now know exactly who my old ones are (!), I have a wonderful boyfriend, I'm about to go to Cambridge...and I'm the Roedean Musician of the Year!!! Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: "Von ewiger Liebe" - Brahms (Comment on this)
Monday, September 10th, 2001
10:10 pm	Hello outside world, how have you been? Long time no see! Not that I can say I've missed you terribly... I've suddenly started playing the piano again. I mean not just bashing out stuff with my mediocre ear - actually making the effort to read music, and finding out that I can actually play the accompaniments to very many songs and am not *too* far away from being able to play nearly everything that I want to be able to play. I can play "Fear no more the heat o' the sun"! It's so wonderful! My brain is actually doing it, actually reading the music and transporting the information to my fingers. God knows why I never learned the piano properly before. But hey, no time like the present! I'd like to write more, like about how lovely it is to be able to garble on about the psychology of the text of the Christmas Oratorio to someone who actually knows what I mean and is interested in what I'm saying (among other pleasures.) But I'm too tired and I'm wading through a sea of music on my living room floor, Faure, Brahms, Finzi, Delius, you name it, I've been trying to play it! And with a surprising degree of success and a corresponding amount of happiness. Current Mood: rejuvenated Current Music: Fear no more the heat o' the sun - Finzi. Incredible song. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 6th, 2001
1:55 pm	I'm back. Home, that is, after what feels like about a month out of reality but has in fact been only about two or three days/nights during which I have not got very much sleep, and besides we worked out last night that we've only actually been going out for 9 days. Nine days?! My god, it's unbelievable. I'm not *in* love with him. "In love" there taken to mean rush of chemicals to the brain, drug-like addiction to a person lasting 6 months to 2 years during which you convince yourself that the person you are with is all you could ever want and need and bla bla whatever it was that Stendahl wrote. No, I am not in love with him. And promise here and now that I will never say the words "I love you", as Jeanette Winterson so perfectly put it, as if I were dropping them into a wishing well in the hope that they would make me come true. The way I feel is much more a case of Alanis Morissette's "don't be surprised if I love you for all that you are". I still wouldn't say it to him, purely because those words are and have been "too often profaned for me to profane it", thank you Mr Shelley. God I'm going mad quoting literature today. Must be his influence. No, formulaic cliches are an insult to love. I will say it with my hands. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 1st, 2001
11:09 pm	Jesus, the things we do for - er - ... Right, please will someone listen to this and tell me am I obsessed, am I in love, or am I just completely mad? I have a computer at home from which I can access the internet no problem and for no charge. Instead of being there I have just paid 2 pounds to check my e-mail in an internet cafe in Oxford Street, having just been out to a play with two friends. The reason I did that is to see if Max had e-mailed me to say whether I could come to his house tonight. The thing is, earlier today I had the brainwave that I could go to his house and tell my Mum that I was staying with the friends (Maria and John) with whom I went to the play. That way I would spare myself the embarrassment of telling my mother that I actually intended to - oh god, you know what, I am so tired I am actually about to drop dead, I'm too tired even to try to explain this. I'm really not sleeping well since he's been around...! Every morning I wake up at around four and can't get back to sleep. I pray I get some sleep tonight. I'm going to see Frances tomorrow in Brighton, should be fun. God, I'm tired. I have to wait for Maria and John to get off the internet. Why did I come here at all, why didn't I just stay at home and be available to contact... "nuits blanches" nice phrase. Current Mood: Half comatose with fatigue Current Music: Some shit they're playing in this net cafe dump (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 30th, 2001
5:41 pm	*contented sigh* I'm tired. I'm happy. I hope the window cleaner considers himself privileged for what he saw when his head appeared outside my bedroom window this afternoon! I wish that for just one night I could make parents and siblings extinct as a species. I don't really have much else to say... Current Mood: content Current Music: Something from the Izzy "Ascolta" CD (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 27th, 2001
11:13 am	I have a boyfriend, this is amazing. Not just any old boyfriend, but one who plays Beethoven piano sonatas, is going to Trinity, Cambridge to read English, stands up when a woman comes into the room, can sing down to the Ralphian B flat, makes me laugh til it hurts, is an amazing actor and actually seems to like me as much as I like him!! How on earth did this happen? I don't know, but I'm not complaining! [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<by [...] way,>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] I have a boyfriend, this is amazing. Not just any old boyfriend, but one who plays Beethoven piano sonatas, is going to Trinity, Cambridge to read English, stands up when a woman comes into the room, can sing down to the Ralphian B flat, makes me laugh til it hurts, is an amazing actor and actually seems to like me as much as I like him!! How on earth did this happen? I don't know, but I'm not complaining! <by the way, can anyone on LJ tell me how to do italics on your entries?> "Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which is my sin though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, for I have more." and two more verses besides. It's funny, I was looking through a book of John Donne's poetry in a shop and I found this, and on paper it looked like nothing much. It's only with Pelham Humfrey's music that it comes to life. It's the most incredible song - you can tell that every word of the poet's and every note of the composer's are *meant* down to the base of their spine...as deep as shame can reach. I don't know whether it's the particular realisation that I have by Tippett and Bergmann, but some of the harmony is so ahead of its time - augmented chords coming out of nowhere, occasionally things which could only be described as clusters, like a chord of D, E flat, G and A, the D resolving to C to make what I think is a half-diminished chord...And who's ever heard of anything else by Pelham Humfrey? It must be a lone work of genius from an otherwise unexceptional composer, who was so moved by the power of the words that he was able to create something far beyond his means. What an amazing piece of music. Current Mood: excited Current Music: "A Hymne to God the Father" - Pelham Humfrey/John Donne (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2001
9:08 pm	Finally back... I haven't written in here for AGES. And I feel like a real nob because I was so, SO sure I'd had it with being friends with Em, and then whaddayaknow - practically 5 minutes later, I love her to bits again. After all that bitchy shit I wrote, too. I feel a right idiot. I don't want to be the kind of insincere Tara P-T style git who changes their mind every 5 minutes and makes out each mind-change is the absolute and radical final one. But I'm glad she's added me to her friends list, though. Well, lots to report on. Just got back from Greece and got my breakdown for my A-levels, which really was quite pleasing. There are 6 papers in German and French, and in German I got 100% in four of them, in French in three. My overall mark for German was 406 out of 410, for French 398 out of 410. Annoyingly there's no breakdown for music. Never mind - Cambridge here I come!!!!! I'm still not happy, though. There is one thing in this world which can make me happy, and that is getting into the choir at Clare. I was dreaming in Greece about the places I'd hodl choir practices if I had my own choir...We went into an amazing water cave which was off the coast of one island, and it had the most wonderful echo...how Iustorum Animae would sound in there...*shivers* Current Mood: self-satisfied but not happy Current Music: Iustorum Animae - William Byrd (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 26th, 2001
1:39 pm	God what an intensive week I've just had. Intensive in every sense. Friendships broken, adoration rekindled, music music music everywhere!!! Ralph Allwood is surely the sexiest man alive. Iustorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum mortis. Visi sunt oculis insipientium mori; illi autem sunt in pace. The music by William Byrd...so beautiful. I feel inspired, frustrated, sad, alone, excited, thankful and happy all at the same time. Current Mood: Everything Current Music: Iustorum animae - William Byrd (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 17th, 2001
9:26 pm	Long time no write I haven't written in here for ages. Partly because I've been away in Italy having flu. I think I might just go back to a normal, private, hand-written journal - after all, no-one really reads this anyway! I'm going on the choral course tomorrow and I have a cold!!! AAAHHHHH!! "Ich warte, ich warte mit brennendem Oele..." German must look so weird to people who don't speak it. Especially when you have to put "e"s instead of Umlauts. Current Mood: excited Current Music: "Wenn kommst du, mein Heil?" - Bach - a Cantata (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 5th, 2001
10:45 pm	Coochie coochie ya ya da da (actually when you write it down it looks like baby talk. I wonder if that's the idea?) We just had the Variety Concert...it was AMAZING! Now we're all off to organise our leaving pranks for tomorrow! Midnight rendez-vous outside on the Quad... Current Mood: excited Current Music: "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" - by god knows who. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, July 2nd, 2001
9:27 pm	Em (yawn yawn) God Em drives me mad sometimes. I just went into Keswick Hall for our Variety Concert rehearsal - which, I hasten to add, we had *booked* the hall for in advance. She then gets all huffy as if it's her own private salon, saying it's "our hall" and my year have no right to be there. "I can't believe how fucking awful all of your year are", she says. She gets up, walks out and slams the door behind her. Even though we have no room here in Lawrence that we could possibly use. And now she tells me that yesterday when she was giving me the ice queen treatment over Gail was actually not to do with Gail at all: she was simply annoyed that Jemma and I had come over to Keswick to get some food whilst her year were having their house barbecue. The fact that we *had* to take some barbecue food because the food laid out for us was all gone, and that we'd been on a train for 6 hours and hadn't eaten all day, was of course immaterial - how dare we interrupt her private party? God, I'd like to shove a poker up her arse if she didn't appear to have such a huge one there already... Current Mood: pissed off Current Music: "Clair de lune" - Faure (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 28th, 2001
9:33 pm	The London Oratory Junior Choir Mein Jesus ist tot, tot, tot, mein Jesus ist tot... (sorry, it doesn't really make much sense unless you can hear the music in your head!) I've been singing that all day. In between watching Wimbledon and eating. Just keeping my score of the St John Passion right by me, and every now and then, walking over to the music wing and singing. Or Keswick Hall, but I feel self-conscious singing in there, everyone can hear me who walks across the balcony. I had my last EVER singing lesson with Mrs Noakes today! YESSSSS!! Celebrate! That silly old bag who makes me feel the size of a speck of dust and has taught me precisely NOTHING in seven years of singing lessons will never be telling me to contort my face into stupid shapes to supposedly "get more resonance" in my voice again! It's incredible how psychological it is. I've been singing really well recently, hardly had to worry about the problem of wavering across the "bridge" that has plagued me so much in the past. But whaddaya know - when I went into my singing lesson, I suddenly started singing worse than I'd done for ages - my voice was cracking on every top note, my breath wasn't doing anything... And then about 2 hours later, I went to the OMC to sing on my own, and it was perfect. Not the slightest hint of a break in my voice - it flew up as smoothly as anything. I want to be in a proper choir SO much. I miss the Oratory so, so much. I've never loved anything as much. Last week Mum and I went to the fete there - she likes it 'cause you get good bargains, but for me it's my one chance every year to see my beloved choir room again (even if only through the window.) When I sneaked down to the basement today and looked through the window, it seemed to have changed a lot. The benches weren't there anymore, the piano wasn't in its usual place and I couldn't really make out the way it used to be. It was such a *sacred* room. I'm not the slightest bit religious, but the spirit in this room was alive in the air. The whole room was infused with music, you could sense the years and centuries of choristers who had sung there through the ages. It was stuffed with scores of every piece of church music you could imagine. So much music that I'll probably never hear or sing again. Ebner's "Gloria" - no one I ask has even heard of Ebner. "Lift thine eyes" - the one in Elijah is different to the one we did. Chris Walker's "Veni, Sancte Spiritus"..."O, mysterium ineffabile"..."Maria mater gratiae"...and so many that I must have inevitably forgotten. When I had to leave the Oratory Choir to come to Roedean, it was like - excuse the crap analogy - but it was like being a flower just about to open and being wrenched away from the stem. In a way, even though Roedean has been wonderful, it could never, ever repay the debt it caused by making me leave the OJC. There's so much more I could say about it - how I memorised pages and pages of Latin just because the music made the language so beautiful...how the sun used to flow through the high window and into the choir loft at Mass on Sunday mornings...Christmas morning, singing Personnent Hodie...the prayer we said every time before Mass... The memories I have of that choir go too deep ever to leave me. One day I'm going to pluck up the courage to just go there and ask one of the Fathers if I can go down and see the choir room again. I so want to see it again, there's no room like it or so sacred to me in all the world. Current Mood: nostalgic Current Music: "Zerfliesse, mein Herze" - St John Passion, Bach (Comment on this)
Monday, June 25th, 2001
6:55 pm	Keeping my bitterness in check. I'm in a difficult situation. I can't write about it because if I do, I will hurt one of my friends and alienate another. Today I wrote a comment in reply to another comment I received. It said, in a couple of lines, what i want to say here but can't. I then sat on the same page for fifteen minutes trying to decide whether to send it. In the end I realised I just couldn't, and deleted the comment. I just hope... I just hope she's not as blind or as needy as I was. Current Mood: frustrated Current Music: Cat Duet - Rossini (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 23rd, 2001
1:18 pm	People sometimes criticise New Labour for trying to be everything to everyone, and ending up being nothing to anyone. Sometimes I wonder if I'm like that as a person. Sometimes I'm a snob. (Not that I really have the intellectual accomplishment to deserve it!) I condemn superficial people. I castigate crappy "romantic comedy" films and mainstream pop music. But then other times I can quite happily be superficial myself. Have whole conversations about meaningless fluff, willingly. Watch those films, and almost enjoy them. (I've never yet been able to enjoy the music, I guess that's where I draw the line!) And I go and knock on George's door and spend a fruitless evening lying on her bed discussing bikinis. Being ambivalent like this means that I get criticised by both sides. It sucks. And worse, I feel that I myself have no real identity, that I'm a chameleon. Similarly, sometimes I want to cry at the injustice of Capitalist society, the materialistic greediness and selfishness that we have come to think of as normal, not even the slightest bit shameful...being fed on a diet of noisy inanity, advertising advertising advertising, no time for beauty, stripping the noblest and greatest music down to 3-minute soundbites on "Classical Moods", because no-one has the time to listen to the whole thing, and it sells better that way. (And then George expects me to be happy that classical music is "being brought to the people" and losing its elitism. I feel sick.) Even music, the most sacred of all things, become a crass commercial product for consumption. But THEN, *then*, I quite happily go to King's Road, spend a great deal of money on ridiculous things for myself, and feel not a twinge of guilt. Why am I so full of contradictions?? Current Mood: uncomfortable Current Music: The tennis theme tune on TV (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 20th, 2001
11:50 pm	Frustration I want to make something but I don't know what!! Most of all I want to make another video...a sequel to the Maury show and adverts in Canada last year - but on what? I can't do more Maury, I've done it to death. I've done taking the piss out of American TV to death, and I think it would really get to me if I did any more. So what? Why can't I have endless ideas like Em does, like other people do? Maybe I'm really not meant to be creative. Maybe I'm just an all-round nob who does not get fancied and cannot do anything. Current Mood: nobular Current Music: Faure - Lydia (Comment on this)
5:08 pm	Em *is* annoying: she's in her house in Chelsea now, which means she's about 10 minutes away from me, and we could meet up, but she hasn't phoned me and I don't know her London phone number, and they don't have a computer there! Damn. Anyway, I have spent another day contentedly languishing in Kensington Gardens...I spent ?20 just on cards to give to the teachers when I leave. Thought the Medici shop was supposed to be cheap! And yesterday I did the same (ie. lay around) in Fulham Palace Gardens, then I went and watched the kids play in the sandpit and fountain in Bishop's Park. This little 3-year-old went and pissed on the ground when he thought no-one was looking (which they weren't apart from me) and then all these people kept walking through it thinking it was just water from the fountain...! I love... I wish... I wish I had a boyfriend/girlfriend. Or anyone to lie on grass in the sun with. I'm jealous of Gail, even though I don't envy her position. That sounds like another of my famous contradictions. Current Mood: blah Current Music: "Apres un reve" (can't be arsed with accents) - Faure (Comment on this)
Monday, June 18th, 2001
6:14 pm	Today. A successful day. I got presents for lots of people, went to an excellent concert, and bought two fantastic CDs. (Gail, just listen to the cast of the recording of Mozart's Requiem that I bought: John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Barbara Bonney, Anne Sofie von Otter, Hans Peter Blochwitz and Willard White! I've already got a recording of it but with that list of names I just couldn't resist getting it.) I also went to Kensington Gardens for the first time since we used to have our games lessons in summer there at my primary school. I saw the kids coming out at hometime, still the same old purple uniforms. I love South Kensington. I love it because of: the French people the French shops the French baguette shops! the trees Kensington Gardens the Kensington Music Shop the Oratory is nearby the classical music CD shop Nothing much is going on now. I'm going to go and wrap up some presents in a minute. I made Em a wicked card, I hope she likes it. She should like her present too. It's funny, the entries in my journal which I would consider the more interesting ones never seem to get commented on, whereas the really boring ones (as they appear to me) seem to attract lots of comments. Let's see if that rings true for this barrage of boringness! Current Mood: good Current Music: The solo bits from Mozart's Req. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 16th, 2001
10:32 pm	Music My brother's got into gambling. So far he's won ?75. I think I might start! I've just been playing the piano for quite a while. Well, it seemed like quite a while, but it was probably only 20 minutes or so - time goes slower in music. Apparently composers live longer than ordinary people, so maybe that's why. I don't know why I do that so rarely these days - just sit at a piano and see where my fingers fall. It's the way I used to sometimes compose good stuff. Thing is it's annoying when you can't seem to free yourself from the clich?s of V sus 4 and poppy, boring chords...or when you forget that harmonic rhythm doesn't have to be regular...or when you start just playing chromatic scales over and over each other, which is funnily enough a common syndrome of mine. Playing the piano like this is like scribbling or writing morning pages. All your shit just comes out in sound. Even though nothing important came out this time, I still started feeling quite high-wired at one point. The amount of frustration generated in me in everyday life is amazing. Some people like to go on detox diets to clear out their body's system. I don't realise how much piano playing is required to clear out my clogged-up emotional system. I think I'm going to start doing it more often now. Maybe eventually I'll get some decent music out of it. Even this frustrates me though. It frustrates me that, although I'm (I suppose) talented enough to have basic aural ability and get what I hear out onto the keys, I need to go further...I want to be at the stage where the piano is just an extension of my mind. And I don't know if my ears are acute enough ever to get to that stage. Still, it was funny - at the end of today's session, I felt tired and I couldn't be bothered to play loudly or fast anymore, so I closed my eyes, dunked down a low pedal note in the bass, and with my right hand, just literally let my fingers fall wherever they would. It sounded sort of like scattering fairy dust in the dark. I was thinking, if someone sympathetic was listening, I would have been able to hypnotise them pretty well with it even though I had absolutely no idea where my fingers were or what note was going to come next. So it was just random fate playing, not me at all. It meant nothing really, I suppose, but then I suppose no music could mean anything in an objective sense. Current Mood: indescribable Current Music: Some weird chromatic thing I was playing at one point. (Comment on this)