Pencils

What a day friends...Ever say that at the end of the day?

Today, I got to spend some time with my students and teach them music. I never quite realized the tedious work of teaching...
most of the time, teachers spend working in the grime and dirt. It's not pretty or glamorous and cuts into your mealtimes. Teachers are the ones who call you out and work with you until you understand. It's like, as a teacher, they are saying they've been there and done that, and they're trying to get the student to believe they can achieve it too.

A word to teachers: thank you for being the amazing people that you are and putting yourselves out there for our sake. You're the most honest and hopeful people I know. I only hope to be as amazing as you.

I got to share a song with someone today. It's funny how something can be painful and sad but when you are able to use that and help someone understand they are not alone, it can actually have a positive light. Sometimes, ok let's admit it, most times I wonder if I am cut out for this music thing...then I find myself sharing my stories through song and someone gets it. They are able for one minute to sigh and be at peace whether in laughter, in tears or both. ha! These are heavenly moments and by heavenly moments I mean...moments that can't really be explained by anything else other than saying it's just God.

The rest of the most beautiful afternoon ever was spent taking photos for my website. It was great. My dressing room was let's say...mobile? From car to behind trees. I guess that's what you get when you take pictures at random places in a city. It's hard taking those "serious, thought provoking" solo artist pictures...because I'm pretty sure my thoughts consisted of how many possible ways can you move your facial muscles, do I look away and act pouty, and if so, being pouty is pitiful Cas...don't be pouty and then my face tightens and then my face kicks in awkward mode and I lose all possible chance of looking "cool and nonchalant" to the world. I'm just a goofy person who loves to smile, be sassy and silly. Can't hide it. Do you think there's room for me in the cool artist world?

oh this music thing...one step, even some silly ones, at a time.

Love,
C

Two by Two

18 Now as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who was called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.

19 And He said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

20 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.

(Matthew 4:18-20)-NASB

_________

41 And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums.

42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent.

43 Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury;

44 for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on."

(Mark 12:41-44)-NASB
__________

Two best friends living in two different places sat in two different church as these two passages were preached on today.

Two best friends living in two different places at two different places in their lives open their eyes and hearts to new understanding, for that is the purpose of faith.

Two best friends understanding that God calls us to get out of our heads full of doubt, uncertainty, failure, fear and loneliness and realize something/one greater beyond ourselves...something/one we can wholeheartedly belong to and ultimately be able to stand tall because of it.

Love,
C

timeless princess

It's 10:27 pm and I am tired. a good kind of tired says one of my friends. I've had a fairly productive week and started running again. :)

Today, I recorded some music and went to teach some students pieces for a singing competition.
One thing I am starting to discover about working with different singers is that you can learn a lot about someone's personality and demeanor through their voices and understanding about music. They each take a different path finding their "voice" or understanding of the concept. Singing, music making, learning how to make music an artform in your own experience...it all seems so abstract much like fluffy purple elephants on a picnic or something like that. I guess that is the beautiful thing about music and art. You know, well fed elephants and all.

After practice, I hung out in the choir room and played some songs on the piano. One particular piece, "So this is love" from Cinderella, a princess song. As I was singing, one of my students came by to listen and she started to sing along with me too. It's like one of those scenes from a musical, where all is right in the world when the characters suddenly dabble into music and sing away. They shut themselves out from the world and become a prince or princess in their own right.

I was thinking about Disney princesses and it seems these days, the princess movies are becoming far and few...however...the idea of wanting to be a princess...I believe this doesn't ever die really. Life just kind of cycles around like that which is an interesting idea in itself. The ironies, joy, struggle, fights, awkward situations, sadness, victories...all battling to find out the truth and make sense of it. Redemption really.

I guess if anything, what I most enjoy about teaching my students as well as myself is that we have every right to sing, find personal truth, that unique inner "voice" inside all of us and not feel the least bit guilty because of it.

Love,
C

delightful

My Grandma sent this. She's so cute.

<3
C

If just to learn

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." --E.L. Doctorow

I was talking to a friend today and she makes me laugh. Her stories are full of awkwardness and irony. It's wonderful. I kept telling her they are quality blogging material and we all need stories in our life that help us move along with ease.
She kept telling me that no one would read them and that they aren't really anything significant.

Writing anything never has to be significant. They are your thoughts, your experiences and they deserve to be noted...if anything, just for yourself. Sometimes we feel pathetic, we feel our experiences are nothing in comparison to someone else's, we feel selfish for even entertaining the thought that something in our life demands the attention of someone else...and some dear friend of mine told me to never believe that, ever.

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." --E.L. Doctorow

Love,
C

PS This is my dream journal! :) AHHH! a very long book for very long and probably most often silly musings. :)

starving men

There was once a man named Gerard. He wore a beret everyday on his morning walk around the neighborhood. He had his routine and nothing, not even rain would stop him. He'd come back home after stopping by Mrs. Kimberly's yard to look at the roses she sweetly tended to. After picking up his newspaper, he'd start to roll the rubber-band off even before he reached his door. He'd open his fridge, grab his OJ and eat his freshly baked bread. Mr. Gerard paid great attention to the craft of bread-making.

There was once another man named Andrews. Yes, with an "s" on the end of his name. He was laid back and lived a simple down to earth kind of life. He'd be the man you'd see in the bookstore engrossed in a novel on a cloudy day with no care in the world. You'd catch yourself watching him with such intrigue and wondering why you can't be as carefree and engrossed in your reading as he is. He would wake up each morning and grab a coffee at the book shop, tipping the barista .50 each day. He believed that .50 each day was more consistent than a dollar occasionally. A barista favors consistency over occasional kindness he thought. Similar to Gerard, Andrews too made bread from scratch. Saturday was his bread making day and Sunday was his day to reap what he sowed.

The economy was starting to fall each day. Yet, Gerard scraped as much money to get his newspaper coming daily and Andrews still tipped that barista. Gerard tips his hat off to me in the morning right before his walk as I am leaving for work and as Andrews is walking home with a book practically still glued to his face, he peers over the brim of his literature to acknowledge me.

Unfortunately a terrible windstorm destroyed our neighborhood one day, taking all that we were used to seeing, our routines and scrambled it all up. Some lost their houses or parts of it. Gerard and Andrews decided to bake bread for the neighbors in order to help out. Now, they each had a different way to make bread. Gerard learned from his father's bakery when he was a child helping out dad at the store and Andrews picked up bread making by trial and error. He found solace in bread making when his grandmother passed away. She loved baking and she said bread was suitable for the family. It takes work to make it with extra care but it fills everyone bellies, is shared and doesn't need embellishment.

Anyways I digress, as you can see with such different ways to bread making, Gerard and Andrews did not get started on making bread as soon as they had hoped. They argued in and out about who's way was right and better. "Well in my experience, this never worked..." "My father served 45 years as a bread maker and was successful"..."you have to do it this certain way"...all this was battled back and forth as families started to run out of places to search for food mainly because the food shelter was running short on food items. The two men continued to battle and waste more baking materials in their attempts to win each other over with whose way was better. Gerard and Andrews found themselves becoming bitter men.

Two men at each the end of the table,
with hollow faces and slowly becoming hollow hearts,
darken over differences,
that could be made right.

Food for the stomach,
become their gods,
ways of routine,
are daily mantras.

Desire to be right,
eating up their lives,
when hollowness could be filled.

In the end,
bones are left at each end of the table
as bags upon bags of flour and yeast
are left untouched.

I exaggerate slightly in this story. I'm not even sure why I wanted to jot this down. I guess it's just to say that I believe
Gerard and Andrews exist in all of us in some form or fashion. However, I am going to learn how to make bread and how to share it even if with bitter angry old men who just squabble over who's right or wrong...maybe they'll grow silent when chewing the bread and end up laughing over their silliness, over the pointless arguments of details that grow smaller by the minute as bellies are full and bread is being passed around the table.

Love,
C

Maybe just for you.

PS Pic was taken at Centrale Station in Milan, Italia.

that one word

Part of my new job consists of teaching classical vocal songs to students. I absolutely love it.I love bringing music from the 1600, 1700 and 1800's to life and making it applicable to students. This was what was brought to my attention when I was learning these songs at their age...like an aha moment that occurred when I realized that we don't stand so far from these poems on life and love as much as we think we do. I've started to realize almost all of them have to do with love at some point, of wanting, despairing, rejoicing, breaking

all over love.

I think the best moment was when I was trying to explain this text:

For the glory of adoring you
I want to love you,
oh dear eyes.
In love I will suffer,
yet always I will love you,
Yes, in my suffering:
I will suffer,
I will love you,
dear, dear eyes.
-Bonocini

In modern day high school terms, I translated:

I want you, even if I have to suffer for it,
wait for the day to come where you say yes,
go for days and months without any text or message from you,
yet I still find you amazing and I still want to love you.

My student's eyes just beamed and she got it. It was great. Nothing is new under the sun really...the story about seeking love out and being baffled by how it comes in such unexpected ways. It makes no sense but it makes complete sense.

Brahms kind of said it brilliantly:

It moves like a melody,
Gently through my mind;
It blossoms like spring flowers
And wafts away like fragrance.

But when it is captured in words,
And placed before my eyes,
It turns pale like a gray mist
And disappears like a breath.

Love can't be contained and if it is, it loses the greatness that exists in its entirety and movement. It breaks you because it's just so right.

"If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing, If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

Love, you're such a show stopper.

Goodnight friends,
C

Sunday musings

I was just catching myself up on the news this lovely sunday afternoon and while multi-tasking, I stumbled on John Mark McMillan, the guy who wrote "How He Loves". A nice song but overplayed. That is probably the only song I have heard from him...his other songs are pretty good and folky. I enjoy it.

Anyways, I found myself listening to a commentary on his song, The Medicine and sometimes he struggles with fear and doubts that the album won't make it. However, he realizes amidst the mess ups it's about the community and musicians enjoying the music being made...he'd rather have that than perfect "besides what's perfect anyway"...that's just kind of a beautiful line isn't it?

I just had to stop and write that. Mainly just as reminder to myself.

Love,
C

story time and carpet squares

Once there was a girl named Carla and she liked a boy named Tim. Tim would sing "You are so beautiful to me" everyday to her. She liked it so much. She'd tell her girlfriends and they would swoon. Carla and Tim would chase each other around the playground and then one day, Tim said he didn't want to play anymore. Maybe he meant it or maybe he didn't. Either way, she did not like it, ran away and didn't look back although she kind of wanted to. She didn't listen to the song "You are so beautiful to me" much since then.

Then there was a girl named Emma and she liked a boy named Jim. Jim was from England and had the most eye catching hats. They'd chase each other around the playground. She'd take his hat from him, put it on her head and flaunt it around. Then Jim, said he'd rather give Rachel his hats to play with. She did not like that and ran away as well although she kind of wanted to stay and play with his hat some more. She didn't touch a hat much since then.

Carla and Emma met up one day, they shared ice cream and their playground romances, appalled yet grateful they were in similar states of pain and heartache as much pain and heartache kids go through at that time in their lives. Love and life does this sometimes. No matter where you are in life, someone has been there and what a beautiful thing it is to have someone to have story time and carpet squares with. It lets us laugh for a little bit.

Life is rough sometimes and answers are few but there will always be carpet squares for us to break away and rest our little weary hearts.

Love,
C

eye lids and lullabies

Friends,

My eye lids want to close in on me yet I wanted to write to you and just say hi.
It's one of those nights where I just want to sit at my keyboard and play all night long and forget that I have a list of to do's tomorrow.


I just worked on a new song with my best friend and it was fantastic. Honestly it consisted of moments where we paused in outrageous laughter, or in much shame for horrid mistakes made, or in just sheer pleasure at the music that was made. It was the best and I needed it today. Also, I do believe Ticking and Tocking's cousin was born today...well actually she was born a couple of days ago but needed to be attended with special care but she is alive and kicking now. :)

This song is rather special to me...and for once, as far and few as they come, it's about me. However, I believe it represents a handful of people in my life. When it gets posted, I hope it helps them wherever they are at. This is the most beautiful thing about songwriting. I get to put music to experiences in hopes that someone knows they aren't alone and that they are special enough to be sung to.

Love,
C