Song of the Week 10/30/16

     For those who don't know, I've been a James Bond fan for about five years now. I drove myself insane from fangirling when Skyfall came out and finally got to see it (three or four times) when it was televised a year or two later. When I heard about Spectre's release, about a year and a half ago, I was pretty excited, and I remember listening to the theme song when it came out and celebrating the movie's release day on November 6 by putting a poster for it on my iPad's home screen.
     This one, to be exact:

     (Wow, I just noticed the glass is shattered in the shape of the arms on the Spectre logo. That's really dang cool.)

     But somehow, throughout the next year I all but forgot about it. Until two weeks ago when I learned it was coming on TV and I finally got to see it. And I'll have to say, as much as I loved Skyfall, I don't even know which one I love better now because Spectre was amazing as well. I even made this ring for it, which you'll totally get if you've seen the movie:

     (It may look a little rough but things this small are extremely hard to make out of clay.)

     As a lover of music and atmosphere, the opening sequence of a James Bond movie is one of the most important elements to me, because the song can set the atmosphere for the movie. So, I had to defer this one for another week to accommodate for the song I found last Saturday, but here it is: Sam Smith's "Writing's On the Wall", the theme for Spectre.

     The first time I heard this song, I didn't like it, and I didn't hear it again until I was actually watching the opening sequence for Spectre, which was an amazing experience because I recognized elements of the song after having forgotten about it for so long. But that time my mind started opening up to the song a bit more. By the end of the movie it was still in my head, and I had a new understanding of it. I knew there was no way I would've grasped the atmosphere of the song if not for the movie. And in reflecting on that, I learned that the movie can actually set the atmosphere for the song as well.

     This song has a very soft feeling most of the way through, so a lot of the emotion is set mainly by the vocals themselves. Although the lyrics of both verses are different, the melody is the same, and that always creates a nostalgic feeling within the song. It also makes me impressed with the songwriter's job of fitting the syllables of the lyrics into the melody while also expressing a deep yet tangible emotion through them. I like how the strings after the chorus echo the melody of the verse vocals while using the same chord progression, which alternates between one major and one minor chord. It creates a very trapped and dreary feeling and soft-spoken emotion which in my opinion fits very well with the movie.

     With all the other melodies being the same, the chorus is the only part that's really different. And for the most part it's actually softer than the rest of the song, which makes for a very unique feeling. The high pitch and vocal melody that starts off the chorus is absolutely addictive to me. It creates an eerie feeling which carries the aforementioned emotion even farther and gives it a sort of rhythmic, almost lullaby-like twist at the same time. (It might seem weird to say that, but it's there.)

     I'm wanting to learn this song on the piano now. I'm unsure how others may perceive its atmosphere without seeing the movie as well, since for me they go hand in hand. But give it a listen anyway; who knows what it might do to you?

Song of the Week 10/23/16

     I had a different song in mind for this week but I'll have to save it for the next. I found this song yesterday and I'm so obsessed with it that I've listened to it four times so far and I'm trying not to overlisten. I was listening to TobyMac nightcores (because it was his birthday and I wanted to celebrate) then I got off track and started listening to other Christian nightcores which led to this one. I'd never heard of it before but I knew of Jonathan Thulin so I thought I'd give it a try. It's called 'Masquerade'. I loved the deepness in it and it seemed to pull me in so I decided to listen to the original and ended up listening to that twice yesterday and another time this morning.

     I know all the lyrics by now (they were fairly easy to learn). They hold a lot of truth as they are convicting Christians who are too afraid to let their light shine because of the judgment of the world. The light is nothing to be ashamed of, but it can be hard to stand strong when we're scared. However, the Bible says "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12) Besides, we're in God's hands, and God is so much stronger than the world. This song is a challenge to never hide the light of Jesus, and I grasped that meaning right away because of personal events. I love the way this concept is pulled off metaphorically, which is something I really enjoy doing in songwriting.
     I don't actually know what genre Jonathan Thulin generally releases, as I haven't listened to much of him yet (although I do know his brother is David Thulin, who is an EDM artist, so I'd expect something slightly electronic), and I don't even know what genre this song is. But nonetheless, the instrumental side of it is awesome. It has a nice rhythm, although the tempo is a little slow, but the rapid violin melody counters that and creates an atmosphere which makes you picture dancing in your mind. All that together with the awesome vocal fillers after the hook echo the lyrical concept very well.
     I love the descending rhythm of the vocals in the verses, which are contrasted later by the ascending vocals in the bridge. There is also a suspenseful feeling just after the bridge vocals which adds to the entire atmosphere as well. The chorus is actually repeated four times, but I'm fine with that because I love it. This whole track is pulled off pretty nicely when you break its elements down. Jonathan Thulin is not a very well known artist, but this track is amazing, so I'd definitely recommend checking it out and giving it some support if you like it.

Fan photography for this song; photo cred to me :)

My Cat Got Mad Today

     I have a rather extensive history with cats, as I've lived with them ever since I was born. One of the two cats I have now is a faithful grey and white female that I've had for six years, the only one remaining from her litter of three. She may seem lazy, as she spends much of the daytime indoors, but she possesses an ability to run quite rapidly upon necessity and even to scurry up trees in order to obtain a position on top of our roof. Just the other day I was in the kitchen when I witnessed a great burst of motion in the tree outside the window followed by the cat scrambling up its thin trunk between all the offshoots of evergreen leaves, only to make her way down more slowly ten minutes later.
     The biggest reason this seems a little surprising for my cat is because she's put on some weight in the last couple years and is not exactly the thinnest cat in the world anymore. We tried to ration her food a bit more sparingly but it was to no use. Nevertheless, she's happy and that's all we really care about.
     This cat has several places she likes to lie down to take her 7-hour-long "catnaps", interrupted by an occasional trip to the food bowl (or sometimes the younger cat's food bowl, in which case I have to discipline her), and she often rotates from one place to the other, choosing one for a few weeks and then moving on without warning. There is no transitional phase, just one day she decides to claim a different spot and that's that. She may not go back to the other spot for the better part of a year.
     Right now I'm privileged enough to say that the cat (aka. the household queen) has chosen my bed for her current resting spot. Today she was sprawled across my blanket, trying to drown out the sounds of my mom and I repeating Spanish phrases back to my computer, which was just to the left of her. At the beginning she ignored us and continued on with her nap, but as time went on she couldn't seem to keep her eyes closed and finally she turned and gave us a quite annoyed look, which I know all too well to mean "You're disrupting my beauty sleep". My mom wasn't paying attention although the look was directed at her; nonetheless, the cat held her position and didn't say a word.
     After a while, the cat had no choice but to be fully awake. I occasionally put my head at her level and told her she was such a pretty cat, and she stared back at me with her curious green eyes with pupils the width of a needle due to the brightness of the sun. She was already getting slightly unnerved by my stroking her tail, which for some reason I was suddenly enthralled with. I kept protesting that she had a pretty tail but she would have none of it.
     But all this was nothing compared to when I reached in and briefly stroked the pocket of fat she has sticking out just below her belly, covered with white fur. She reached forward and resolutely slammed her paw down, claws extended, right where my hand had been before. I began apologizing profusely but this was not enough to satisfy her. In her little mind, she had just gotten mad, and therefore she had to look for anything and everything in her path to take that anger out on. I saw the fury in her eyes and immediately saw the necessity to back away so she wouldn't pursue me as her victim. Being in a curled position meant that the first thing in her path was her own tail. She apparently saw the tail and was so mad that it dared to twitch in her presence that she reached even farther and clamped her unrelenting claw down right on top of it.
     Whether she realized her mistake or not I don't know. But she was still not content and soon fell to unleashing her rage on the thin extensions around the edge of my blanket. Gripping the fabric in both her claws, she attacked it and bit into it as if it were a living creature which had just dared to insult her status as queen.
     She continued to do this for a minute, but before long she was sitting up and bathing, then, seeming to have had enough of the situation (or perhaps wanting more food), she got up and left.

Song of the Week 10/16/16

     I chose this song, "Blessings" by Laura Story, because a woman did a cover of it this morning at church and it's been stuck in my head all day because I've been working on this blog so much that I haven't listened to anything else. The lyrics are very reassuring and have a level of insight that most Christian songs don't achieve. I found this lyric video so you can see what I mean, but there's almost no need because Laura sings the words so clearly that you can easily understand them.
     The instrumental part takes a minimalist approach with only the piano creating a simple melody and giving most of the spotlight to the deepness of the vocal, while between the verses and at the beginning and end it appears for a short time to echo the melody. You can also hear the complexity of the piano which gets louder at the very end of the bridge to perfectly accompany the soaring voice of the singer. I love the extension of the last chorus as well. This isn't like most Christian songs on the radio, whose pop sound gets monotonous after a while. This one stands out a lot because of its uniqueness and it's one I still love.

     I finally figured out how to use the coding to make the embedding smaller. *sigh of relief* It was going to drive me insane having every video stick out twenty feet on the right and cover up my beautiful new tag cloud.

I'm Back

How do you get the text to center on this thing?

Ok, there we go.

Wait, do I want it centered?

Not really.

     Ok, that's better. Now let's take a minute and look at that fancy tag cloud over on the right. >>>

     Beautiful, isn't it? Yeah, I've been trying to get that on here for a year. So I'm very proud of it. I don't know if I want the numbers with the tags because it's more useful with them but prettier without them. I tend to go for usefulness though. Looks literally mean nothing.

     So, let's start with the reason I've been gone. Mostly it's because last year I got an account on a different platform and posted about my life in detail on there so, although this blog was vaguely on my mind, I didn't feel the need to do it here as well. Everything went perfectly there for about six months, and then some drama took place. It got fairly sorted out and I tried moving on with an optimistic approach (as is my natural custom), but the damage was pretty much irreversible and in the following three months my seemingly strong rope came unraveled one thread at a time until I realized (by the means of a Monstercat album, none else) I was hanging on for dear life. Then in one last blinding crash, every friend I'd made while I was there decided to turn on me (which was probably due to a post against transgenderism I'd made three months earlier), and in the space of three days I lost everything I had there. The reputation I'd built, the community I'd surrounded myself with, my plans for the future there...everything. I couldn't take it anymore, and I left.

     Even though that's been over for the better part of four months, it was a very mentally traumatic and damaging experience and the dust is still settling in my mind, so it took until this morning for me to think of this blog again. I immediately wanted to come back and renovate it, so I've been working on that for most of today. I went through all the settings, changed my description and profile, added the tag cloud, and then changed the tags on every single post to make navigation easier (no, I don't have OCD, but I am a perfectionist in some sense).

     I don't really know what I'm doing here next. I wanted to post something to revive the blog since I haven't posted since the 021 era, which blows my mind, and it's now 029, which also blows my mind (I live my life in Monstercat eras, quite literally). This post was actually a completely empty draft I made, for some reason, on May 28th, 2015, right before Contact came out. (There's a reason I put on my profile that Monstercat is my lifestyle. This stuff happens in my subconscious all the time, although most of the time it leaks through to my conscious and blows me away because it's been so long since Contact, etc.)

     But anyway, it's been almost two years since I've posted. And I'm not trying to stereotype, but when you're this age a lot changes in two years. I've learned a lot about myself. My mom told me that the early teen years are more about friends and the later years are more about finding yourself. I'm currently 14 (almost 14 1/2). I don't really care about friends (although that's fairly recent) and I'm pretty sure I've already found myself (although I still discover new things and I don't think that will ever stop). At this point I'm just living and being happy. And that should be fine.

     People misunderstand my motives for having no friends. I just don't really get the point when I don't want any. One of the last things I would do is blend into society because it's 'normal'. I'm far from normal. I've always been that way. Right now my entire life is Monstercat and I love it that way. I don't think that will change. EDM is what I was born for, and completely thanks to Monstercat (and the two people who indirectly led me to it), I found that out early. I could never repay them for making me the happiest person alive, but the least I can do is exercise my virtue of loyalty and support them. And that's not hard. I've been hooked on that label for well over two years.

     I try to keep a certain level of trustworthiness, and I really don't want to be the person that posts once a year saying they're going to post more often. So I'm going to be completely honest, I don't know how much I'll be posting here after this. It should be a fair amount if things go well and my mind doesn't decide to turn back. (My mind is very sensitive and I already feel weird trying to return.) I don't even know why I'm here right now. I don't know what's going on. But I want this blog to keep developing with me. I'll probably keep it for a long time. It's quiet here. And I like it that way.