#To be fair I've always liked poems you can hear the music in- we are a nation raised on Burns and bothy ballads after all

[the-busy-ghost]

Finally learnt what a dactyl actually is and I’m going to have to take a moment to lie down 

#I mean I had a vague idea but when I read poetry it was rarely for technicaly/English lit reasons #And more for either enjoyment or historical relevance #So internally my brain went 'Yeah yeah it's dactylic verse like Homer whatever now onto the historical context and some juicy alliteration' #And didn't have time to probe any further #But I'm sorry I'm in love #Excuse me while my heart cries out for language #The words are waltzing #I realise I must sound very stupid to have got to the age I am and with the level of education I officially have and not know these things #But I'm doing my best to make up for the shoddy comprehensive education which was not helped by my lazy depressed distracted teenage self #So please just let me enjoy this discovery rather than judge #To be fair I've always liked poems you can hear the music in- we are a nation raised on Burns and bothy ballads after all #But I suppose I never thought to look up the names (other than a general awareness of iambic pentameter via Shakespeare) #Going dancing with Robert Browning be back soon

[hoseeok]

thank you @kimtaegis 🥺 !!! I rarely interact from this blog so this makes me really happy >.<

Who is your favourite k-pop group? bangtan!!! <3

Which member sparked your interest first? jimin!! i literally heard his voice in a snippet of a song from a samsung ad and it wouldn't leave my mind bc I wanted to hear it again... the rest was history. truly the pied piper

Who was your first bias? jimin<3

Who is your current biases? namgiseok🤍, but most of all hobi

What makes them your current bias(es)? I love hobi's passion, his optimism and kindness, his fairness and care for everyone he meets in different ways. we also have the same laugh, which always makes me happy. he is just SO GOOD you know? he (and bangtan really) brought so much joy in my life, they keep making me love life more (prev you wrote things so true about tae TvT)

yoongi's just special. he has a unique connection to whoever can relate to his music, and again, he is immensely kind and emotionally wise. he brings comfort the way someone who gets it, and loves you despite the pain, can. this counts for the three of them, but I admire their writing so much. also he's just so so resilient and loving.

namjoon is a lot like me in the way we believe life's beauty is something to draw comfort and joy and strength from. when i see art, when i read a book, when i admire a beautiful sky, I am living the way I should, because I am made better by it, and because it makes me want to cherish and preserve this beauty and the people around me to witness it. we share a love for art in all its forms, but also the same penchant for melancholy, for reflection. i feel immensely seen whenever I read one of his letters.

to be fair, I also love a lot of other groups, though not with the same intensity as bangtan. my favourites are: skz's rapline, in particular han jisung, yeonjun and taehyun and soobin, yeosang and hoongjoong, seonghwa, jungwon, woozi...

Who is your bias wrecker? the rest of bangtan!! I could write poems about each of them. I also (stupidly) think I get seokjin the way few people could, and love vminkook with the intensity of a thousand suns. i've been missing tae a lot lately

Which members are you currently obsessing over that aren't your bias/ bias wrecker? I miss taehyung and jungkook SO MUCH. I miss taehyung's unique self, even and especially when he just disappears to do his things and then goes live for 14 seconds, and i miss seeing jungkook just being the marvelous unique artist he is. it is especially unfair he can't do what he loves rn

When did you first discover the group? september 2020, shortly after dynamite had been released! one weekend of extensive content consumption and I was done for <<<<<< OMG SAME. the contribution youtube did to my baby army era... but yes, the dynamite samsung ad got me (though my sister had been trying to make me love them since ON was released, she got a 6 months start)

Have you ever been to one of their concerts? ahahhahahahahhah no.

What are some of your favourite songs by the group? answer: love myself, mikrokosmos, just one day, 24/7=heaven, outro:tear, crystal snow, seesaw, mama... i'm a big softie at the end.

i don't know a lot of people here... maybe @hoshifromkpop ? if you want? and whoever sees this u-u

#tag games

[jdenvs3000w24]

Nature in Music, Music in Nature

Hello again fellow bloggers!

This week our lecture material was based on a musical perspective on nature interpretation. I brought up Vivaldi's Four Seasons for the art and nature interpretation a few weeks ago post. So as an additional point for nature interpretation through music, I recommend scrolling down my blog a bit and checking out that post. 

Today I went on a walk through Crane Park here in Guelph, it's one of my favourite spots in the city to clear my head and enjoy nature. It's a place where I get to enjoy the music of nature, the sound of the babbling brook, the birds chirping and the bullfrogs croaking. This music of nature soothes my soul in a way nothing else does. Because music is subjective, any combination of sounds could be musical so long as our brain interprets it as such. So when I sit on a granite boulder and listen to melodies of sea birds, whistles from the wind, and the rhythmic percussion of the waves hitting the shore, I bask in this natural symphony and enjoy life. It's quite therapeutic! 

Now let's dive into the alternative view, where is nature in music? Well first, some back story first. I spent a fair number of years singing in a choir, it was a pretty major part of my life at the time. In that choir, we sang masterworks from the likes of Beethoven, Mozart, and Vivaldi, but we also sang some madrigals each Friday. In the madrigal choir, we sang songs where each voice part sang a different counter melody not any of us truly taking the full spotlight, but each putting together one whole song. A notable example is the silver swan, one of my favourites. The lyrics are as follows, 

“The silver Swan, who, living, had no Note, when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat. Leaning her breast against the reedy shore, thus sang her first and last, and sang no more: ‘Farewell, all joys! O Death, come close mine eyes!  More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise.’”

This song, while it was likely to have been written as a British social commentary at the time, always evokes a sense of nature when sung. I've linked a YouTube video down below so you can listen to this short song and hear for yourself what I mean.

Nature is used as inspiration for many musical works, many poems and later songs tell the story of some natural event put to song, whether it be a large catastrophic storm or the fight between a bear and a moose or something like that. 

To answer the final question on our prompt, anytime I hear a Great Big Sea song or something with a little Irish/Scottish flare, I get reminded of home, on the rock shores, listening to the waves. That is my paradise that desperately want to return to.

#Youtube

[gingerteaonthetardis]

📚 ✨ bookworm ask ✨ 📚

i was tagged by @saecookie to answer some questions about my favorite thing... books! so, here we go...

how many books are too many books in a series?

honestly, i like a good old fashioned trilogy. i've never been a huge fan of those sprawling series that go on indefinitely; that usually feels like a money grab to me. self-contained stories with a distinct beginning and end are my jam!

how do you feel about cliffhangers?

i'm ambivalent, i guess. it depends on the story and how much i've enjoyed it overall—that, more than any kind of dramatic cliffhanger, is what will push me into reading the next book. if i'm not super engaged, though, a big cliffhanger will just irritate me.

hardback or paperback?

hardbacks for the bookshelves, paperbacks for everyday use. i have a mixture of both. certain books that are important to me, i'll definitely get in hardback, though.

least favorite book?

probably any of the ones i had to read for school. i always hated the epic poems—beowulf, in particular, bored the absolute hell out of me. stories about men usually do. but hey, maybe i should give it a chance as an adult?

love triangles, yes or no?

no love triangles, only triads. if a character has two hands, there's nothing wrong with a partner for each of them. but triangles for the sake of drama? please, no.

the most recent book you just couldn’t finish?

you know, i've only just recently started allowing myself to not finish books, even ones i absolutely hated reading. but it occurred to me that life is short and i don't owe anyone my attention, so now i'm genuinely pretty picky. anyway, i recently abandoned a c*urt of th*rns and r*ses after about two chapters. i tried it because it got so popular, but that shit was really not for me. ugh.

a book you’re currently reading?

on beauty by zadie smith. so far, i'm really enjoying it—she has a talent for creating distinct character voices.

oldest book you’ve read?

the epic of gilgamesh, probably.

newest book you’ve read?

iron widow by xiran jay zhao, which is a fun read that just came out this year. easy to get through, but still dramatic and angsty and engaging. plus: polyamory! i highly recommend it, particularly in audiobook form.

favourite author?

jane austen is obviously up there, because she inspired my childhood love of reading. robin wall kimmerer is up there, since she's written the books that have changed me most as a person. oh, god, and ursula k. le guin. her books inspire me every time i read them, without fail. and n. k. jemisin is definitely a favorite, too; she understands how to build worlds you can get completely lost in. okay, i'm stopping—

buying books or borrowing books?

both! i buy books i know i'll love or that i've read before and borrow the rest from the library. i wish my friends lived closer, though, so we could do book exchanges; i love lending people books.

a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love?

the g*ldfinch. though, to be fair, i didn't finish it. this book was actually what motivated me to stop forcing myself to read stuff i didn't like! i couldn't take the constant, churning anxiety. and i get bored of reading books about boring rich people, which is her m.o. the secret hist*ry was enough for me, thanks.

bookmarks or dog ears?

bookmarks for hardbacks (though a "bookmark" can be a receipt or scrap paper or a tissue, depending on whether my trusty aragorn bookmark—with the little tassle and replica of the one ring hanging off the end—is around). dog ears for paperbacks.

a book you can always reread?

i have several! firstly, absolutely anything jane austen, i can drop everything and reread. but circe by madeline miller and the tombs of atuan by ursula k. le guin are probably my most reread books of the past few years.

can you read while listening to music?

not usually. i have read while listening to classical music before, but that's about the most i can handle. i tend to get so immersed i can't really hear anything anyway, so there's not much point.

one pov or multiple povs?

it really depends on what the writer's purpose is in having multiple perspectives and how skillfully they're handling it. jemisin is one of my favorite authors to play with multiple points of view.

do you read a book in one sitting or over multiple days?

depends on the length of the book, but i usually like to stretch stories out across multiple days. if i read it in just one sitting, i find that i retain less of it, like crunching before a test.

tagging (without pressure or expectation): @howlonghaveyoubeenseventeen, @loupettes, @lotsofthinkythoughts, @finefeatheredfriend, and @sunnibits, along with anyone else who might be interested!

#tag game #abbey.txt #on reading