Validated! (in a different sort of way)

Grace is the craziest thing and why God lets me meet the people I do, I will never know. Today is the new year for over a billion people across the world, and a friend of mine, Hien, (on the far right) invited me to a Vietnamese New-Year party. This semester has been a bit rough for me so far, but I can honestly say that last night was one of the best times I have had out East. I had a blast hanging out with everyone at the table, from talking about Greece with Gregorius and having a differential equation contest with Thinh to finally playing my pennywhistle for Hien. The company was fantastic. The food was amazing. I have never eaten crab legs that tasty, and the spring rolls were totally sw33t!

Lastly, it has been confirmed - Vietnamese is officially the hardest language for an English speaker to pronounce. It bobs up and down so fast, and you make notes from low in your throat to way up in your head. It reminds me of a bubbling brook.

The tragedy of idolizing music

This is long. The importance of the paragraph is inversely related to its offset in the vertical direction. I mean, the last paragraph is the most important, and its importance declines the farther up you go.


So I got 2 of the three CD's I ordered today. I'm still waiting for the $30 dollar one, but these were by the same composer. I heard a couple songs off of each of these, and I really thought they were gonna totally rock. Darn it... really good music is sooo good, but it is sooo hard to find. And I really wanted some good music to add to my collection, cause it's been a while. I mean, the last CD I got that I sort of liked was... X&Y... I think. Trying to remember what I got recently. It was good and all, in a very "normal good" sense. But it wasn't like Habib Koite or anything. I haven't listened to X&Y very often anymore, but I still regularly listen to Habib's albums 5 years after I got them.

Back to these 2 CD's. Guess what? They totally suck! That's right! There's probably like 5 songs I'll listen to, out of a total of, uh, about 80 songs (not kidding, they both had 2 disks, each with 20 songs on them.) 5/80 = not a great batting average. The last soundtracks this guy did were so good, I could listen to them all day even if the game sucked. They had actual musical merit. They had this excellent tension going on in them... I wish I knew more about music. But you know how just about anything in a mixolydian or dorian scale sounds better than in a major scale? It's because of the tension it brings into the music. And that was what was so great about all of his earlier stuff. He was creative with modes, and his melodies were much simpler and catchier, although some were complex, but they were complex without losing the listener.

95% of the stuff I'm listening to (right now, as I type even) has all the tension cut completely from the music, and that's why it sucks. I guess the earshattering highs of the synth accordion might contribute as well.

So, uh, why did I say this post was about "Idolizing music?" Seriously, music moves us more than anything else I can think of. If I could compose music instead of paint, I would do it in a heartbeat. My head is filled with images I could paint, and I can bust out a drawing of one of these no problem. But with music, I don't have my own invented melody in my mind, I have the melodies of a thousand other songs randomly playing. I have an idea of how a song should be, but no clue how to make it that way. Most music is... ok. I listen to most music and think, "I can see that someone might like to listen to it. But that person is not me." Some music is good, and I like it a lot, but it doesn't have it. (it, for the moment, is some un-catagorizeable - possibly through lack of musical education - element of a song which paralyzes the individual Tim Marston. it's may vary according to individual.) But then, there are are certain songs that are in a catagory of their own... they have an element of something that is so perfect, it awakens some incredible desire in the listener. But it always misses the perfection mark. And I feel like, because I can see the flaw, or atleast, know it is there, somehow that means I could make the perfect song. So I try to write the perfect song, and it is a complete disaster. I end up plunking around on my guitar for about half an hour, then give up in complete depression. "Song writing is not for me," I realize. So, instead, I hope someone else has my same it, and simultaneously has the gift of composition. I spend so much time trying to find this music. And I always think I've found it with some new CD. Then I listen to it, and... sigh.

This is the one encouraging thought from this all - I wonder if this desire for the supremely beautiful... something... is meant to draw us towards God. A lot of times, I associate God with such crappy aesthetics and I forget that all beauty is found in him. When I do a cross-reference search in my brain of God and Beauty, purple sound-absorption panels come up (don't ask me why), along with speakers hanging from the ceilings of cavernous hexagonal shaped rooms with wooden pews, stone cathedrals, dots hoping on projected images of praise songs, gorgeous stained glass windows, snow on pine trees, and black sure Shure SM-58 microphones. A postmodern list if there was one. But the point is, what should have come up doesn't. What should have come up is this unfulfilled desire for the gorgeous. When I think of God and beauty, what should come to mind are these things which are so incredibly gorgeous, that it's like the fingerprint of God, almost, but not himself. Almost like a shadow of the real beauty which HE has and possesses. I am starting to think this way but I'm not quite there yet. But I bet that if we really truly believed that God is the most beautiful, that all the desires for beauty are found in him, that would completely change how we related to him.

my good friend Josh

This is my great friend Josh. I just caught up with him last night. He is one of my best buddies, and has been a great friend at the roughest times. So I though I'd post some cool pictures of our hiking trip this last summer. We were standing at the top of a cliff above some rapidly moving and very cold water. He said "we are gonna climb down and stick our hand in the water." I said "no, that would be crazy." But we both ended up doing it and I took the quick way back up and took a picture of him from the top, trying to find some crazy alternate route. (That's the bottom picture.)

...

I was looking through some of my older stuff, and found this. I think it's like 4 years old cause I did it the week before my Sophomore year at SPU started, for a girl. My picture subjects used to be a bit more phantastical back then, but I still like the picture.

East and West

About worship

When we sing worship songs that have lines like:

"I'm raising my hands to worship you"
or
"I'm on my knees praising you"
or
"I'm dancing now, cause I feel so much joy"

I've always wondered something: why don't people do what they are singing? It's like somehow the fact that we are singing "I'm on my knees worshiping you" means we don't actually have to do it, cause, uh, we're singing and somehow that means we don't have to do what we are saying. I dunno, I've stopped singing lines like that cause I either have to do what they say, and look real weird for being the only one in the whole church doing it, or not do what I'm saying I'm doing and be lying. I guess the best thing would be to be like David and "dance naked before the lord."

The mind altering power of the Ipod

As I was returning from an unsuccessful attempt at finding a decent friday night open-mic (which seem to have gone to crap these days), the alley I was walking down seemed darker and more mysterious than usual. Almost as if a photo of it would have been artsy and deep. You know, like those photos of things like dead trees, rusty fire hydrants and ... dark mysterious alleys. Even the drunken clumps of students stagering down the street and sitting on the sidewalks achieved never before seen levels of profundity. Then it dawned on me, the reason for this transformation. The scene was unfolding (or staggering) in front of me to the hauntingly eerie choral piece "The Miracle" from xenosaga.

I can't wait for someone to jump me now, cause I'll just flip on my battle scene music and kick total @$$. except I might have to wait a while for that to happen in state college. You never know, a guy can get lucky.

The CD of great price

I just spent $30 on a CD with only 8 songs in it.

"Crazy!" you say, and "surely you jest!" But it is true. Finding the rare and out of print copy of such a liquid smooth synthesis of melodic Irish and Japanese folk music composed by the one and only, Yasunori Mitsuda, happens only once in a life time. Trust me on this one: music is worth the price.

"Deep Thoughts" with Tim Marston, #2

In the event that you need to operate power tools around flailing, heavy machinery (and being totally hip isn't an absolute must), it is best to remove one's ipod.

The ipod is supremely gorgeous, Paula, Josh, Marian, Jacob, mom and dad. I got it working last night. Thanks so much guys! I can now have the sound-track to my life that I always wanted: Mist Over the Xioa and Wiang River!! (Just kidding about that last part. I think.)

Journey to the Pond of Heaven

To add to my artistic schizophrenia...

Pandora round 2

So while I still think Pandora is great and all, after a couple days of experimentation I have discovered that most of my music library is not in the music genome project. I suppose I was foolish to expect it to have such artists as Ten Chinese, Origa, or The Seatbelts. The fact that artists like Dispatch and Ben Folds pop up when I try to find matches to Sufjan should have been a dead give away that this wasn't as comprehensive as I had hoped it would be. But who can fault them, I mean seriously - the amount of music available to the public is almost incomprehendibly large so I guess I'll cut them a little slack.

By the way, since this is supposed to be an art blog, I'll get back to posting art. The deal is, I haven't been feeling the vibe, of late. So I'll put up some recent to older stuff for your viewing pleasure.

p.p.s - seriously - if anybody's reading this I would like to know.

Website of the week

www.pandora.com

Type: Customizeable radio station

Purpose: Total sw33tn3ss

How it works: Input an artist, and it forms a customized radiostation of artists with similar traits. You will be hard pressed to stump this site, it is linked to music genome project so it has a massive library. Underneath the currently playing song is a description of the music and why it was picked. The music is sorted by such traits as instrumentation, rythmic and syncapation, melody, vocals and a host of other things. I have no idea how it works so thoroughly and have been impressed so far.

Big heap thanks to fellow acoustician Dan Valente for pointing me to this website

Gruel: It's what's for breakfast!

A brief foray into the high art of digital photography

...

I did this last weekend. It was fun to paint but sort of rushed, and I might do it over again.

"Deep Thoughts" with Tim Marston

As I munched on my cereal this morning, I pondered: food manufacturers normally cut corners to save money so how come the size of the dates (expensive ingredient) in my Great Grains breakfast cereal keep getting larger?

Tune in next time for more intriguing questions.

Nativity

This was a set of cards for my mom and dad. They were individual cards and painted individually, but the way I made the borders and edges is that they don't look right unless they are put next to eachother.

Mother and Child

This was for my older sister, I was trying make the dress look like it was glowing but I still have a lot to learn about paint flow I guess. I really like the luminosity of the Aurolian&Burnt Sienna combination, against the dark background though.

Mushroom hunting

This was for my little sister, cause she and her fiance have a thing for 'shrooms.

...

This was one of my favorite cards this year

Painting a Picture

Here is the typical process I go through when making a painting: I pencil sketch a bunch of ideas down in a sketchbook. If I like an ideal, I will (more or less) copy it to a piece of watercolor paper and cover the lines with brown or black ink. Then I erase the picture, leaving only the pen lines and a clean outline of the image. Then I will cover the people and snowflakes with removable masking fluid, and paint a background wash, burnt umber and french ultramarine in this case. Lastly, I remove the masking fluid, re-ink the areas that have been washed out by the masking fluid, and paint the figures.

up and coming

I apologize for the lack of response to anybody who posted. Since coming home for break I haven't spent the time updating this website, opting instead to do stuff w/my family, newly engaged sisters, and painting cards. I have several stuff to update, but I want to do it on a computer where I have a more accurate idea of the type of image editing I need to do on the files. Happy New Year!


Hmmm... On a side note I'm listening to a Clancy Brothers record right now:

"I'll eat when I'm hungry I'll drink when I'm dry and if moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die"

"Whiskey you're the devil, you've led me astray, over hills and mountains and too a metal gate... Whiskey you're my darlin', drunk or sober!"

that's irish music for ya.