Current Happenings

Preface:
I need to apologize to those of you who actually follow this blog. I'm a horrible blog sinner and I haven't updated in forever like all good little boy bloggers and girl bloggers should. For this, I apologize.

Getting You Up to Speed:
Family - I just got back from Washington D.C. where I went with my family to celebrate with my grandmother, Bettye Kimbrell, receiving the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. We are so very proud of her and what all she has accomplished with her quilting. D.C. was marvelous. I loved all the history that was there. We toured the Capitol Building and got to sit in the gallery in the House of Representatives, courtesy of Representative Spencer Bacchus. We also went to the National Archives and saw the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. This was a favorite moment of mine. We also toured the major monuments. I loved the Lincoln Memorial. It was awesome. We went to Arlington National Cemetary and walked around there. We saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers as well as The Eternal Flame at JFK's tomb. This was a very somber event. I really enjoyed spending time with my family in Washintgon.

School - Wow, I am super busy with classes this semester. Music History, Conducting I, and Theory III are seriously testing me. These three classes are not easy and require much study time. I also am in three performing ensembles which require much rehearsal. UAB Concert Choir - we are getting our repertoire ready for our trip to Cincinatti to participate in the NCO Convention. UAB Chamber Singers - are preparing for Video Games Live!, an event we will sing at with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. UAB Opera - This semester, I was chosen to be the Assistant to the Director for our production of Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors. I am also in the chorus for this opera and I have auditions for our spring production of Mozart's The Magic Flute that are coming up in a week or so.

Life - Things are going alright overall right now. Two weeks ago, I joined the Birmingham Concert Chorale, the official chorus of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. I rehearse with them on Monday nights and will perform with them on Handel's Messiah and Orff's Carmina Burana with the ASO. I am also being saught after for being hired as a paid musician for some local churches to sing in their church choir. Although the extra income would be nice, I have not agreed to any present offers just yet because I really do not want to leave Mountaintop. I love my church and I just cannot see myself not serving there right now. Btw... the new website for Mountaintop Community Church is awesome! Check it out at http://www.mountaintopchurch.com if you get a chance.

Well sports fans, I guess I'll wrap this blog entry up. Comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Later!

B

Love Song

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

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I love literature. I swear that if I wasn't a music major, I would potentially be an English major simply because I love to read classic literature and try and relate it to life.