Motivational Monday!

Hello blogging world!

Since it is Monday, I thought I would do a motivational post to help you get through the week! As far as I know, Louise, aka Sprinkle of Glitter came up with this idea, so I give her full credit :) Since I am a swimmer, I thought a swimming post would be best. It's a bit long, I know, but in my honest opinion, it just about sums up everything about swimming and why we swim. Enjoy!

In short, even though there are grueling practices, where you are on the verge of passing out of exhaustion or lack of air, angry coaches, who are constantly yelling at you, and when you are always getting complaints about how you smell of chlorine, swimming is amazing because of the thrill of the race, the strong friendships forged, and the fantastic feeling of being fit! That's it! I hope you have a great week :)

Dead Children and Don Preston

Hello blogging world!

Yesterday, as a part of my orchestra grade, my class, which consists of four people, was invited forced to participate in a performance with Don Preston, who is a member of the band The Grandmothers (they’re quite old). If you don’t know who he is(don’t worry, I didn’t know either), Here is a video for anyone who doesn't know who he is:

 One of the songs that we played was titled Dead Children. Creepy, right? Supposedly he wrote the song at the time when there were a lot of shootings, which resulted in a lot of innocent peoples’ deaths, including many children. He wrote this piece out of anger at the murderers. The song is basically a bunch of random sharps and flats that are played slowly, and then for improve, everyone first played a bunch of random notes really slowly, and then for cue two, a bunch of random notes as fast as possible. It sounded really weird, like music from a horror film. 

The second piece that my orchestra class participated in was a piece called A Jovian Life. There was no score, only a story written out on a page of paper. A person would read a part of the story, then we would play what we feel. We hadn’t practiced it before, so it was really strange to improvise based off of words. For most of the “song” we just ended up sitting there wondering if we were supposed to be playing or not, since our orchestra teacher wasn’t cueing us in, he was too into the improve. Overall, it was a really interesting experience, definitely one of those moments to add to the most strange moments of my life list. Only a few faculty members and students showed up total, which was disappointing for my orchestra teacher, but a relief for us :)

Have you ever heard of Don Preston or The Grandmothers? Do you know any other strange "improvisational" artists? Comment below :)

Back From the Dead

Hello Blogging World! 

This is just an information post to explain my absences sorry.

So, I don't know if anyones noticed, but I have been MIA for the past few weeks, so sorry about that! I was extremely busy before the holidays, with final tests and christmas stress, as I am sure happened to you to (or is it just an american thing)? After the new year started, I found it harder and harder to write a post, because I felt that it had to be great in order to make up for lost time. 

But since it is the start of a new year, I thought that in addition to my new years resolutions, I should also add some blogging resolutions. And what better way to stick to those than to post them online for the whole world to see right?(I seriously hope this isn't some huge mistake). 

Anyways, I thought it would be great to ask you what suggestions you have for this blog. I am totally new to this whole writing your thoughts and posting them online thing(can you tell ;), but a reason that I am doing this is to get better at writing, and to also get feedback! I also wanted to find a way to communicate with others, and meet  interesting and creative people around the world like yourselves! So please, if you read this blog, shoot me a comment down below! If you want to give feedback without leaving a comment, then email me at 

sparkofbrilliance42@gmail.com. I would love emails from all you lovely people, even if it is just a how is your day, or you just feel like ranting, anything is fine :)

Happy 2014!