It starts the way all these stories tend to start.

By all these stories, I mean the ones where people talk about how they stumbled upon the random song/picture/show/epiphany/etc. this one time. It usually starts with a time stamp, a brief insight into what they were doing at the time and segues into how this random thing came into their lives. These stories are usually rambling in nature, and probably have nothing to do with the thing they found. And you, the listener/reader, will in all likelihood not remember the story but maybe the random thing might stick with you. One can only hope.

I have two such stories today. Two stories, two random finds.

The first one starts with me sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment, the oven clock reading a little after 4 in the morning. I had just finished a rather emotionally taxing episode of The Knick (great TV show, more on that later), tired but not wanting to go to bed yet. I briefly pondered whether to go on with the next episode of the show, but my tired eyes whispered loud protests. I like to listen to music as I fall asleep, so I turned on Soundcloud and started to drift off to sleep when this song came out of nowhere:

Turns out I had accidentally clicked on ‘Folk’ instead of Indie. I’m not a massive folk music fan, wasn’t particularly feeling folk-sy, but the song captivated me. I don’t know if I would call it folk, but it still worked for me. In fact, their whole Soundcloud page worked for me (maybe with the exception of the Coldplay cover), ‘Run’ being followed up by an indie song then a trip hop song, ending in two low-key, somewhat acoustic feeling songs.

I listened to them again this afternoon, just to make sure my sleepy self hadn’t prematurely taken a liking to something that my non-sleepy self wouldn’t have. Verdict: non-sleepy self was indeed still impressed. Lucky finds, oh the things we stumble on at 4 in the morning.

The second story is shorter than the first, I promise.

I was looking for bike horns online, to give to a friend who had recently gotten a new bike. Google recommended that I also look up ‘bike horn mambo no.5,’ because apparently a lot of people search for bike horn mambo no.5. Thinking what an awesome bike horn that would be (can you imagine, a bike horn blaring Mambo No.5?), I had no choice but to click on it.

I was close, but I got much, much more than what I was expecting.

I got this.

A whole album with song covers played on bike horns. Mambo No.5 was indeed on it, as well as Pokemon and La Cucaracha (of all songs). It was so annoyingly impressive. I mean, the work that went into this album must have been quite an incredible amount because the songs are very intricate. But the result is so abrasively enchanting and addicting in a weird way. In other words, my morning alarm for the next few months.

Here’s to the endless number of random things still waiting to be discovered.

Do you like music? How ’bout small local venues that let emerging artists of all kinds show and play their work? Yes? I thought so.

This Friday, September the 19th, The Yellow Barn is hosting a show to raise money for its own upkeep and repair, and you should be present IF you like new strange powerful ear-numbing sound, black lights, body paint, dancing and singing and being generally ECSTATIC about being ALIVE! The show will feature the bands (in no particular order) Ramaganja & Mitsubisiclipse, March of the Ant (who is lucky to have my good friend and extremely talented musician and vocalist Kat Steih as a part of their crew, and whose music I can personally vouch for when I say I’ve never heard anything like it, so fresh and sharp and wonderful), The Pineapple Army, and Watabou, beginning at 7:30 PM and ending when the music stops! The Yellow Barn is located at 416 W. Huron St., Ann Arbor, and the cover (remember, for the best of causes) is $7 upon entry. This is more than worth it because the venue has been supporting local creatives since the beginning of Time, as both a rad spot to sing and dance around as well as a swell place to show visual art. Last year’s Art & Design Senior Thesis Exhibition titled “The No-Show” was held in the very same place, to great success.

So we should keep these things going, right? It’s good to have places for young excited people to show their art and play their music, rrright? RIGHT! There will be good people, good sounds, and good vibes; it will be a GOOD NIGHT!

In case you missed any of the details, consult the below poster (created by yours truly) to review them in full unadulterated color –

Hope to see you there!

 

“That train was never meant to go anywhere.”
“Then for What purpose was it built? You can’t possibly suggest that it was built to be stationary, for if that is the case it would cease to be a train at all.”
“How can it cease to be a train? It most certainly looks like a train. Are you telling me that you are looking at it straight on with your eyes and you see not a train, but something else?”
“I see a building shaped like a train, specifically a café shaped like a train.”
“Now you are just being silly, prolonging this already pointless debate by nitpicking a single perspective, tugging on a single thread amongst many.”
“Well, one must pull the thread to unravel the truth.”
“Truth? My confused brother, you would only distort the knitted cloth that was already created. Stop being a nuisance, a child, and grow up will you?”
“Or could it be, that the ‘knitted cloth’ is just an illusion and my eager and fascinated tugging of the thread simply elucidates that which has avoided us?”
“Stop.”
“Very well then sis, by the way, what a wonderful sunrise.”
“What is better? Sunsets or sunrises?”
“Now who is being childish?”

I remember all of this. Buses pulling in and out of CC Little, quirky shops in the Nichols Arcade, deer crossing the street right in front of Bursley Hall. Even the weather—early September Ann Arbor weather is in a distinct category all in its own for me. I remember taking my first-ever bus down to Central Campus (a Commuter North bus) and being disoriented like no other, because both sides of CC Little looked identical. I had my first meal at Pancheros, because that’s where I ended up after a series of random turns that somehow felt right.

It all feels eerily familiar the second time, the same exhilarating sense of independence tinged with a slight shudder for the responsibility that accompanies it. But it’s different as well—I’m coming back to my home from another home. Ann Arbor is no longer a place full of unknowns, where I know I’ll be forced to search for answers that exist somewhere in this place. Instead, I know where to look for the answers (well, at least some of them) that I’ve carefully stored away in nooks and crannies. I know I’ll have more questions and more answers I’ll need to tuck away in places around town. I know my playing ground, and I can’t wait to start playing again.

A new beginning means changes—moving into an apartment instead of a dorm room is one of them. It’s an aspect of this year that I’m looking forward to the most, but one that will undoubtedly be very different. My freshman dorm experience as a member of the Michigan Learning Community called Living Arts was unique in that I had the chance to live in a hall filled with people constantly engaging with each other on many levels. I was always surrounded by many people who shared my interests, from art to theater to engineering. Living in an apartment after a year in Bursley will be a welcome change, but I will definitely miss the communal aspect of bustling dorm life.

New and improved schedule: after the infamous ‘Foundation Year’ at the Stamps school, I am so glad to have control over my classes that more accurately reflect my interests. It’s going to be an interesting semester, with my full load of classes ranging from Acting 101 to Linguistics to Programming and Data Structures. After my first week, I can safely say that I genuinely love all my classes and am excited to go to class every day. It’s going to get challenging as the semester goes on (I can already see the storm coming) but even that makes me more excited for how much I’ll have grown at the end of the semester.

So, here’s to the new, the old and the in-between. To a (somewhat) new beginning.

First: Hello again to this small pocket of the ever-vasting Internet and you wonderful people who actually read these things – it’s good to be back (on campus, in classes, to not spending eight hours a day at a full-time job, etc.)! It’s been quite the summer, full of travels and eye-opening experiences that I just CAN’T WAIT to share with the World Wide Web, whether it likes them or not.

The most significant thing I did this summer was spend a month in Ireland with fourteen of my fellow art-schoolers on our questionably mandatory study abroad experience. There were many many laughs and smiles, there was much gasping at rocks (SO MANY ROCKS) and mountains and infinitely green fields, there was a whole lot of personal expression and learning and all that good stuff, some tears, new friendships, ALL THE FEELS, and most importantly (for me at least), a new way of perceiving my surroundings, a new kind of vision that has grabbed me by the eyeballs and refused to let go.

This is more pleasant than it sounds.

What I mean is that I’ve been possessed by the sense that everything I see and hear and do and feel is NEW and EXCITING, each time I see a tree or rock or a person’s face, it’s as if I’ve never seen it before. This is due to the fact that most things I saw in Ireland were actually completely foreign and unfamiliar to me – the rocks that literally explode from the ground, literally everywhere you look, were not just rocks (a cab driver once threw those words at me on the way back to Ballyvaughan from the city of Galway, and I nearly threw a punch, the only thing stopping me being that it would have been left-handed, him sitting on the right side of the car, of course) – but in my ecstasy of adventure and freedom, these rocks became a visible, physical connection to the Earth I come from, we all come from, the same Earth that we will return to in time (too morbid?). It was the most inspiring, comforting, eye-opening experience of my life, and this is one of the few things I now write that is not exaggerated. I spent a month waking up as if I’d just opened my eyes for the first time. Every solitary rock amidst miles and miles of drystone walls had been given meaning, had the traces of ancestors’ fingerprints written all over it; every leaf and twig and slug in the road became these glowing meaningful important things that I couldn’t bear to overlook, to ignore, to forget – in short, I heard the hallelujahs of Mother Nature, saw her hands working the land, in a constant state of creation and destruction, the whole process beautiful and amazing to me.

I think it’s easy to get stuck in our daily routines and comfortably familiar experiences – the faces of friends and family we know and love, the places we feel connected to, restaurants with “usuals”, streets with names we know, beds that smell like home – these are the things I definitely missed while abroad. But at the same time, if we mistake routine for knowledge and wisdom, and let comfort veil our eyes to the new and exciting things that happen to us every day, our surroundings and experiences lose the meaning that I now try to see in literally EVERY thing. This is not me saying I’ve achieved instant Buddhahood, or am now walking around more “enlightened” than you beautiful people who’ve happened to come upon this digital collection of words, hell, maybe checking this site is part of your own routine and you’re on here daily. MORE POWER TO YA! I’m not even saying that I feel the same excitement and wide-eyed amazement at everything, every moment of every day. I don’t. All I’m saying (bear with me for meta-cheesy feels here) is that if we stop every once in a while to pick up a leaf or rock off the ground and wonder how it got there, or think about how we would describe a sunset or trees waving in the wind or the infinite ripples of currents in some body of water (even the less-than-Mighty Huron River) to someone who has never seen them before, that maybe we could learn to appreciate it all a little more, and learn that our puny human problems are not so bad, that we will keep on living as we always have, us little piles of up-sitting mud who are lucky enough to get to sit up and look around for a while (thanks Vonnegut). All I’m saying is that it’s nice to get excited about things, about life, and to have that excitement come from inside; it’s nice to think of everything as new and fresh and meaningful because it IS, nothing is the same twice, I myself am now a different person than I was when I started writing this, metaphorically and physiologically, my atoms are new, they are excited to run my hand along the bark of that tree I’ve passed daily for a week and a half, knowing it too is not the same as it was the last time I saw and felt it.

This has been a rant. Long story short: I had fun in Ireland. I’ll probably be posting about it for a while. Hope you don’t mind.

🙂