Welcome to Lizatrmbn's blog. Your browser either has not received the stylesheets associated with this page or is incapable of rendering them. You might trying an internationally compliant browser such as Firefox or Safari (Mac only).
About Me...

Name : : Liza

Birthday : : April 13, 1984

Country : : United States of America

Star Sign : : Aries

I Love : : Music, art, writing, literature, food, books, good conversation, fashion, my cat, the mountains, martial arts, Tolkien...and of course, my family and friends.

I Hate : : When people pronouce the word nuclear "nuke-you-ler." And trashy reality TV.

Contact: : Contact Me

Photos : : Photos/Photos

News

UPDATE: Some people have been having trouble with comments! Please notice that there is now a lovely spam protection box. If you don't add up the two numbers, you won't be able to post your comment. Thanks to Ben for the addition.

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UPDATE 9/19: I have recently updated the list of blog links. I have removed those blogs which are rarely if ever used. However, if you would like your link to be reposted, I will do so if you just let me know.

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I've received some requests for accounts in the past. Most people probably will not be granted an account, but please don't take it personally! The good stuff is already public, and the private posts are usually just general, supplementary venting, most of which isn't appropriate for internet publishing.

SO...I'm basically just trying to say that I love you all, and don't feel bad that I'm not giving out passwords! C'mon, I'm female...you probably don't want to hear most of it anyway!

I Read...
Great Links
Current Poetry

For SAI

.

one glimpse is all it takes

and one textured husky laugh

and someone's slowly opening eyes

for one of them to know you

and to listen

.

they are aware of you

and of your presence, and of your complexity

just as they are aware of themselves

and their own hearts, deep and full and lush

.

and I know somehow that there are no women

like these women

with their strength packaged

into quick curious smiles

and steel hidden like ore in the soft lines

of their jaws

.

there are no women

like the ones who wear their loveliness

as banners flying in the Rochester wind

eyes craning over the land

fierce and shining with ambition

but with one hand always by their sides

clasping yours

Music to Hear Before You Die

Contributors: Liza, Hilary, Ali, Mike, Ben

1. Mahler (personal favorites: 2 and 6...well, honestly anything Mahler)

2. Mozart Requiem

3. Prokofiev (personal favorite: 5 and Romeo & Juliette)

4. Shostakovich (personal favorite: 7)

5. Resphigi Church Windows, Fountains of Rome, and Pines of Rome

6. Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis and Mathis der Mahler

7. Stravinsky Rite of Spring and Firebird

8. Brahms (personal favorite: 2)

9. Schumann (it has to be 3, come on)

10. Wagner Tannhauser and the last aria of Tristan and Isolde (yes, I know that an aria is not symphonic, but this one is too beautiful to leave out)...pretty all Wagner, honestly

11. Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique and Requiem

12. Bartok Concerto for Orchestra and Miraculous Mandarin

13. Schoenberg Chamber Symphonies, Transfigured Night, Gurrelieder, Variations, and Pierrot Lunaire (also not symphonic, but too essential to leave out)

14. Penderecki Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

15. Schubert (personal favorite: 8)

16. Bruckner (personal favorite: 8)

17. Vaughn Williams (personal favorite: London Symphony and Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis)

18. Early music by Hammerschmidt, Gabrielli, Tallis, Byrd, Lassus, Josquin, Gesualdo...somebody stop me

19. Bach (favorites: Art of the Fugue, cello suites - if we're insisting on symphonic rep, go with Mass in B minor...oh, and St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion)

20. Mendelssohn (favorite: 5)

21. Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition

22. Tchaikovsky (Personal Favorites: 6 and Overture 1812)

23. Beethoven (Favorites 5 and 9...but listen to everything Beethoven, really)

24. Bernstein Candide (full opera, seriously it's incredible), West Side Story, Suite from On the Waterfront

25. Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade, Russian Easter Overture

26. Copland (Favorite - Symphony No. 3) Fanfare for the Common Man, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid

27. Barber Adagio for Strings

28. Ravel Bolero, Daphnis et Chloe

29. Crumb Black Angels

30. Strauss Heldenleben, Also Sprach Zarathustra (and other tone poems, but especially these!)

31. Allegri Miserere

32. Dvorak (Favorites 7,8,9)

33. Ives (Favorite: Symphony No. 2)

34. Glinka Mazurka from A Life for the Tsar, Overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla

Archives

To read past entries, search for content with the field below, or click "Advanced search" to restrict entries to a certain time period.

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The full text of any result can be accessed by clicking the appropriate "comments" link.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

This is a Get To Know Liza Better Moment: I hate anise. I hate it more than just about any flavor on the face of the earth. My hate for raw tomatoes? Does not even come close. I know I'm already a picky eater - the whole no-pork/shellfish/cheeseburger thing eliminates a lot - but really. Anise. European licorice, that stuff in the bowl at the hostess desk at an Indian restaurant, any anise-flavored liquor...cannot handle it. Stomach-turning awfulness.

This was brought on by a recipe I found tonight on a food blog, of which anise played a singular role.

Ohmuhgawd. Anise. *Shudder*

9:22 PM - 1 comments
Monday, November 17, 2008

My nerves are a jangled sloppy mess. Last night I was wired, almost hyper, when Hilary and Greg dragged themselves all the way to Tennessee to pick me up. Rehearsal this morning was ok, but gradually, throughout the day, I've been getting more and more on edge. I forgot to rehearse with Robert at the church. My heartbeat keeps speeding up and slowing down.

But I should start at the beginning, and it'll be a cryptic beginning, because the internet is too cold a translator for the deeps that is a person's heart, and I'm sorry for that. Rich told me to leave the last entry up, even though I had planned to delete it. So it would be there, so it would be a reminder, of the terrible thing that almost happened to us.

So I drove myself to Charlotte. It was the first time I did the drive myself. I'm ashamed it was the first time. Four months in Indiana, four months with a car of my own and only now, on the brink, did I make the effort to get in and drive.

It was a good trip, a revealing trip. I drove home at night, emotionally exhausted. I made it over the Smokey Mountains without incident, drove through Nashville, and was cruising along Highway 24, lined with dense trees thick with the night, when I saw, directly in my path, outlined in shadow, a great, majestic buck. It did not see me until I slammed on the brakes, pumping them up and down, holding the wheel for dear life. In the slow motion before the collision, I was aware that I had to swerve out of the way, that I was headed toward the thick trunks of trees to the left, and that I was screaming. I swerved. The deer bolted, and then we collided with a smash of glass and smoke. The animal, glorious in life, hit the front of my car with a devastating thud, then hurtled into the middle of the road, flailing. Its legs were broken, and still I feel the sobs locked in me, not yet released, remembering its wide sad eyes, the way it dragged and dragged itself to the trees, the way it finally fell to the ground and, after a while, lay still.

I remember pressing the hazard lights over and over again. I remember getting out of the car and then getting back in to turn off the smoking engine. I remember dialing 911 with shaking hands. The wonderful family who stayed with me in the cold, until the police officer came to file the accident report and call the tow truck, and who drove me thirty miles out of their way so Hilary and Greg could themselves go out of their way to pick me up in Hopkinsville.

But I cannot get that deer out of my mind. The beautiful innocent animal that I made suffer, that I killed. Its desperate accepting eyes. The way it finally lay, quiet in the dark, not quite to its home among the trees, its great glorious antlers lit by the light of my flashers, blinking, blinking.

7:11 PM - 1 comments
Thursday, November 13, 2008

we could have been so happy together

11:45 PM - 0 comments
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Wait one second. An important Postscript was left out of yesterday's entry: Obama won the presidency. Not that anyone didn't know that, of course, but still, it's something worth writing about.

Now don't screw it up, sir.

4:33 PM - 0 comments
Monday, November 10, 2008

Looking forward to Kung Fu tonight, because I've finally watched Kill Bill (both of them, even though they were the edited-for-content TBS versions, which is all I can handle anyway, ok back to the topic, here), and I'm feeling kind of inspired. Plus I have my test for yellow sash on Saturday, and I'm a bit behind because of the tour.

Ah, the tour. I've returned to find the trees on 1st Street beginning to shed their leaves. Autumn is exiting the stage in a storm of pomp and color. The ground is coated in gold and the leaves that are still on the trees are firey red against their naked trunks. I'm wearing a white woolen sweater as I type. It stands out starkly against the light tan I acquired in Florida. Nevertheless I'm glad. I do not think I would be happy in a place with no Autumn, though it be fair and sunny all year. There is something thrilling about pulling on the first jacket of the season, about zipping up those tough black boots to prepare for snow; and it is equally glorious to go outside on the first day of spring, with arms swinging loose and bare in the warm sun, wearing sandals for the first time since October.

This isn't to say that we had a bad time in Florida. Quite the contrary, as they say. We performed one to two times a day, hence the lack of blogging, and gave lots of workshops to kids around West Palm. It was wonderful to perform at such a prestigious hall, with real stage lighting and an audience full of enthusiastic kids. We also had a lovely time exploring the city: dancing, going to concerts, finding the good places to eat, and of course, going to the beach.

Two things, however, stand out in my memory. The first was our experience working with inner-city kids. Though we walked out of those workshops feeling like we had been blindsided by tractor trailers, I'll never forget the incredible warmth in the eyes of those little girls, their small hands grasping for mine at the end of the hour, their moments of unsung brilliance that came out like shooting stars, brief and sparkling, when I least expected it.

The second was the night after our first performance. It was dark already, but we headed to the beach anyway, stepping over the low, white wall and sinking our feet into the cool sand. And there it was: the sea. Dark and beautiful, awesome and terrible, it crashed upon the shoreline as if, in the line between the city and the water, time shifted into eternity. The waves were gentle around my legs, the water warm and tropical. In the sky the stars gleamed, and two times, a meteor flashed and disappeared into the night. For some moments all of us transcended the barrier of time in which we stood. The salt wind was blowing in our hair. Our thoughts traveled to secret places. Our eyes looked outward, outward, to the great power and peace that is the sea.

6:50 PM - 0 comments