Nihilism in the Choir*

As my readers know, the Finneytown Chorale received a 1 in class AA at contest last weekend. This means that we qualified to move on to state contest. After a vote, we decided that we'd try it. Unfortunately, today we learned that scheduling conflicts would make it nearly impossible to go on any of the four possible contest days (well we could still actually fit in two places, but our teacher doesn't seem to be trying very hard). Because of this, anarchy and nihilism will reign in the choir.

Anarchy was already a problem. My teacher has never demanded much respect from the students, so he hasn't gotten nearly as much as he would like. Surprise, surprise. But I won't rail against Mr. McKee's classroom "control" at this time. I won't spend much time describing anarchy since I've given some description in person to my readers in the past. I'm just sick and tired of non-stop chatter and nonsense. People talk while other people talk about why we shouldn't be talking all the time. It's immensely aggravating. It's not like we're the concert choir, full of people who just needed another credit. We're all talented musicians, and an extremely high percentage of us are honors kids and "good students."

Now that we're not going to contest, we have nothing to work towards (as some people see it). This is where the nihilism comes in. With no purpose/goal to work towards, there's no reason for the hooligans not to cause mayhem. Some of my classmates and I would consider it a good enough goal to simply create beautiful music and to share this music with our family and friends. However, about half of the problematic people are seniors with severe cases of senioritis. They really don't care about anything school-related at this point, even if that means being inconsiderate towards others. My teacher might have us do this awesome but incredibly complicated Eric Whitaker piece, and maybe that will inspire some to actually work. I have my doubts.

A few of my friends and I are actually considering how nice it might be to have a study hall fourth bell with AP exams approaching. I probably won't switch classes, though. I've stuck with it this far, so I might as well finish strong.


*My original title for this post was "Nihilism and Anarchy in the Choir" but "Nihilism in the Choir" sounds like an awesome band name, so I had to leave it that way.

Renaming the Blog

While reading my psychology textbook, I discovered that the term "antisocial" technically refers to something far different from what I had intended to communicate in my blog's title. According to my textbook, "antisocial personality disorder [is] a personality disorder in which the person exhibits a lack of conscience for wrongdoing, even toward friends and family members. May be aggressive and ruthless or a clever con artist." I don't think I want to associate myself with such a disorder. Even though the general public's definition of antisocial goes along with my former notion of the word (which was that antisocial people are uncomfortable around people or more comfortable alone), I'd rather change my blog's name now that I know the technical meaning for the term. I don't like my new title as much as I did the old one. I'll probably change it again when I find a word or phrase with a similar meaning that I like the sound of.

Tale as Old as Time

So this might sound a little sappy or whatever, but oh well. Maybe it's not as sappy as I'm thinking, since I generally put an unnecessary amount of effort into avoiding being sappy. I suppose a bit of over-sentimentality (or "spoony-ness" to use Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day from yesterday) isn't so bad every once in a while, if that's what this is. Ordinary sentimentality definitely isn't a bad thing in moderation. Now I'll stop rambling and get to the point so I can get back to work on less enjoyable things.

As my readers know, Ben's sermon this week was about God's omnitemporality. This morning during the sermon, the song "Tale as Old as Time" from Beauty and the Beast popped into my head. I thought about the song for a second and scoffed at the idea that the story of Beauty and the Beast was a "tale as old as time." But upon further reflection, I realized that the general idea of the story was in fact older than time. It was outside of time, even. God has chosen to love something decidedly unlovely: humanity (as we read in Romans 5:8). When I continued to think, I made yet another connection (well, actually I remembered a passage from Orthodoxy): not only has God chosen to love an unlovely thing, but because he loves it he's decided to make it into something lovely (as we read in Philippians 1:6). I can't help but thank God for all this. I've made my actual point in a few sentences, and yet these few facts are mind-boggling. I could (and should) spend quite a bit of time, or more appropriately all of my time, with these amazing, comforting truths in mind.

In Which The Man Tries to Prevent Me from Being True to Mine Ownself

I have a particularly low voice for a girl. My friend Mike has a particularly high voice for a guy. We've agreed that he'd do quite well as a first alto, and I'd do quite well as a first tenor, so we decided to switch voice parts for the senior ensemble song. He chickened out, but I still learned the tenor part and have been singing as a tenor for the past few weeks (and blending far more easily into the tenor section than the alto section).

On Friday, our conductor finally figured out that I've been singing with the guys. He had an issue with that, and told me to go back to the alto part. So now our formation is thrown off, I need to relearn the song (I know both parts, but I keep on finding myself singing an alto-tenor hybrid part), and I stick out. The alto part for the song is in the break in my range, which means I have to sing loudly to get a decent tone, and there are some notes on which I can't change my tone much to match my section or I'll lose the pitch (or they could just sing darker like they're supposed to).

I'm considering sticking it to the man and singing the tenor part anyway. He didn't even notice I had switched parts from listening - he noticed when I filled a tenor slot in the formation. I blend so well as a tenor that it's nearly impossible to tell by ear that there's a girl singing with them. I don't see why he's so adamantly against me being a tenor for just one song. I'll have to talk with him about it. If he's still against it, I'll just be an alto. I see no reason to pick a fight with my conductor just to prove I can.

Cheerful Childhood Delusions Dissolved

Once upon a time in a little place in southwestern Ohio, there lived a five-year-old girl. She and her family went on a vacation to Washington, DC, and she brought her baby doll along. It's name was Ria Baby. While in Washington, DC, Ria Baby was lost on the subway. The little girl was absolutely devastated. She got a cat (whom she named Ria Kitty and who would one day become her closest animal friend), but her excitement about her new companion could not efface her grief over the loss of Ria Baby.

Several months later, a package came in the mail for the little girl. Inside was her Ria Baby! Oh, the joy! Her mother told her that someone must have found it in Washington, DC, and known to send it back to her. The girl believed this wholeheartedly.

For years, the girl believed what her mother had told her. As she grew older, she began to wonder how on earth it could possibly have happened, but she retained a shred of her belief in the old story until one day when she was seventeen. On that fateful day, the conversation somehow turned to Ria Baby. The girl's mother was shocked to find that her daughter had not gotten to the bottom of the fantastic story. In reality, the mother had written to one of her cousins and asked them to send a Ria Baby. Ria Baby had merely been a McDonald's Happy Meal toy and had been replaced by an impostor for years.