Entry posted by Jean Valjean
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Today I dressed up as Inspector Gadget. He was the only thing to come to my mind since I hadn't planned anything ahead of time and I had to make do with the regular clothes that I already have. Fortunately, I buy some rather interesting clothes. Take, for instance, a cream colored fedora and trench coat. Even though the Inspector didn't wear one, I put on a bowtie because it gave the outfit the feel of a children's cartoon.
What was really cool was that everybody could get who I was. I knew that it wouldn't be too hard because I had worn these clothes before, sans the bowtie, and people would call me Inspector Gadget without thinking about it. It's was awesome when people just called me by my character's name instead of my own name the whole day.
Asides from having what was apparently a good idea for Halloween, considering that I put almost no effort into it, the other significant thing about today was my first choir performance. I have a good voice. I have never been in choir before. People were always shocked that I wasn't in it. They said I should. I said I wouldn't. Then the choir president gave me a challenge, and I, under the influence of testosterone, made up my mind instantaneously that I would go out for the first time.
Although I really didn't go out for concert choir. "Mixed choir", which only meets two times a week and since just four songs, was my best bet, because otherwise I didn't have any study halls for first semester.
The songs were okay. The only one that I really liked was "Bata Yetu", which I love because I play Civilization IV and knew most of the words. My least favorite song was "The Promise of Living". My, oh my, could I go on a rant about that one.
"The Promise of living, the promise of growing, the promise of ending is labor and sharing and loving."
First, what does the song mean by "the promise of ending"? And are you really promised sharing and love? I agree that we're promised labor, since nothing in life is guaranteed except for death and taxes, and therefore labor. But sharing and loving? I can see how loving is a purpose of life, but if we're talking about the purposes of life, then labor isn't part of the big three. This was just one big stack of superlatives that the lyricist picked out because they sound good, but otherwise don't directly correlate and don't come together in this song to create a unifying theme.
Oh, and you're going to love what the opening spiel introducing the song said. If I can paraphrase:
"We asked all of the choir students what this song meant to them [translation: No, they didn't]. We all said that life was full of hardships and pretty much sucks ["Sucks" makes it sound like something a high school student might actually say, but they were just putting words into our mouths]. Yet, we all agreed that amidst everything, the guaranteed principles of labor, sharing, and love are the three highest principles of living [Most of us did not agree]. When we die and are gone, everything is as dust. Life is brief and has little comfort, but we all have the opportunity to leave behind the three sole virtues of labor, sharing, and love, to bring us peace in our souls [unless you're a Matoran, in which case the three universal virtues are unity, duty, and destiny, which have a little more correlation]."
They said the three virtues of labor, sharing, and loving quite a bit. Hey, I'll agree with loving, but I really think that if you get a deep look at humanity, labor and sharing can probably described as assets of other, purer virtues. I don't feel that it really gets to the crux of the matter. Nor is it the most powerful of the songs, so I don't understand why it was supposed to be the climax of the entire show. Nobody did.
There was also the issue that the song was very complicated with five different parts singing very fast, so I messed up in a couple of places. At least I had over a hundred other people to blot those mistakes out.
So the song just sucked.
It was nice to hear the concert choir and their additional songs for the first time, too. I didn't know that they sang a Dies Irae, nor that our concert would include some dancing and stuff like that. It was all very cool. I might go out for concert choir next semester, although I still have to think a lot about whether or not the cool extra music is worth it or not.
No, I did not go trick-or-treating. I think that I will use the special atmosphere of this night to contemplate new writing ideas.
Happy Halloween to all, and to all a good fright!
Your Honor,
Emperor Kraggh
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