a little whinge about pretending to be self sufficient

i can't decide whether i like living alone or not. i love having my own space, filling it with my own things, eating what i want, doing what i want. i like not having to share a bathroom with anyone. i like coming home and everything being just how i left it. i like the quiet but i like to be able to make noise when i want. i like being able to have people over anytime. i like to be able to play the piano without anyone listening.

but sometimes i get bored. and lonely. it's horrible when you're sad or sick because there's no one around to know or care about it. i love cooking but i end up eating all kinds of crap because i forget to start cooking until i'm way past hungry and then just need to eat anything (why is it easier to remember to cook when someone else is around?). sometimes i wonder why i need all this space. i never have any money. then i start to wonder what the point of living on my own is. am i just trying to prove i can do it?

i don't want to get a flatmate who is a friend because i end up resenting them for stupid, petty things. i don't want to get a boarder because i don't want to share my space with a complete stranger. so i kind of want people around but not living in my space.

i have become a selfish hermit. i'm not good at staying in touch with people either, even when i miss them. not sure why that is. i always wanted the kind of place that people would just drop into, come round for a cup of tea on a whim, that sort of thing. but i don't think people really do that; you seem to have to plan everything six months in advance.

and i seem to be getting agoraphobic or something - i find it really hard to go out these days. it's also turning up places on your own, i've always found that really hard. and also i get really tired so fast that i worry about going out on my own and not being able to get home if i conk out (lack of money means i can't just jump in a taxi like i used to). usually when i do go out i have a good time, but actually leaving the house has become a problem.

so come round sometime. i have lots of tea and space. :)

more custard

But the richness of Mr Loewe's score makes My Fair Lady romantic despite Shaw's anti-romantic disclaimer. In an epilogue to Pygmalion he said that Eliza is too strong minded a girl to fetch Henry Higgins' slippers for the rest of her life. She will marry someone - Freddy - who will wait on her.

Brooks Atkinson, from the liner notes of the soundtrack

"Marry Freddy! Ha!"

i threw a custard in her face

i've had 'i've grown accustomed to her face' from my fair lady going through my head for the last few days (mainly because i downloaded a sermon by mike raiter called 'i've grown accustomed to his grace') - just remembered i had the soundtrack on CD, so have been listening to it this morning.

i know the ending of pygmalion is different, and eliza marries freddy, but the film/musical has her going back to professor higgins. he has just been ranting and reflecting on her absence, in the song i mentioned above - it's a great song. mum said (and i agree) that it reflects something of the way relationships really can be, where you love the person but can be incredibly frustrated by them, where you want them around but they can drive you insanse, etc. so you think, oh henry's been boorish and unpleasant but he actually does love her! (so much better than freddy, who hangs around on the street outside her house singing 'on the street where you live'...that's just a few steps away from stalking, buddy)

and then eliza returns. she goes back to this man who, even though he has just realised he loves her, greets her with "where the devil are my slippers?"

and the music soars. and everyone smiles. yet imagine the sort of relationship eliza and henry would have had - it would have been dreadful!

it makes me wonder - when you get to the end of watching, what do you actually want for eliza? what is the musical saying? with her upbringing, daughter of a working class drunkard, should she expect more than to be picked up by whatever man chooses her? thanks to henry, she theoretically has more options than she did before her education. and she still has a strength and resilience about her, having had to cope with less than ideal circumstances her whole life. so do you want her to be with the obnoxious, arrogant professor higgins, with the drippy freddy eynsford-hill, or on her own? (and hey, you might not care at all, but this is my blog, ha)

those old musicals are very manipulative. with a few major chords and soaring strings over the final scene, they make you think it's a happy ending with everything resolved, yet...you have to wonder how much these things subconsciously warp one's expectations of life.

Christian hedonism

i started reading Desiring God by John Piper last night (was supposed to read ch 1 & 2 for my ethics class tonight and managed the preface and introduction...d'oh). the book opens with the line "This is a serious book about being happy in God". i like that, and the way he ties together joy and worship and suffering and perseverance and makes his argument for Christian hedonism very convincing (okay, so i've not read that much of it, but so far i'm hooked...and if you're intrigued by the term 'Christian hedonism' which might seem like an oxymoron to you, get the book and read the explanation). i also like the fact that he quotes CS Lewis a lot. :)

i love it when you start a book and it just clicks with you, and the anticipation of reading the rest of the book makes you want to stop doing everything else until you're finished. don't remember getting many set readings in uni courses that made me feel that way.

i've read it before somewhere, but Piper quotes CS Lewis from The Weight of Glory (and I love this quote):

...if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

CS Lewis quoted in Piper, John, Desiring God, IVP, Leicester, p 20

let's TWIST again

Last weekend, although exhausting was just brilliant. Mum and I went to the TWIST music ministry conference - i just posted the following on the Sydney Anglicans website, thought i may as well put it here too:

I went to TWIST and found it incredibly uplifting and challenging. As always, it was just wonderful to be in a room with so many other people who were there to be moved by God, to worship him, and to give him thanks for the gifts he has given us. I think no matter what else you think of Emu (and that has been discussed in great detail elsewhere), you have to concede there is great value in running an event like TWIST, aimed at building up those in music ministry to serve God's people in as godly a manner as possible.

Bryson Smith gave some very confronting and yet encouraging talks on 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. A couple of things that stuck with me from the talks were that although music ministry is very important, it is not the most important ministry or gift, and us musos can sometimes get this out of perspective. We need to remember why we are serving in this manner and remember that it is indeed service, not self-promoting performance. We also reflected on 1 Cor 13, and how we need to serve in love - we can play the most brilliant music, write the most amazing songs, but if we do not have love all of that is just the sound of a clanging cymbal in God's ears.

We learned and recorded some excellent new songs for the next Emu live CD, which is due out in a couple of months. The recording itself was great fun, but the structure of the evening meant that it was a really valuable praise and reflection time. A definite foretaste of heaven (which made it really hard to leave at the end of the evening and cope with Sydney traffic on the way home!).

The workshops were helpful, although as the conference has grown so much it has lost some of the 'hands on' feel that there was in previous years (though this seems like a good problem to have!). Even so, one really good thing was being able to talk to people from all different kinds of churches - various denominations, big churches, small churches, places that have 5 services and 10 music teams and others that just have a piano and a euphonium - and to pray for one another and be aware that we can draw on the wealth of such varied experiences.

I come from a church where we have a fairly small, overworked music team, and it's really easy to get discouraged and tired. So it was just great to be able to go away, drink in God's word, have my spiritual and musical tools resharpened and my vision refocused, and to feel that I couldn't wait to get back into it when I went back to church on Sunday night!

You could say I had a good time. :)