The fall semester here at SIU is just about over, with finals now on top of the student body. And if you imagined finals as being a person, literally on top of another person (who is the aforementioned student body), then good. That's what I was hoping you'd picture because that's pretty much how it went for me today with my first final. It was an absolute fucking disaster. Where the other 3 tests were at about a 6/10 in difficulty, the final, which was only half cumulative bumped the difficulty way the fuck up to about a 20/10... The proverbial A-Bomb dropped directly on my head... We'll see how my grade ends up soon hopefully. And hopefully the other finals won't be so god damn meticulous. But I digress.
The Halo subject, however? Well, I got some great news, which has the potential to end even greater, but I won't know that for a couple more hours. I can't say much else at this point however. All I know is that I forever love 343i and the people working there; one in particular, without whom none of my Halo-rific feats would not have been achievable. If they happen to be reading this, I still can't thank you enough for the opportunities you've granted me, and I owe you so much more than you think. <343
Now, as I feel that the overall subject of Halo would probably end up making a given blog about twice as long as my previous ones, I will leave that for another day, perhaps very soon, perhaps tomorrow? So do not fret, random Halo fan that is reading this in hopes of me telling my stories, including the whole 117 debacle. All your (possibly) burning questions will be answered soon. And I know there's at least a couple of you out there who have requested that I write about it. I will Never Forget. (hah, see what I did there?)
The primary subject of today's blog is about dancing. Now, before I get into my story, I've always like the movement of dance, especially dances that weren't so structured and choreographed. The free movement of it inspired me. A good example would be pop-n-lock. It just seemed like such free movement that didn't initially seem possible. I would dance in my own time here and there, but it was never something I did actively, and never in front of other people. But that would eventually change.
Throughout last year (in school year terms), I began gradually changing my taste in music. I would mostly listen to stuff like Dave Matthews Band, who, for a long time, was my favorite music artist. But in general, I would listen to much more contemporary and conventional music. But during that year, I got back into contact with my oldest, and one of my dearest friends, Mike Jehl. At the time, I believe he had been working for my dad's company. Over winter break, Mike and I, and another one of our mutual best friends, Matt Steffen, went out for the first time since the last world cup, when we drove down to St. Louis to visit Mike and enjoy the games. Matt opened my eyes to new musical possibilites. The two most prevalent of which would be Passion Pit and Crystal Castles. Most people know Passion Pit by now, but Crystal Castles remains relatively unknown. They are far on one side of the musical spectrum. Electronic, but much more so than others that we here every now and then. Both artists were I spent most of my time listening to. When we hung out over winter break, it was great. We danced like fools and it was great. They talked about other stuff that they had heard, one in particular: Skrillex. That night, I looked him up and boy, that was awesome. I've since found that I am generally not that into Dubstep, but I can really get into Skrillex.
That next semester, we kept in contact more than we had in since high school. Towards the end of the school year, Matt put me onto another band: Cut Copy. It was love at first listen. "Feel the Love," was such a new sound to me. Anytime it came on, I had to dance to it. I found out Mike was also going through the same thing, and with the same song. It was such a great summer, listening to such interesting music and dancing with two of my oldest friends. I was moving away from the doing the same thing all the time, which generally entailed my "Every Day" friends coming over, just sitting there watching either Jersey Shore, or god forbid sports, and the occasional bonfire, which after a while, also lost it's luster. It was time for change, and this new music would be the instrument that would lead me there.
I generally subscribed to Mike and Matt's recommendations, but Cut Copy always remained as the top contender, and still does to this day. I've all but stopped listening to Dave Matthews, and anything else? I can hardly remember what it was that I listened to in the first place. Mike introduced me to the French pop artist, Yelle, whom I adore. Other major artists include Cults, Neon Indian, TV on the Radio, some Deadmau5, Justice, M83, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaur, and most recently, The Ashton Shuffle (which actually was suggested by one of my twitter friends, @42Meaningoflife).
The more I listen, the more I dance, and the more I dance, I better I get. I am slowly becoming faster and more fluent in my movements. You'll eventually notice, if you haven't already that I really try to stay in the mind set that there really is no correct way to do something or think something. Dancing is a perfect example of this, it's sort of an implied mantra of mine that it doesn't necessarily matter what you do while you dance, just that you dance and love it. Feel the beat and the rhythm and you'll know what to do. Don't place so much into it. I did however, mention above that I am slowly getting better at dancing. Butto say that I am getting "better" would imply an intended goal. And what is that goal? To be able to dance like this:
That song is by Yelle by the way. The way that these guy's move so quickly and fluid-like absolutely astounds me and it's this type of dancing that I love and aspire to be 'better' in.
This is the point where I'll cut myself off. I leave you to listen to Cut Copy's awesome and danceable song, "Lights and Music." If you feel the need to dance, don't question it. Just do it and go with what feels best. There's no correct way to dance, as long as you feel the awesome emanating from the movement.
Oh! and that embarrassment I would feel when dancing when I was younger? That's been gone for a long time now. I dance where ever, when ever, and I couldn't be happier.
Until Next time...
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