A Beautiful Quote from a Theater Teacher

“Love is a selfish emotion, because you are taking someone else’s happiness and linking it to your own.” ~Mr. Wax

KONY 2012

I'm sure many of you have seen this video already, since I was bombarded by insane amounts of people talking about it at school today. I first heard of it from Phil Defranco, but I was once again amazed by the power of the internet and the speed at which these things spread.

I personally believe this is an incredible mission, and Invisible Children is a wonderful organization that I want to assist through this project. It is truly a Project for Awesome. Nerdfighters, we can make a difference, we have before. And those of you reading this who are not Nerdfighters, 1. You should become one. 2. You can make a difference as well.

Cover the Night (April 20, 2012) is just a few days before my 17th birthday. For my birthday, I want to see people in my community and around the world taking a stand against Kony. Put up your flyers, wear your bracelets and t-shirts proudly. I'm getting them, you won't be alone. Make this your Facebook status, use the hashtag #Kony2012. Get the word out and strengthen the Peace Army. Share this post, friends. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Email, I don't care. Use your social media for good. I want to see the community coming together to help children on the other side of the world. Show me how far our love can spread.

Accept the challenge? Go!

- - -

EDIT Friday, March 9, 2012:

*sigh* so I don't know what to think about this whole Kony thing now. I think a lot of people (myself included) just watched the video and got caught up in the emotional 'children-are-kidnapped-and-killing-people-and-dying-and-they-need-help-omg' aspects of it, and jumped on raising more awareness and trying to take action. We blindly trusted Invisible Children and didn't look into its history as a charity organization.

The sad thing is, its history is not all that great. And the sadder thing is, this sort of thing happens ALL THE TIME. I'm not saying Invisible Children is a complete fraud or anything, but it's not quite exactly what it says it is. I honestly don't know whether to trust it or not, now. The situation is admittedly terrible, but it is so much more complicated than Kony 2012 makes it seem. The video (like almost any other thing involving politics and international relations) is presented from a biased point of view, so of course not all the 'facts' are entirely true. The US government is not as ignorant and terrible as is appears there. Also, does the United States really have the resources or economic stability to get itself into another war? I mean, we're already fighting in the Middle East. There's enough confusion and chaos centered around that. I don't know what choice is right and which is wrong, honestly. What gives us the right to interfere in ANY foreign affairs, anyway? I just don't feel like I know enough about any of these situations to pick a side. And the last thing I want to do is to act blindly and cause a mistake.

Admittedly, I do want to save the children. No child should be forced to kill their own parents. No preteen girl should be sold as a sex slave (nor should any girl at all, for that matter). I think we can all agree that those things are just wrong. But it's also wrong for groups of people to slaughter each other just because they practice a different religion, or for minority races to be treated differently, whether through segregation or something more discreet like environmental racism. There are people in countries everywhere who are the victims of injustice, racism, religious persecution, starvation, poverty, and illnesses and death from easily preventable disease. The world has a ton of problems, and we have to choose which are most important to us, and which effect the most people and can be resolved.

So I don't know what to do. I want to do the right thing, but I don't know what the right thing is. I feel about the same as my hero Hank Green does here, and he explains it much more eloquently than I just did:

So yeah. Kony 2012. Let's see where it goes then, shall we?

My All-States Experience (Part 3)

We made it to the JMU campus just as the sunrise caught up to us, and found our way to the parking deck and music buildings. We pulled into a spot on the second level and took the staircase down to the ground. It was bitterly cold there, a different sort of cold from what we have here at home. The frigid air permeated right through our layers of jackets and nipped at our skin, numbing it and making our jeans scrape painfully at the backs of our knees. We made it inside only to be greeted by a claustrophobic warmth, and I fought through the crowd of instrument-clutching students and their equally flustered parents to find my band director and receive my payment ticket. He greeted me with a halfhearted smile, but I could feel the warning in his gaze. Make me proud, he was thinking. Represent our school. Don't screw this up, Amber. Don't make this a waste. I'd thought I was nervous before, but that was nothing compared to the panic I felt as I struggled to smile back at him. My lips trembled as I tried to make my facial muscles compose themselves, a knot formed in my throat, and my eyes threatened to spill over from shame. I think he could tell, because he quickly looked away. I guess he felt awkward or something.

I turned in my audition packet to a group of college guys at the registration table, where I received my audition number. 1. I was number 1. The first one the judges would hear, the first one to attempt the sight-reading, the first one to be finished and get to come home. I was both relieved and terrified. I proceeded nervously to the percussion warm up room, where I sat with my drum and mallet bag in an awkward posture-perfecting chair near the door and picked all of my nail polish off in my anxious panic. The room slowly filled with the people who would be competing with me, mostly guys from all over the state. I literally think there were about 6 girls in there, including myself. People warmed up on their snare drums and the provided timpani and xylophones. Some even worked on their tambourine-playing and triangle technique. The room was dominated by the complexity of our prepared piece, played overlapping itself by 72 percussionists from all over Virginia. It was almost surreal, how we had all learned the same music, and played it together, although almost none of us had even met each other, and would probably never see each other again. Almost nobody spoke, not only because it was so ear-grindingly loud but because we were either too nervous to open our mouths or too competitive to try to make friends. For me, it was both.

I sat there from 7:45 until 9:30. Auditions started later than they were supposed to, which was horrible. I just sat there and observed my competitors. There were the ones who were obviously drummers, not percussionists; they were twirling their drumsticks in ways usually reserved for the football field. Some were from the really wealthy schools, who looked sneeringly at the warm-up instruments provided to us, because they were apparently used to better ones. Some were obviously forced to audition but didn't really care at all, and some were still in the process of learning their music, even daring to ask others how to count rhythms. It was ridiculous. It wasn't anything like what I had expected. Of course, many of them were much better than me. I knew that before I agreed to try out. But I didn't expect such a wide range of players.

I also didn't expect for all of us to have matching circles around our eyes and the same callouses on our hands. Clearly, I'm not as unique as I like to believe. It was humbling.

Finally auditions began, and I was first. Apparently it was a big deal for a girl to be going first, because the four guys in my group whistled in awe and looked impressed. And maybe even jealous, I guess because everyone in that warm up room watched me leave, and knew that I was number one, not them. I went into the first room to do snare, and I won't go into all of the details of my audition because it would be too boring, the majority of people wouldn't know what I was talking about or wouldn't care, and it was rather painful anyway. I'll just say the sight-reading was worse than I expected. Like my prepared piece, it didn't look like music at all. I sortof butchered it. I'm not proud of that. 


At that point I was beginning to panic and lose my head a little, and I had cottonmouth like crazy. I forgot that I would have to use my snare drum again and started to dismantle it, actually, because I was that flustered and confused. I went to the mallets room next, which was significantly better than in the snare room, but still not my best performance. Nerves were really starting to kill me at that point. In the timpani room, I don't even remember what happened. Everything was getting really chaotic, my hand was bleeding all over my mallets from an old blister that chose a really bad time to pop, and I was nearly in tears. The audition assistant was staring at me as well, because that was his job, to make sure I wasn't having any sort of problems. But at that moment, I hated him. I wanted to yell at him to leave and go and get me a bandaid and stop staring at me because I knew I sucked and he didn't need to make fun of me. But I couldn't (thank goodness) because we aren't allowed to speak in audition rooms. So I held my tongue.


In the last room, I felt about ready to faint. I managed to get everything set up in under 30 seconds, which was a miracle because there was so much to do and at the point I was completely going insane. I'm sure I looked like a complete madwoman.I sure felt like one. I played my prepared piece (I mean, I suppose I did. I actually don't remember. That happens to me when I get too panicky.), grabbed all my stuff, and walked out. I never want to set foot in those rooms again. I hate them. I hate how they made me feel, and I hate how they showed me how weak of a player I am. They made me hate percussion. I've honestly been forcing myself to play ever since.


I stopped by the warm up room to wish my friends from my district good luck, and to gather the rest of my things. I said a quick goodbye to my band director, avoiding eye contact at all costs because I knew if I looked at him I would lose it. I located my dad and headed to the parking deck, where I counted my mallets to make sure I hadn't lost any in my panic (I hadn't) and ate a sandwich before I fainted.


All the way home, I tried to admire the mountains, but I was too worried about my performance and too distracted by the abundance of people texting me, asking me how it went. I finally felt free, however, and that was totally worth it. It was great to go first and get out of there before 10:30, and I still had time to go home and get some essays done before having my first Girl's Night in over a month. Freedom was something that I didn't realize I had missed so much, and I still haven't gotten over actually having time to enjoy myself yet.

~ ~ ~

So it turns out, I got 59th chair. Out of 72. After all of my hard work, I was extremely disappointed in myself. I felt like I had wasted my entire month, been miserable all for nothing. That is, until my percussionist friend encouraged me. He was proud, and he didn't think I wasted my time, because having such a difficult musical experience made me a better player. Plus, now I know what to do when I try out next year.

Maybe next time, my states story will have a happy ending instead. For now, #59 is fine with me.

My All-States Experience (Part 2)

Saturday morning, February 25th, I woke up at 4 am. I actually don't remember waking up at that time because I was so tired. But I did, because that's when my alarm clock was supposed to go off and I know for a fact I wasn't late. So apparently I woke up on time, gathered my snare drum, mallet bag, and music, and set off down the road with my dad in the driver's seat. I actually don't remember anything before I-295.

Of course, due to the fact that it was almost 5 am, it was still dark outside. I was also half-delusional with nerves and exhaustion. I remember staring ahead of us at the road, with Repo! The Genetic Opera blasting into my ears. The reflectors on the sides of the highway were the only things visible, because there were hardly any other cars on the road at that time of the morning. I could see about a half-mile ahead of us, and I watched the reflectors fade into darkness, or sometimes curve like the tracks of a roller coaster into the trees. For some reason I was reminded of Space Mountain in Disney World. I know I spent a good 20 minutes just staring at the reflectors and subdividing my music in my head. I marveled at the things I had never noticed about the songs before, because I'd never listened to them that closely in such a silent atmosphere.

Whenever we came across another lonely car on those highways, I wondered what bought them there at such an obscene time of morning. Were they going to states auditions too? Were they perhaps my competition? Or were they making a road trip? Maybe they were on their way to work....or possibly on their way home, if they had the misfortune to  work night shifts. I wonder if the people in those solitary cars were wondering the same things about me, or if they were just tired like I was and didn't really care. It was a lonely trip, and my mind was in some strange places.

Around about 5:30 the sky started to slowly turn from black to indigo to navy to teal and suddenly it burst into color. We were heading west, so of course the sunrise was behind us the entire time. Looking out the front window, I still saw darkness, with the shapes of trees and distant mountains beginning to appear. I watched the sunrise in the passenger side mirror. It was another glorious dawn, and it lasted for 2 full hours, since we were driving away from it the entire time. I took it as an acknowledgement to all of my efforts that I had the privilege to watch something that beautiful for so long.

Another benefit was the fact that I'd never driven through the mountains before, so that was quite a unique experience. I'd never seen mountains so massive, and I'd never looked out of my car window to see a sheer cliff face 10 yards away. Rocks and dirt protruded in geometric shapes from the mountainside, and I tried to take pictures with my phone but failed due to the sun's glare and the speed at which we were moving. Every once in a while I'd see a grand and isolated house perched in a bald spot on the mountainside, overlooking the valleys and pastures filled with cows, sheep, and horses. It struck me as an especially serene place to live. If I ever lived on a mountainside, I'd wake up every morning and make hazelnut coffee to watch the sun peek over the edge of my world.

It snowed briefly during the drive. For literally about two minutes, there were flurries in the mountain air, mixing in with the thick fog that the sun had not yet burned away. I'd never seen snow in the mountains either. So that was another first to mark off of my list.

~ ~ ~

My All-States Experience (Part 1)

So as you've most likely figured out already, I am a band kid. I play percussion, and I am WAY too competitive and strive to be the best, always. My competitiveness has not always earned me a top spot (I was second in this year's District band, so close!), but it has helped me to be motivated to improve. In this case, second chair qualified me to audition for All-States band, which was a huge and terrifying honor that I was not prepared for.

The evening after our All-District concert, I stayed up until midnight (despite being exhausted) in order to download my states audition music as soon as it was available. Finally, after waiting for an extra 45 minutes, the music was posted. I clicked on the percussion link, and I waited for my Adobe Reader to open the document....

When the page opened, my jaw dropped. It didn't even look like music. It was like somebody had sneezed dots and lines and dynamic markings on a sheet of paper. I almost gave up right then and there. I was supposed to switch between snare drum, triangle, timpani, tambourine, and 3-mallet xylophone. The notes were cramped together, the tempo was obscenely fast, and the time signature went from 5/4 to 6/4 to 5/4 to 9/8 to 12/8. I had no idea how to even approach a piece of music that difficult. But I am stupidly competitive, so I decided I had to try anyway.

For the rest of the month of February, I skipped lunch to practice in the band room. I practiced from when I got home from theater rehearsals until my parents told me they needed sleep too, and then I'd cram in homework. My grades dropped, I didn't see my friends, and many blisters and callouses found new homes on my hands. I took lessons from a certain percussionist who I can never thank enough, I bought new mallets, and I was basically miserable for an entire month. That was a month of having meltdowns in the drum closet, and hiding there because I didn't want to return to class after a particularly brutal practice session. Yes, the same drum closet I wrote about here. Despite being disgusting, I love that closet.We've cleaned it over and over again, and we recently acquired a door for it. That closet is like a second home for me, where only percussionists are allowed and where we've always gone to escape from the rest of the band. The secrets concealed in the ceiling and under the shelves have been there for years, and I plan to leave my own before I leave. The closet is a place for private talks, mental breaks, and chill-and-forget-about-what-people-think-of-you time.

The week before the audition was the worst week of my life, there's no doubt. Even though I'd worked so hard and exhausted myself, I was still not prepared for my audition. Nerves were getting the best of me, and it effected my performance in all of my classes. I was irritable, depressed, and hopeless. I was afraid to fail after putting so much time, energy, and money into preparing. Friday night, I just cried. It was all I could do. It was too late to prepare any more. My percussionist friend and my student teacher encouraged me and told me how to stay calm and told me they were proud, and it was so touching. But it made me that much more nervous, because I didn't want to let them down and have wasted their time as well.

~ ~ ~

A Riddle

How is a Raven like a writing desk?

Poe wrote on both.