it's the glorious sound of christmas!

aka: some meditations on concert season.

i had about 1/3 of a very long rambly post written about how cliquey choir can be when you get 120 singers, some of whom take themselves a little too seriously, in a room for five days in one week, and about how lonely i am and how my one friend who i know from somewhere else has been simultaneously really reassuring and gentle to me about it but also oblivious to the fact that he's part of the 30something gay baritone clique. this post does not need to go on dreamwidth to my 4 followers. i am self-conscious and performative at all times and i have a real diary for things like that. the contents of that post are however all true and i'm really grateful that this 30something and not-outwardly-very-sentimental guy is okay with me getting tipsy and texting him about how i feel like nobody likes me. (by the time i'll hit post on this, it's gonna be his birthday! happy birthday, guy who will never read this because his social media use as far as i can tell extends solely to r/rollercoasters! i appreciate him <3)

i do love this concert though. the concert hall is gorgeous and modeled after the inside of a cello. my name (at birth, not my current legal one--my relationship to any name i've ever had is complicated) is engraved onto one of the walls alongside a bunch of donors and contributors and suchlike because my dad worked on the initial project back when i was just born and so when everyone on the team got to put someone's name on the wall, he picked mine. some of the people i'm singing with used to sing with my mom and have sort of adopted me as their choir daughter (the genderqueer thing confuses a lot of people and honestly sometimes i think about just giving up on it and going back to being a girl who was bad at being a girl). i love to sing with the orchestra and they're doing these awesome jazz arrangements of the nutcracker that i absolutely love. and it's hilarious to watch the cello section roll their eyes when they have to spin their instruments because they are in a Serious Orchestra and are above that shit. and as isolating as it can be, there's also a deep camaraderie among performers during concert. everyone wants to go out for drinks.

the other thing about concerts is that... okay, did anyone else have the picture book "the philharmonic gets dressed" as a kid? because i think about that book every time i put on concert black. something something all across the city one hundred and five people are getting ready to go to work. one hundred and twenty people (plus the orchestra, i dunno their numbers) are getting ready to go to gsoc.

that's the name of the concert, btw. the glorious sound of christmas.

daisy jones & the six / last twilight / produce japan finale / htgawm

waow 2 posts in one day!!1! (last night's doesn't really count. website coding be damned, i slept in between!) sup folks i am back with a post that is about a lot of different things so that there's something for everyone :)

so, firstly: i tore through daisy jones and the six in about 24 hours. i had really enjoyed 7 husbands of evelyn hugo and had seen the marketing for the amazon series, so i was curious about this one and it DIDN'T DISAPPOINT. i think tjr does the oral history style very well and it gave me some Thoughts about how to planning-stage an original story idea i have that's also about a band. i liked how the stories would contradict each other and the plot twist that julia dunne was the one doing the interviews all along was really nicely executed. (it does feel a little bit samey with the evelyn hugo story--the narrator is secretly not neutral and actually linked to a key part of the story!!!--but whatever.) i'm going to have to read this woman's other books, i've decided that i really like them.

secondly: i shopped around for more bl to watch before just landing on last twilight. which, in some ways, going from moonlight chicken (where i was mostly invested in liming/heart) to last twilight is a very natural progression because of the shared themes of class struggle, isolation, and disability. but while i'm going to keep watching last twilight, i'm kind of enjoying it less. i don't think these two actors are doing a very good job of acting like they're attracted to each other, so it's jarring to go in the youtube comments to see their fans all "wow the look in his eyes when his love interest said he liked someone else... he looks heartbroken..." no... he kind of doesn't. i'm not sure what the difference is between these stories but i'm just less on board for mhok/day than i was for liming/heart or even jim/wen! so maybe after last twilight finishes i'll watch the time loop one or something.

thirdly: produce japan finished airing and i promptly got spoiled by one of the former contestants posting the lineup on her instagram. (i'm trying to use instagram less anyway.) hooray for kokoro, keiko, and shizuku! and also for rinon, who, like... she went from seventeenth to third and then PLACED SECOND IN THE WHOLE DAMN THING.

and finally: while i've been between produce japan episodes, i've been rewatching the first season of how to get away with murder. partly because jack falahee is hot, partly out of nostalgia for coliver being one of baby's first gay ships back in the day, partly because i just like procedurals i think. i only watched the first two seasons (and i hear the plot really spun out of control after that) but i might keep watching it off and on. mostly because of connor/oliver. shh.