May 27

The Colvin House is startlingly soundproof. It sits right off the lake, and at the corner of a busy intersection. My friend and I observed the cars drive by, slick in the downpour, but absolutely, deafeningly silent from within the confines of the house. Strange how sounds shape a world, a universe. Step out into the rain and the spell is broken.

We were never a particularly quiet studio anyways. Studio mates are basically siblings that all play the same instrument (but you never, ever want to hear a harp quartet) – we borrow each others clothes, food, tuning keys, and music, and squabble like a colony of gulls while barricading the fire exit. It’s amusing when people tell us how beautiful and soothing harp music is, and how elegant we must be as harpists.

look: Cameron Rowland, 91020000
listen: Lowell Liebermann, Sonata for Flute and Harp, Op. 56
read: Blythe Bernhard, Washington University graduates its first class of students in prison (not fiction, but significant all the same)

*disclaimer: today’s amalgamation of art is not entirely related to the day’s happenings, but was related to things I’d read and been mulling over.