Entering a new phase!

Yes, it's been years since I've published on here. I still have followers though, so how about a little update?

In the years that I have been away, I've done nothing but practice the piano. And you know what? Doing the same activity 4-5 hours a day, every day, can really produce some great results! I'm working on my first set of real virtuosic repertoire, including: Mozart's c minor Fantasy and Sonata, Chopin Ballades, Liszt Paganini Etudes, and Messiaen Catalogue of the Birds. It's all very exciting.

And I'm starting my teaching career! You can see my website at tjohnsonpiano.com, or visit my page at Thumbtack: Piano Studio of Thomas Johnson. Let me know if you have any tips. I'm getting my name out there and hopefully the students start enrolling this month! So far I have one...

New New York.

At 6am this morning, as I pulled my overly-packed full vehicle up to the Starbucks drive-thru, I turned on my Garmin GPS.

I hit: "Set Home Location" and entered: "New York, New York, 10040."

"Go."

Tonight, I sleep my first night as an official resident of Manhattan.

(come visit!)

Carol Lynn Pearson Interview

I have followed John Dehlin's "Mormon Stories" podcast/website for the past 2-3 years. It is great. And I must share this:

http://mormonstories.org/?p=1091


I hope you all watch this captivating FIVE HOUR interview with Carol Lynn Pearson. What could be better?!

I don't have a Facebook anymore to spam this across!

Please, share it around!


(Also, watch the recent Bruce Bastian interview that is on there.)

Bliss.

"Follow your bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.

"there is no security in following the call to adventure"

-Joseph Campbell

Radio Star

My dad's friend Laura Lavigne is a life coach from Seattle. She has a weekly radio show called "Chez Laura" (she's French), and I am one of the guest speakers this month! My show is called "Let's talk about 'being seventeen, Mormon, and gay!'"

"After graduation, my friend Tommy went to Brigham Young University. He was 17. A few months later, he called his family and told them that he needed to come home to tell them something important. This was three years ago and I have invited Tommy to come talk with me and share more of his story. A story of authenticity."

Check it out live on Jan. 12th at noon PST or hear it in the archives any time after that.

http://www.lauralavigne.com/Tommy.html
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lauralavigne/2010/01/12/chez-laura--lets-talk-about-being-seventeen-mormon

Moments that touched me

It was February of 2008, and I was in the deepest throes of dealing with being gay and Mormon. Probably due to the fact that I hadn't been sleeping or eating much, I came down with the flu. It wasn't a good time to get sick, and I was already feeling extremely down with life as it was.

One day a box showed up in front of my dorm room. It contained all sorts of medicines and sick/comfort foods. Each item had a sticky note attached to it with something creative written on it in bubbly writing. It was all anonymous, and I never found out who it was from. It was quite the care package and must have cost quite a bit for a college student's budget.

To this day that may be one of the nicest things anyone has done for me.

Thank you.

Whatever floats your boat...

How random is this? I saw it while I was biking today.

16? What is wrong with 14? Or 17?

I love it.

Here's to Healing

So where have I been the past month?

Well, I stuck around Salt Lake till the evening of June 18th, when I had finals (at the BYU Salt Lake Center).


Promptly following, (midnight that night), I got on a plane to Burlington, Vermont, and spent 5 days visiting the family I "mannyed" for last summer in Plattsburgh, New York. (The picture above is actually from a later flight. See below ;-) )


Then, on June 24th, I took the midnight bus to Manhattan, where I played with my aunts and uncles for 5 days, and went to my uncle's wedding.


Then, on Sunday the 28th, I flew back to Salt Lake, but not before stopping by the NYC Pride Parade...


Back in Provo, I worked for 2 days, before driving up to Seattle on Wednesday with Michael, Michael, and Justin.

They left on Sunday. I stayed up there, where I played with family and friends.

Before flying back to Salt Lake on July 14th, I took a quick two-day trip to Portland. There, I visited my grandparents and aunt who lives there, and met up with my other aunt who is visiting before she moves to Bangladesh. This is my sister's dog Sadie, who came along.

Once I got back to Utah, I saw Harry Potter 6 at midnight (and liked it), and worked for the next two days, both at my job at the BYU Library and in my room, packing and cleaning. This was my work crew.

On Thursday night after work, I drove to Zion National Park to do some hiking and visit yet another aunt.

I got back on Sunday and visited friends in Salt Lake. On Monday and Tuesday I worked 2 more days as I continues to frantically pack and clean my apartment. I had a cleaning check on Wednesday at 10am, and checked out of my apartment.

Then, I got in my stuffed car,


and drove, and drove, and drove,


and drove, and drove some more,


and drove, and went to Niagara Falls,


and drove, and after 2384(.3) miles, finally made it back to Plattsburgh, New York.


I am taking some of my old manny duties back up.


Therefore, I am officially a BYU dropout. I declined my scholarship. I'll go back to school someday, since I really like school, but not now.

Fact of the matter is, while I did like BYU generally, I have found that some relationships in life just aren't healthy for us. I think my relationship with BYU was one such relationship.


So, here's to healing.

(the front yard. that's lake chanplain in the background.)

long time, no post

I know.

To Do Tomorrow

1. Get up at 8:00 (as opposed to my more normal 12:30 or 1).
2. Finish reading Arcadia (finally).
3. Give Elrond (my fish) some fresh water.
   
4. Write my rhetorical analysis and research paper.
5. Apply to study abroad in London.
   
6. Become a vegan.
   

My blogging unmotivation continues. Sorry again (sorta).

The Oracle, Mary Poppins, and Grass--Revisited

I have been rather unmotivated to blog lately. Sorry.

On another blog and at another time, my mother posted the following:

No, not that kind of grass! Stop it.

Remember the scene in The Matrix where Neo has gone to visit the Oracle to find out if he's The One? Oracle tells him, "Don't worry about the vase." "What vase?" asks Neo, as he knocks a vase of flowers off a table. "I told you not to worry about it," she responds. The Big Question is if Neo would have knocked the vase over if the Oracle hadn't said anything. This implies to me that he wouldn't have, and that the Oracle, in fact, set Neo up, as she set up all the other characters. Now think about Mary Poppins. Did she not set the Banks family up? Remember the scene where she manipulates Mr. Banks into taking the children on an outing to the bank? Then think of the next scene in which she describes the bird woman of St. Paul's Cathedral to the children. Wasn't she setting the children up to feed the birds? Of course, it is on the outing to the bank that the climax of the movie plays out -- and you can't say Mary Poppins didn't intend it all in the first place.

So think about it. We all walk around feeling free -- but can we be sure we haven't been set up as well, by someone somewhere somehow?

Here's a fun tease. Maybe we're being setup by a most unlikely source! Take a look at this video and see if it doesn't twist your mind a bit. There are some other fun ideas here too so enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/214

I repost this because it speaks to some things I have thought about for quite a while now. Who is doing the setting up, where are they, and how are they doing it, indeed?!

Immigration Arguments

I know, this is pretty old. But is one of my favorites, it always makes me laugh. And immigration is one of my favorite topics to debate, even though I haven't been keeping up on it for the past few months. I used to be quite educated on the matter.



Bill O'Reilly, you baffle me. I really just don't even know what to say.

Cream Cheese and Choir

I have so many random and ultimately irrelevant and inconsequential thoughts I feel like post right now. I will refrain from most of it with the following exceptions:

-UTA has recently purchased several sleek looking new buses. I have wanted to ride one for a while now, and this morning while I was waiting at the bus stop listening to "The Everglow" by Mae I was most excited to see that I was about to get that chance. None of the other people at the bus stop looked too excited though so I didn't express my excitement to them. I just smiled to myself.

-My history professor brought bagels to class this morning. One of the cream cheeses she brought was honey-almond, and my goodness! it was very very good.




I have another opportunity to culture oneself coming up, although it's not quite as cool as watching some sweet dances.

Next Tuesday, April 14th, at the Provo Tabernacle (University Ave. and 1st South) will be a choir concert I'm in. The choir is University Chorale, and it is FREE.

Sometimes people don't come to Chorale concerts since they think Men's/Women's Chorus, Concert Choir, and BYU Singers are all better. And they are, but in the past I've enjoyed listening to Chorale more though because the singing seems more authentic to me; they don't have some particular sound they are always going for. There aren't all these vocal conventions they are trying to live up to. I dunno.

I also like singing with them a lot. I've thought about trying out for Men's Chorus, but am not sure about it. It is an everyday thing, for one, and especially next year I won't have the time to go to practice every day. Who knows if I would make it in anyways. Plus, I have sat in on rehearsals for all of the other choirs here at BYU and the conductors are so incredibly high strung it stresses me out just looking at them.

Chorale, on the other hand, is a non-auditioned choir that only meets 3 times a week and it is in general a much more relaxed setting. So I like it.

fin.

Leaving a Wake of Love

Max Skousen has been an influential person on my journey over the past few years. He is (well, he died, but at least was) LDS, but held some pretty out-there and unorthodox ideas.

In the midst of my most intense period of religious doubt, it was some of his writings that helped me to reconcile all the things bouncing around inside my head and swing the pendulum of my religious views back to something that is more valid.

But that is all beside the point.

My mother apparently spoke to him on the phone once, and she said she could just feel the love that man held radiating out from him. I forget her direct wording, but there was a power he held because of his compassion.

I want to be like that someday. How amazing is it that he could hold so much love for someone who he had never met before or since that they could feel it while talking to him one time, and over the telephone at that? It would be impossible to feign. He may have forgotten about it the next day, yet he still left a lasting mark.

So, how, then, does one go about developing compassion to the level that they are just dripping with it?

Daily Universe Entertainment

I would characterize my relationship with BYU’s newspaper "The Daily Universe” as a love-hate one. I love to hate it. It is so fun… and easy.

I dutifully pick one every morning and at least read my favorite: the letters to the editor (sinboards anyone?). Then I do whatever of the crossword puzzle and the sudokus I can.

Luckily I got to campus early this morning before all 18,500 copies that are printed everyday were recalled due to an entertaining typo.


If you can’t see in the photos, the caption of this picture from conference says the “Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities…”

Right smack on the front page.

This caused a stir on campus and the DU is very embarrassed. By noon the mistaken copies were already replaced with a re-printed and fixed edition. (But not before I got my copy and scanned it into the computer…)

Ramblings on Blogging Motivations

I was discussing blogging with a friend recently who told me that their blog was their biggest therapy.

I explained a little bit about my blogging motivations, but now it's been about two weeks and I've been thinking more about why I blog. I've had a few thoughts rattling around my head and I'm not going to use this post to explain those thoughts, I am going to use it to explore them. (Since I don’t totally know what I am trying to say here)

As far as therapy goes, I don’t think I use my blog for that. I use my actual therapist (I think a little therapy is good for everyone no matter how mentally stable they are), and I talk to friends or family about it, or I am pretty good at just working through things on my own.

I think that there is a bit of a cathartic element to blogging. It is good to get things out on paper and to work things out through words. Things, thoughts, and emotions look a lot different to me when they are written out on paper and not just sitting in my head. It gives me a chance to go back and read through my thought processes and look for gaps in my logic or to see how I might look at an issue differently, or just to gain a better perspective. That is where the “therapy” part comes in, I suppose.

But then, blogging isn't my only venue through which I do that. I posted about my life notebook a while ago. That is also a place where I can find the release I just talked about. Yesterday, I got to class at 9:30, and I did not feel like taking notes, so I started writing in my notebook and just listening to the lecture. Pretty soon I was in my next class and was still writing. Then I went and observed two choir rehearsals and kept writing that whole time. That's a good 4 or 5 hours right there. It took so long because I was working through something that has been on my mind lately (well, for about a month). I tried to write about every aspect of it that I could think about, and so it took a long time to cover all my bases properly.

It was really good for me to do that and it helped me to realize some important things that have helped make the issue I was writing about more manageable and workable for my life. I suppose I could have blogged about it and achieved the same ends, and for many a blog probably is the outlet they would have used. Personally though I would not have felt comfortable letting other people read what I had to say, which is fine--there isn't anything forcing me to post things I don't want to.

That's another thing. Often I have thoughts and emotions that are very important or meaningful to me, but when I try to write them down or post about them or whatever I find that language limits my ability to express them. I find that emotion or thought to be slightly violated after that, because justice has not been done to it, or people misunderstand it or whatever. I would feel more comfortable discussing them in a face to face situation, because there is real communication going on there and it is more fluid than writing a blog post, which allows for greater expressive flexibility.

I guess I don't really have this blog just for me; my notebook is just for me (though I share portions of it with a few people). Having readers totally shifts what I say and my rhetorical stance. If I have a satisfactory outlet for my thoughts in my notebook where I have perfect freedom, don’t need it for therapeutic purposes or input, what then is my real reason for blogging? How do I decide which issues to post on here and which not to? What are the ends I hope to achieve by maintaining a blog and what function does the blog play in my life as compared to my notebook?

I don’t use my blog as some place where I can work through issues that I have and receive input and help from other people on. (Even though I am sort of doing that with this post... So maybe it just depends on how personal I feel it is?) I think I am in a very good place in life in that I have a decision making process that I am happy with. I have done a good job of learning to manage my life in healthy way and learning what works for me. If I do need advice or to bounce and idea off of someone, I have friends and family that I will go to to talk with. My blog is not the place I go to for things like that. If I am feeling distraught over something, or a very strong emotion, this blog isn't going to be the first place I go to to talk about it.

I’m generally a pretty private person and I value the process of working things out on my own and figuring out what is best for me. Once I have had a chance to gain my bearings though and some knowledge, I love to discuss it with other people. What is my reason for posting things on here, then, for everyone to read?

Do I even need a “reason” to do something?

An opportunity to culture oneself

Just a bit of advertising....

This Wednesday (the 1st of April) is the Spring Festival of Nations in the WSC/Wilk Ballroom. There are several international bands doing a pre-show at 7:30 and then the show for reals starts at 8. The show is a bunch of dances from around the world, and admission is $2.

If you come, you just might see me up there in the second number doing the Mexican Polka with my folk dance team... Maybe ;-)

It should be good show, so come!

Nature of God

Members of the Church often emphasize the importance of having a correct knowledge about the nature of God--a correct idea of His character, perfections and attributes. Perhaps the testimonies about: knowing that God lives; that He is a corporeal being; that He not a trinity but instead multiple and distinct beings--come from this emphasizing.

But I've been noticing that though perhaps they say these things on an intellectual level, that most of the people I have met do not truly understand God.

A question I ask any time I get the chance is, "What would you do if you were to meet God right now, this very instant? How would you feel? What would you think?"

I have yet to get an answer that does not fall among the following lines:
-I would be embarrassed.
-I wouldn't be prepared or ready.
-I would be frightened.
-I didn't repent this morning, I can't meet God!

Bottom line, it doesn't sound like a pleasant experience for them.

That makes me very uneasy. It is so wrong. I don't think that all those people have any real bearing on the true nature of God at all.

Let me give you a little history on my path in coming to understand what I call "God" in my life. All through high school, with my various self-esteem and self-image issues, I think I was terrified of God. I felt I was not acceptable to him, that I was broken and I was in that same boat of being scared with the idea of meeting God. I was filled with guilt and saw myself as a sinner.

One day (the third Sunday of 2008), I was sitting in my dorm room at about 11:30 at night, and I just broke down. I slowly began to cry, which turned quickly into sobbing. This was unusual, for I couldn't remember the last time I had dripped even more than just one tear. At the risk of being embarrassed by being seen by my roommates, I ran outside and sat underneath the bell tower. There, I just sat and wept for a long time. It was a total catharsis. Somewhere during this time, I suddenly felt filled with the love of God, and his grace.

On the one hand, I had these rules that the Church had told me that made me feel like a bad person and then suddenly being so overwhelmed with the love of God and feeling, for the very first time in my life, that I was alright in the eyes of God. I could be loved and accepted just as I was. Somehow, all those Church rules didn't seem to matter. I was in the middle of this experience that made me know I was okay as a person, and the Church had never made me feel this way. I had previously only felt judged and condemned and that because I didn't line up in a certain way that I was not okay.

Suddenly it was clear that the love of God was bigger than all of that. God's love is simply enough. It was an incredible transformation. For someone who is feeling so lost and so much self-loathing, it is so sublime to know that nothing matters except that God loves me, and that alone is enough.


Does God live or does he not? Does God have a body or not? Did he appear to Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove or not?

Do those questions really ascertain the truly important aspects of God's character? To me, no. I find them terribly dissatisfying.

What good is "knowing" that the corporeal nature of God doing for them? OK, so maybe it gives them support for the belief that man can become god, or whatever. But really on a deep down transformative level, what good has it done them? Has it brought on this transformation that I was able to experience? Has it allowed them to know that God loves them?

I feel that I should be seeking to develop my mind and have more compassion and treat my fellow man with more charity and be working on these larger spiritual matters, not being focused on keeping all the rules like so many Church members do. All those little things can be wiped away in a second.


Now if I were to ask myself, "How would you react if you were to meet God right now?" I can say: All I know is that He would take me into his arms. (If he does indeed have a body ;) ) Say "I missed you, I've longed to see you, and I love you." And that in that moment I would be okay. I would feel whole and complete, and all of those other little things--have I repented of this?, repented of that?, could i have done more of this and less of that-- those things would not even come up on the radar. Because the power of the grace of god is too often overlooked in the Church, exchanged for the importance of works. I would not be nervous. I would be completely at ease, and I would look forward to finally getting to ask God some important questions.

Frosty Eliotonians

Ok, I have some posts I want to get out, but first need to give the other side of the Frost discussion, because a friend called me out on it. "The Figure a Poem Makes" begins with: "Abstraction is an old story with the philosophers, but it has been like a new toy in the hands of the artists of our day." --A stab at people such as T.S. Eliot, who were pretty into abstraction and having unclear meanings. Frost's poetry is usually pretty clear and accesible in its meaning, which is fitting for an American Modern. Eliot is not as clear, which is also fitting of his High Modern-ness. (I am so going to take a class on Modernism. It's fun.)

Eliot ends his poem "Hollow Men" with:

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

See what I mean about the abstraction? Frost can be fairly well interpreted with one reading, this takes more work. The reference to the Lord's Prayer is a side note to the text of the poem itself. The fragmented and incomplete segments of it that follow say, unlike Frost, that maybe there isn't any "momentary stay against the confusion" at all. The thought is never completed, the clarity never found. That unlike those bits of wisdom that Frost says a poem is to convey at the end (and fairly clearly, too), maybe things just happen because they do. The end of the world is trivialized and made into some thing that sound's like a song children sing as they hop and skip about. (I know I am ignoring the wartime implications and context of this poem but it doesnt really fit into my discussion. It is an important application though. I also know I am not fully fleshing out my ideas, but this is my blog not a classroom!)

Often Eliot and Frost are put into opposing camps, a sort of scholar vs. artist mentality. I think they are more reconcilable though.

Sometimes when reading poetry, (or just as I go through life) I do exactly as Frost says and get knowledge "cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books." He relates it to walking through a field and then noticing all the burrs one picks up along the way. I think there is value in that. We are allowed to informally explore ourselves and learn about life, no pressures.

But I dont think we can always learn like a piece of ice that is just melting randomly on a hot stove.

There is also great value in learning through "conscientious thoroughness along projected lines of logic," or the scholarly approach. It might not be as delightful to learn this way, which is more regimented. It forces us to evaluate things in a different way and lets people criticize our work and look for holes in it, which in turn makes us be more careful. This way, we can be sure our ideas have merit and are supportable.

Why do people feel the need to join one side or the other? Why cant we learn both ways? I know sometimes I come upon an idea the Frost-y way, and then take a deeper look at it the Eliot way. Sure, some of our works can unfold in a surprising and almost revelatory way, but some must also be reasoned through.

Well, there it is. I'm off to play on a friday night!

Bummin' around

Just to warn those who will be in the library bright an early tomorrow--

Chances are there is a homeless lady sleeping in there tonight. A bunch of people saw her go in and none saw her go out when the library closed. My crew at work helped security scour the library for her, but it is a huge place and there were no signs of her.



Aaaaand, I forgot to turn my key in when I clocked out. So I'll be in trouble tomorrow.