One of my goals in writing this blog is to present the dark and mysterious that hides in everyday life. Pretty much any topic or event contains a spooky element, if you've made up your mind to look for it. My hope is that I can then find some beauty in the darkness I've managed to uncover.
Some of this hidden darkness was discovered yesterday, when I attended a concert being held by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The Orchestra performed several pieces, each very different from the next. One of these works Ex Nihilo (meaning "out of nothing") was so spooky that I was reminded of you home haunters. This experimental sounding piece of classical music would be perfect in the background of your haunted house or in a scary movie.
I really wanted to share this music with you, but I cannot find it online. This is probably because the composer is sort of sketching out ideas with this piece. He was just sharing what he had created so far with the audience. If I ever find the finished piece online, I'll be sure to share it. You'll just have to take my word that it was spooky!
Throughout Ex Nihilo, there were large pauses between little plucks on the bass or harp. Slight noises out of nowhere can be unsettling! Ex Nihilo reminded me of a two part Criminal Minds episode (No Way Out) that is played non stop around here. In fact it's on TV so much, that you've all no doubt seen part of it while switching channels. I have this episode more or less memorized by now, because I keep watching the reruns for some reason. By this point, I know just the places in the episode where I would splice in Ex Nihilo!
To put it briefly, the episode involves a woman who has a secret admirer. The admirer happens to be a serial killer. He leaves her wind chimes made from the bones of his victims when he travels through her town. Ex Nihilo reminded me of the scene where we hear the "chimes" in the wind:
The No Way Out Wind Chimes Scene
Unfortunately, I was not permitted to embed that scene on my blog. So, just click that link to get a good laugh. Well, at least I did. If you'd like to see the woman who these little gifts were intended for...
Meet Jane:
"A psycho with a whistle, that's not too weird."
I'm sure that the composer of Ex Nihilo was not inspired by anything along the lines of crazy Jane and her bone chimes.
Isn't it funny where my mind wandered while listening to that music? I'm not sure if any of you are this way, but I've always visualized scenes to go along with the music I'm listening to. It's sort of like I'm making up my own music videos. Visualizing music scenes used to entertain me as a kid while listening to my Walkman in the car.
During the concert's intermission, I wrote down a lot of notes for this blog post. People probably wondered what I was writing down so furiously. After making a list of all the blog points, I happened to look up and notice something I'd never seen before. I'm sure it had been suspended there for years, but I just never bothered to see it:
I saw this speaker and thought to myself "that looks like a head." Then I noticed the ear! I learned that what I saw is the Neumann Dummy Head Microphone.
The head is a microphone and inside each ear is a "condenser element", which is supposed to replicate human hearing.
It's amazing what we can notice when we take the time to look around!
In other music news, I was lucky enough to snag some free tickets to a preview showing of Rock of Ages this past Thursday! I got the free tickets from a site called gofobo.com and you can get free tickets too! That is if you live in the U.S. and there's a participating theater in your area. How it works is that you are emailed the weekly movie and you must reserve your tickets right away. It's first click, first served with this site. What an amazing deal! I wanted to be sure to share this resource with you guys, and that's the only reason I mentioned the movie. There's not a lot of spookiness going on in this one. Well, not aside from some of Tom Cruise's facial expressions.
I really enjoyed Rock of Ages! It's full of 80's music and a lot of funny moments. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are priceless! That's all I'm going to say. Actually, the trailer says it all:
Sometimes it's fun to just sit back, laugh, and enjoy some good old music!
Back to the topic of finding inspiration in everything... A source of spooky visual inspiration recently came from my garden. Some of the veggies I planted from seed have already been harvested and eaten! These radishes, whose roots supply the creepy inspiration, were great. Here's a silhouetted photo of one straight out of the earth. It still has dirt clinging to its roots.
I forgot how hot and spicy homegrown radishes can be. The other pics are of the lettuce and arugula that I also grew from seed. All of these plants were really low maintenance. I just covered the seeds with dirt and watered them occasionally.
The herbs in this photo are parsley and dill.
So, if you'd like to start growing vegetables, and be successful very soon, try radishes and lettuce. If you're a visual artist, you might be inspired by these roots!
Don't the roots look like crawling, tendril-like legs or spindly arms reaching out toward you?
Some of this hidden darkness was discovered yesterday, when I attended a concert being held by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The Orchestra performed several pieces, each very different from the next. One of these works Ex Nihilo (meaning "out of nothing") was so spooky that I was reminded of you home haunters. This experimental sounding piece of classical music would be perfect in the background of your haunted house or in a scary movie.
I really wanted to share this music with you, but I cannot find it online. This is probably because the composer is sort of sketching out ideas with this piece. He was just sharing what he had created so far with the audience. If I ever find the finished piece online, I'll be sure to share it. You'll just have to take my word that it was spooky!
To put it briefly, the episode involves a woman who has a secret admirer. The admirer happens to be a serial killer. He leaves her wind chimes made from the bones of his victims when he travels through her town. Ex Nihilo reminded me of the scene where we hear the "chimes" in the wind:
The No Way Out Wind Chimes Scene
Unfortunately, I was not permitted to embed that scene on my blog. So, just click that link to get a good laugh. Well, at least I did. If you'd like to see the woman who these little gifts were intended for...
Meet Jane:
"A psycho with a whistle, that's not too weird."
I'm sure that the composer of Ex Nihilo was not inspired by anything along the lines of crazy Jane and her bone chimes.
Isn't it funny where my mind wandered while listening to that music? I'm not sure if any of you are this way, but I've always visualized scenes to go along with the music I'm listening to. It's sort of like I'm making up my own music videos. Visualizing music scenes used to entertain me as a kid while listening to my Walkman in the car.
During the concert's intermission, I wrote down a lot of notes for this blog post. People probably wondered what I was writing down so furiously. After making a list of all the blog points, I happened to look up and notice something I'd never seen before. I'm sure it had been suspended there for years, but I just never bothered to see it:
I saw this speaker and thought to myself "that looks like a head." Then I noticed the ear! I learned that what I saw is the Neumann Dummy Head Microphone.
The head is a microphone and inside each ear is a "condenser element", which is supposed to replicate human hearing.
It's amazing what we can notice when we take the time to look around!
In other music news, I was lucky enough to snag some free tickets to a preview showing of Rock of Ages this past Thursday! I got the free tickets from a site called gofobo.com and you can get free tickets too! That is if you live in the U.S. and there's a participating theater in your area. How it works is that you are emailed the weekly movie and you must reserve your tickets right away. It's first click, first served with this site. What an amazing deal! I wanted to be sure to share this resource with you guys, and that's the only reason I mentioned the movie. There's not a lot of spookiness going on in this one. Well, not aside from some of Tom Cruise's facial expressions.
I really enjoyed Rock of Ages! It's full of 80's music and a lot of funny moments. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are priceless! That's all I'm going to say. Actually, the trailer says it all:
Sometimes it's fun to just sit back, laugh, and enjoy some good old music!
Back to the topic of finding inspiration in everything... A source of spooky visual inspiration recently came from my garden. Some of the veggies I planted from seed have already been harvested and eaten! These radishes, whose roots supply the creepy inspiration, were great. Here's a silhouetted photo of one straight out of the earth. It still has dirt clinging to its roots.
I forgot how hot and spicy homegrown radishes can be. The other pics are of the lettuce and arugula that I also grew from seed. All of these plants were really low maintenance. I just covered the seeds with dirt and watered them occasionally.
The herbs in this photo are parsley and dill.
So, if you'd like to start growing vegetables, and be successful very soon, try radishes and lettuce. If you're a visual artist, you might be inspired by these roots!
Don't the roots look like crawling, tendril-like legs or spindly arms reaching out toward you?
