Splurge!

So… I have no idea how to justify this, but Seppo and I bought an incredibly-close-to-brand-spanking-new HDTV which arrived in the mail yesterday. Thanks, Andre! Why are you so awesome? 🙂

It is really quite gorgeous.

In a much smaller splurge, I am purchasing the Outlander Audiobook CD (Unabridged). It is 32.5 hours long. That’s nothing compared to the last book in the series, which is 58 hours long. 😀 Anyway, I am getting the audiobook to help with my commute. I’ve been listening to podcasts of NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” and “Sunday Puzzle” the last few days, a change from listening to the local newsradio station and random music from my ipod, and this change has been for the better.

The first time, part 1

I still remember the first time I heard music in stereo sound. I was twelve years old. I had just received a Sony Walkman (my first!) from a visiting friend of the family, as it had been my birthday not too long ago. It was a hot summer night, and I was supposed to sleep in the livingroom along with my sister (because the guests were sleeping in our room), but instead of actually sleeping, I lay down on the floor with the thin sheet over me and my first headphones covertly placed over my ears.

In the dark, I closed my eyes, pressed play on the Walkman, and for the first time in my life, really listened to the sounds coming into my ears.

It was… indescribeable. It was amazing. The music came from both sides of me, all around me, from within my head. The music flowed through my consciousness, and it was like I was right there with the musicians, like they were playing a performance for me, in a small room with me. The music washed over me, became a part of me. Or I became a part of it. I don’t know.

—

In the fifth grade, the yearly school eye exam revealed that I was terribly near-sighted. My sight being the only sight I knew, I had no idea there was something wrong. I had figured that you can of course see things near you and not see things far from you. Except that I couldn’t see things most others could. In any case, a visit to the optometrist was scheduled, and a pair of glasses were soon procured.

That evening, I walked back from my piano lesson (I only lasted a month :|) which was just a few blocks away from my house, accompanied by my sister and my cousin, who were also taking lessons there. It was a fall evening, and it was starting to get dark already even though it was just turning to dinner time. There were crunchy dried leaves on the ground, and I looked down, dazzled at how much detail I could see of them. Looking up to the trees that were dropping leaves, I couldn’t believe I could pick out individual leaves. Looking past the trees, I was floored by what I saw.

I saw pinpoints of light. Little, individual, bright shining points in the night sky, different sizes, some twinkling, some steady.

I had no idea. I had, until that point, thought stars were more like the five-pointed stars we draw as kids, big fuzzy bursts of blurry, unfocussed light, some so close to each other that they looked like one.

—

I was in the eighth grade, at my new school. It was the first week or two of classes, and the new music teacher was trying to teach us how to really hear and appreciate music. He played a recording of what a violin sounds like alone, then he told us to listen for that sound and see if we could hear the “buzz of bees”. Puzzled, we waited as he put in another tape and hit play.

Of course, the tape he put in was a recording of the Flight of the Bumblebee. At first, it was just one big wave of music washing over me. I could hear the overall melody and what felt like just a big blob of other stuff with it.

But I stopped and really strained to listen. I tried to pick up the sound he had played for us earlier. And BAM, there it was. Holy moly. I could hear the violins, just the violins, almost as if they were playing completely alone. In a split second, it was gone. It was just a jumble of music again.

Until that moment, I thought when music was played with many instruments at the same time, you just heard the resulting cacophany. No, tht’s not even true. I hadn’t even given it enough thought to have formed an idea like that. Music was just sound and it was either pleasant or not. In that short moment when I could hear the violins, I felt like I had been jolted awake.