Thing-a-day.com

This was supposed to be music week, but I got distracted by jewelry yesterday. I thought I’d do an instrumental cover of one of my favorite John Mayer songs, but it sounded weird without the voice melody– so I sang along with it at the last minute. It’s not terribly impressive, because um, I’m not a boy, and this is not a good key for me. I guess this just means I’ll also have to do something complimentary to my voice this week. That’s thrilling I guess.

The rhythm on this song was really tricky for me, and not easy to translate into piano. I think I fucked up the baseline a bit; oh well. Mostly I wanted to do this because the lyrics seem pretty apropos for life lately.

I hate to see you cry
Lying there in that position
There’s things you need to hear
So turn off your tears and listen
Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love makes it all turn around
I know it won’t all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

The Heart of Life

So I was going to finish the Rachmaninoff piece, but instead I had the urge to make this.

It’s an ametrine; ametrine’s pretty rare, as far as gems go, because there’s only one mine in all the world (that’s been discovered) where you can get it. It’s actually made up of both amythest and citrine. Because they’re sort of marbled together, no two pieces are alike. It’s supposed to have certain metaphysical properties too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I made it for a friend, along with customizing a little jewelry box, and I’m making a note for it later, too. But all of that’s a bit personal to share; you guys just get the pendant. I’m quite proud of it, as I’m new to this whole wire-wrapping thing; I usually just make chain.

For my very first thing a day, I decided to take a lovely, slow, a capella choral piece by Rachmaninoff that I’ve always loved– very reverent, a bit melancholy– and do something instrumental with it, and happier. I’m sure Sergei is turning over in his grave.

This is only just about the first half or so of it; I decided to stop when the tempo changes, because I’d already spent a little over an hour on it.

The All-Night Vigil, no. VI

If, like Jess, you want to hear the gorgeous piece I’m massacring, you can get my favorite version from iTunes, here.

I’m pretty excited about this, although it’s a bit crazy of me to agree to do it the month before I move. Potential things you may see in my things:

• Pretty photographs
• Jewelry
• Writing snippets
• RPG design nonsense
• Terrible drawings