RyanHarne.com

Virginia Tech is about two months away. My absence has been both beneficial and unpropitious, in that I’ve gratefully enjoyed a break (my first spring of no school since I was 3 years of age) but feel like I’m unlearning everything (and am struggling to keep myself to a pattern of study and review). I ran into a high school friend today who told me he’s transferring to VT this fall. Of the many people from my high school class who went to VT, I have only kept in close contact with a few of them. Having a good friend now going to my school, from my school, or “our” school I should say, will be pleasant. Regardless, I’m just looking forward to having a tiny space for living and being able to walk to get around town.

Oh well. I’m making the most of my summer by exhausting myself with weekend trips. After this upcoming weekend (my high school’s graduation ceremonies), I will be gone for almost every weekend through July. I foresee this being a summer of 4-5k miles for the Jetta. Poor Jetta.

On a side note, and for future use and reference, I don’t recommend that anyone ever perform the following actions back-to-back. Read Plato. Listen to rap music. It felt like I came upon an intellectual black hole. Especially in the line that said Germans have their steering wheels on the right side of the car, which they don’t. Those rappers are similar to foolish Thrasymachus.

You so crazy, Thrasymachus.

I’ve been having middle school flashbacks. These flashbacks haven’t been induced by anything particularly, but rather just happen to be what my mind has wandered towards in its moments of idleness (rare moments, but they exist nonetheless).

The world I experienced with middle school was not perfect. Our class was still an experimentation with the new building that was just constructed. Noticing the waste of a few million dollars on extras to win an arhcitectural award, it was difficult to adjust to the odd layout and design; almost the same type of difficulty to endure if you forced posture-pedic chairs on students to reshape their spines by the year 2055. There was a “technology lab”, of sorts, in this new middle school and we all rotated through the areas every so often.

In my three years at that school, I never once was chosen, at random, to be in the radio production lab. It was heart-breaking - the one lab I truly desired, among the dozen or so, and despite repeating a few labs in monotony, the radio production setup eluded my grasp. Instead, I dealt with labs such as “Architecture Studies”, “Book Studying Lab”, and “Lab Janitor Lab”.

So the world of middle school was not perfect. One day during some typical lunch half-hour, a few of us middle schoolers, feeling the realization that our hopes and goals were being strategically suppressed and undermined, desired to design a new world. A Perfect World.

With our middle school minds, our envision of a perfect world more or less consisted of us ridding the planet of those we didn’t like. We could not justify a large homicide, so it was our plan to ship certain people to certain continents; basically, a total redistribution of the human race. Sounds exciting, right? Well, it was to us handful of chicken patty-munching students.

I can only remember a few details, but certain people were sent off to their demise in a land called “Stinkpot” while the more prominent members of our group of friends were rescued from destruction and allowed to live with us, provided they didn’t interfere with our supplies. Supplies being a very loose term, in this instance. It was all well and good, and it wasted a half-hour so we could get home faster to play Super Nintendo.

I suppose that world wasn’t perfect after all. But, mind you, this was coming from the same people who bribed another student with eight cookies if he drank a 12 ounce cup of whatever we wanted to put in it. And remember, we’re talking about public school lunch food - Grade F taco beef, generic catsup, orange drink, milk-in-a-bag, tater tots, just-add-water pizza. He did drink it, and we did buy him eight cookies. But it was the best forty-five cents each of us ever spent.

Here marks the end of this middle school flashback. Should another one surface, I’ll warn you in advance.

If you never saw Garden State (as I still haven’t, honestly) or if you never heard the whispered, underground raves regarding Frou Frou, you have been missing out on the voice of Imogen Heap. Fantastic name (gives me a fantastic memory) but a divine vocal prowess.

The album by Frou Frou had a catchy electro-pop drive but tossed in an effectual song of meaning. Every track had a hint of this underlying passion and provocative force that was never named, but was clearly hidden within the expanse of Imogen’s vocals. Her tone is poignant and instantly recognizable. That’s why, upon hearing this new single, I had one of those where-have-I-heard-that-before moments, and then quickly realized the lead of Frou Frou’s name is Imogen Heap.

Imogen Heap. The name itself doesn’t seem to set off bells or attract undivided attention, at least nowhere near as intensely as “Max Power” or “Optimus Prime”. But the unassuming nature of the name is so mirror to fervor invoked by her song. She releases a full-length album in September, but for now we are left with this hint of good things to come. The single, “Hide and Seek”, has the distinct markings that Frou Frou planted, but Imogen loses the pop facade and becomes a mistress to the depth of melodic beauty. This is the type of music you weep to, the type of music that highlights and hallmarks significant times in our lives.

Be warned: you may explode with emotion upon listening. Being serious, this is the best 99 cents I’ve spent since I purchased Darwin Chamber’s 30-minute long “3D Thunderstorm Environment“. Unless you’ve heard the Chamber track, I’ll simply my message and state “Imogen Heap is phenomenal”.

A side note, in addition, I am going to Boston this summer. Oh yes. Uhuh. Yes.