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TL;DR: Like our new music ensemble’s page https://www.facebook.com/splitthelarkmusic so that we can better access grants and donations for high school music students in need. 

If you care to read…

This past year, a friend and I, @cooki3-cat​, started a contemporary music ensemble that’s been performing at my university each semester. What’s a contemporary music ensemble, you ask? We play “classical” music that was composed within the last year, most of the time composed specifically for our group to perform. This means we play music by living composers! Which is super awesome for them and us; they get to see their musical baby come to life, and we get to experience and live with entirely new music for around 6 weeks leading up to exciting performances! (We draw in audiences of 100+ people!) 

The group is made up of about 10 core players; Me playing piano, @cooki3-cat​ playing cello, and others playing violin, viola, clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, trombone and tuba. Next semester, we’ll be going in groups of 3 or 4 to public schools in NJ to perform, and to play pieces written for us by high school students and composers at our college alike. Once we gain more notoriety, we’d also like to start writing grants in order to give passionate students the chance to have an instrument they may have always wanted, but have not been able to afford.

Oftentimes students will be able to practice on a low-quality, cheap instrument provided by the school, but won’t have the money for a standard quality instrument that they can practice at home. And if you’ve ever been in the arts, you know how important it is to have materials/instruments you can be proud of, and ones that you can use to create high quality art. I can’t tell you how many people I knew in high school that had incredible talent. But who couldn’t sound good enough on their low level instruments to get into college. They’d usually give up altogether, since good instruments can cost even as much as a new car. Think of all the talent that’s being wasted.

If men experienced chronic pain at the disproportionate rates women do, pain would be well-medicated and sufferers would be praised, possibly even lionized. If the majority of pain patients were men, there would be more research and less hand-wringing. 

That’s not to say that men with chronic pain have it easy; rather, that our perception of women has shaped our perception and treatment of the illnesses that women tend to get.

but in spaces with other mentally ill people I hate that I can’t express my need to not be treated poorly is read as being ableist, no matter how much the other person is using me or belittling me it’s “ok” because they are mentally ill as if victims are never mentally ill themselves

like, to me, being upset/crying/being needy in itself aren’t manipulative or inherently abusive , those are just expressions of ones emotions

but threatening, attacking, forcing someone to do something they don’t want to (sexual or not) then I have every right to read that behavior as unhealthy

$2500/3 br

built in 1880

4000 square feet

so over the top i love it

$1000/live and work studio