The shivers.

I want you to listen to this music, and hopefully you are listening to it for the first time. I've always been a secret lover of classical music since I first started to learn how to play the piano. I could get swept away by an orchestra, I see such wonderful colours and lights when I close my eyes, and whole lifetimes come to pass and stories unfurl when a symphony rings sweetly or hotly through my ears. If a piece of music really touches me, I get shivers up and down my body. That is how I can tell a piece of music is good, the lights, the sounds, the ideas besides, it is the shivers or pure bliss I get which start right across my shoulders, through my heart, and spread like a wave of pure, shocking joy. I am floored by them, I need a moment to recover after feeling them.

One of the first classical themes I fell in love with is called Le Danse Macabre which is a wonderful example of 1800's classical composition. It was composed by Camille Saint-Saëns after being inspired by a poem written based on an old french superstition that on halloween every year, on the stroke of midnight, the devil rises from the deep to play his fiddle, and make all the dead dance until dawn...

Oh I remember when I was a teenager and first head that music in full glory, I had it on repeat and on my CD player (that was a while ago, remember portable CD players? I'll be harking on about walkmans next.) Recently, I've been diving into 'new age classical' which are compositions made in the last fifty years or so, which are so unique! Given the new techniques used in producing music combined with the classical format of the orchestra, it is so compelling!

Usually, in these modern times when people say something is 'new age' it usually means that they have tried to improve it by doing away with all the nonsense which gave it its charm, and crowbarred modern thinking to something which didn't need 'improvement.' However, I find that new age classical is just an amalgamation of different techniques and instruments appended to the old orchestral format. What we are left with is the sort of wonderful music used in the soundtracks of movies. You remember I mentioned before about when I hear inspiring and breathtaking music, I can see wonderful images and light? Well modern classical is applied to movies in the same way, so that people can feel through sound what they are feeling through sight.

I challenge you to listen to this next piece by Thomas Newman (a new favourite of mine.) Close your eyes, sit,  be, just experience it. Feel the shivers run through your body and wait for that moment where you need to breath in out of shear breathlessness. Seek this pleasure, for this is the true measure of great music.

Now try and tell me the 'Sex Pistols' were good music.

Change is hard.

Ok so I don't want to bum anyone out, but this post if about death.

Yesterday I saw 2012, which for anyone who hasn't seen (which includes the me from before last night) it is basically about the end of the world. I found it, while being a good action film and way up there on my 'Disaster film's list (anyone who knows me well enough knows I love disaster films, colour me crazy) it also got me thinking about my own mortality.

You see the issue is that every so often, and it isn't so often as to be a problem but every once in a while I will have a sort-of mini panic attack about death. About the general shortness and insignificance of existence, and about all the depressing things that to continue with life, most people do not think about. I'll start to think about how everyone I know will eventually die, about the experiences I have yet to go through such as the death of my pets, of my parents, them possibly my brothers and my friends, and throw in the odd accident or cancer and you have a lifetime of heartache that I tremble just thinking about.

Of course this thought disappears very quickly. I resolved a long time ago that you cannot fight the inevitable, and the more time you spend dwelling on the subject of death, the less time you spend living. I mulled that life is measured not by how many people remember you or what you leave behind, but the experiences you have while your here, and the happiness you feel and bestow on others before leaving this mortal coil. Last night I started to panic that my life might not be worth while, that I won't be able to affect the lives of as many people I'd want to and that I might die feeling unfulfilled. I know now that that simply won't happen, I have a lot to give to people, even if it is just my family and friends. My goal in life is to love and be loved, to spread happiness and to ease the suffering of others, to live life and gain as many experiences as I can before I move on to whatever it is I am to move onto.

Last night I fell asleep, as I always do. When I woke up this morning I was looking forward to the day, I wasn't concerned about my mortality, and that, is life.

He's dead, gym!

Ok ok ok, guess what I did...

Wrong!... (maybe,) I joined a gym. After losing an ass load of weight (unfortunately, not from my ass) I have decided to do the stupidly bold and moronically adventurous thing of walking the Manchester Pride parade... shirtless! Normally this action is enough to frighten the populous, but screw it, I'm proud of who I am (or whatever it is.)

Sye, put your shirt on!

I'm usually in the gym for about an hour and a half, to two hours at a time. I start by getting changed (that helps) and doing fifteen minutes on a bike. Not a regular bike mind, one you can chill out on! I tend not to chill out though, I'm quite good at being rigorous when I'm in the gym. After that I do my intensive stretches, focusing mostly on my legs (as I use them for walking and such.) Next up is either fifteen minutes on the rowing machine, or I skip that and go straight to my muscle work outs. These involve focusing on my arms and chest, as well as getting rid of the mid-rift which I have yet to give a name to. After all that, a nice relaxing fifteen minute swim, followed by roughly eight hours in the jacuzzi and sauna (thats, eight hours each or course.)

I leave feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. I have to say it isn't at all what I've expected. I did try attending a gym a few years ago and just felt so self conscious that I couldn't really concentrate. I mean I was fat, but the fact that most of the people in that gym were steroid monkeys, and I was still envious of their bodies. Now however its as if I have no shame at all! I mean there are still a lot of things I would change about my body given the chance, but going from being large to being medium has sort of put things into perspective about how much nobody gives a shit but you! Actually I was worried that I would start to pile weight on during the holidays from Uni, but actually I've managed to stick to it and tighten some of my unsightly loose skin.

All in all, I am rather proud of myself (or, whatever it is) and I think I am going to be daring enought to post pictures soon to report on my progress!

Now, where did I put the ice cream...

Like, totally awesome guys!

Just wanted to say big up to my american friends.

Well done for taking your country back! You know what though, we didn't even want it. It smelled bad, it was too big to walk in flip flops and 'y'all tawk funney ov'r dey're.' Of course the Americans aren't bitter towards the english, not at all. Apart from charging us a bomb air fair and not really understanding how soccer works.

I'm obviously not going to fall into the utterly rediculous and low brow trap of making an obesity reference in my blog, but I will say that the Americans certainly tend to spoil themselves in most areas of life, especially their children.... but we still love you anyway, just don't sit on the couch, its light pine (haha, fat joke.)

Big love, yankees!