Lonely House

 By Sarah Paar

Throughout my childhood, art was always an interest to me. It started as my favorite subject in class and metamorphosed into a hobby I thoroughly enjoy. I started to paint seriously starting at age 16. Since then, I’ve spent countless hours practicing and playing with paints, pencils, chalks, and more. My current favorite medium is watercolors.

This piece is entitled “Lonely House” and is an 8x10 watercolor painting. The content of this piece includes an older mobile home, lit only by the porchlight and the earliest of morning rays. I spent 7 years waiting for the bus right in front of this house. Most mornings, especially on the coldest ones, this house was lit exactly how it’s presented in the painting. Looking back, I feel nostalgia.

Everything about riding the bus was dreadful. There were early hours, cold moorings and hot mornings. The bus ride was long and slow, and it was taking me to a place I would have preferred not to be. Even so, the bus stop was a calm, quiet place. I believe this is why I feel nostalgic looking at this painting.

I’m not sure if anyone lived in this house after my 3^rd year at the bus stop. The porchlight was on, but the windows were always dark. After my 3^rd year at the bus stop, the dark red Jeep I would see leaving in the morning never showed up. For 4 long years, that house sat, all alone.

By the end of my 7^th year riding the bus, I was old enough to drive myself, so I stopped riding, and therefore stopped seeing the lonely house.

Half a year went by till I went by my old bus stop again. I was shocked to see what lay before me. The lonely house was gone. All that remained was an empty plot of land and the slab of concrete where the old house once stood. I still miss that old house and waiting for the bus every morning. It was a huge part of my childhood, and now it’s gone forever.

Talking is Improvising

by Christianne Wilson

On February 27th, 2019, Greg Snider presented a lecture entitled “Anyone Can Improvise.” Snider is a professor at the College of Central Florida, where he teaches saxophone and clarinet, and directs Jazz Bands and Ensembles. He is primarily a jazz musician, and as such is heavily involved in the tradition of musical improvisation. In his lecture, he strove to convey the thought that improvising is more than a musical or professional endeavor, but is an everyday practice that is applied to every aspect of life. He predicted that each audience member was already an accomplished improvisor but that we did not know it.

He began by defining improvisation, which he said is “composing, performing, or delivering without previous preparation; making, providing, or arranging from whatever materials are available.” Snider stated that improvising involves more than music. He used the example of conversation. When two people start a conversation they do not know what the dialogue will be ahead of time, but must decide with each remark what to say, when to say it, etc. His theory is that improv is part of our culture and we are taught its usage from birth.

His job, then, is to instruct his students to transfer this knowledge into music.He starts by setting the parameters. In terms of conversation, this would be things like the scene of the conversation, the size of the crowd, and the speaker's relationship to those to whom one is speaking. Musical guidelines could be rhythm, scale, and length of the song. This step guides the communicator and creates a direction or flow for him or her to follow. Snider demonstrated this by asking one of his students, Shawnli Rivetz, to improvise for the audience. Rivetz was able to convey an idea through his music that spoke to the crowd, by following the given guidelines.

In closing, Snider reiterated that improvising is simply modifying small things to add flavor to a conversation or song, and that anyone can do it.