pro}jection:s

DECISIONS DECISIONS DECISIONS

Filling out my UCAS form. 

Kent is my number 1 choice, but I wasn’t quite sure what course I wanted to do. Originally, I wanted to do History & Religious Studies, but then I started thinking I might enjoy Literature more. I’m really interested in History, but I’m more passionate about Literature.. I settled for English & American Literature with Religious Studies. I hope I’ll be happy with that, but I think I will :) Still, there’s so much stuff to decide this year. It’s doing my head in.

Books that are worth reading:

An Abundance Of Katherines - John Green

Paper Towns - John Green

Looking for Alaska - John Green

(yes, I love John Green)

Eating Animals /

Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud /

Everything is Illuminated - all by Jonathan Safran Foer

Oh wow don’t you love being sick?

Well, I don’t have to go to school till monday, which gives me time to catch up on my reading and (argh) my homework. I decided to make a playlist:

The Fight - Sia

Sentimental Journey - The Merrymacs

Message in a Bottle - The Police

Straight A’s in love - Johnny Cash

Elektrisches Gefühl - Juli

Red Light - The Rumour Said Fire

Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding

Black Coffee - Ella Fitzgerald

Bird Song - Florence & the Machine

Hit The Road Jack - Ray Charles

Seven Nation Army - Ben l’Oncle Soul

Amarula Tree - Amanda Jenssen

A few of my favourite songs. Yeah, loadsa old stuff, but I like it. Right, now I gotta go back to eating chocolate and feeling sick. ;)

So, last year of school started last week. I could do with a holiday.
Everything teachers seem to be able to talk about: UNIVERSITIES. What if I don’t want to attend a uni? Ok, I do, but still. Listening to them, I’m starting to think that if I don’t attend a uni and graduate after 3 or 4 years and start a successful career straight away, my life will be a failure. But there’s things i want to do, things I want to see, before starting my “grown-up life”. For example, I came across this article. A project called “tribe wanted”. This british guy wants people to register with his website, go to sierra leone and build a village by the beach. It doesnt matter where you’re from or who you are, as long as you’re willing to help. Ok, it wouldnt be a luxurious life, but a great experience. I also want to go to the US and travel from east to west and back. I want to go to Australia and do “work&travel”. I want to find out how other people live and what they do before i start a life of my own. I don’t want to wake up in 20 years and think “shit, this is not what I wanted”. But I don’t know. I want to do it all, but for the moment I think I’m too scared to do it alone. Maybe that’s stupid. I don’t know.

. Israfel - E.A.Poe

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
„Whose heart-strings are a lute“;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love’s a grown-up God-
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!

The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely- flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

The Radio, The Radio

You don’t know who’s talking, you’ve never met them. And still, you might listen to them every morning. Or every evening. You feel like you sort of know them, and they always seem to be completely at ease behind the microphone.

…it’s not really like that. They look so different from what you imagined. They turn out to be completely different people. And what they talk about might seem spontaneous, but it has to be planned. Sometimes even the day before.

It’s weird, working here. There’s so much work involved for such “little” results. The music schedule is already set days before, nearly a week. And it’s done by a computer. The real work is finding themes to talk about, making sure the group of people you’re aiming for is interested in it. And it has to be up-to-date.

You call around to get interviews with musicians / politicians / other people and they’re never available or don’t know anything about the stuff you’re trying to do research on. It’s sort of boring. And frustrating, of course, if you have to call 3 different numbers just to get the name of a person.

All in all, I never would have thought that for 15 mins of speech / hour you need so many people working on so much stuff.. Two people for the news, and one or two people per radio show, plus the people that do the online stuff on websites etc.

But there’s also a lot of practical work involved, not just sitting behind a PC. Like I mentioned, you have to call a lot of people to get first hand informations and if you want to have interviews, you sometimes have to go to the city and question people on the streets about stuff.

There’s just so many aspects to working for the radio and so far I’m really loving my internship. But still, I think I’d prefer to work for Magazines / Newspapers or TV.