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Hello, I hope your winter is going well. These next few months are going to be incredibly busy for me — I have my S.A.T. coming up (the final exam in American schools), as well as several piano competitions in the spring – one for concerti, two for solo works. Now’s my chance to finally build my reputation as a pianist. I’ve been waiting for this chance for years, and now that it’s come, I’m going to lock onto it with a grip of steel. If I win, I’ll get a step closer to achieving that scene I described on the Dream Repertory page. In fact, the only reason I’m not practicing right now is because my family brought me on a road trip.

Among my most difficult pieces are Chopin’s Second Ballade, his Nocturne 48 no. 1, and Beethoven’s Pathétique; currently I’m studying Beethoven’s Third Concerto. A typical concert pianist can play all this and more when they’re, like, twelve; I’m incredibly behind, and my chances of making it big as a pianist are practically zero. But I recently stumbled upon this video of Nikolai Lugansky testing a piano in a store by practicing Rachmaninoff 3. In it, despite having no orchestra, no venue, and an audience of only a few random people, incredible passion and artistic depth still shone through. Even if music’s greatest joys are beyond me, there’s still a whole world of art in my reach, and whatever is in that reach, I shall work my very hardest to get. Besides, I’ve experienced many other joys that money and stage time can’t always bring you — I’ve inspired people to study music, I’ve made friends through it, I’ve had neighbors who wander in front of my house just to hear me play. I’m planning to start teaching and finding gigs soon, too. If I could get a lifetime of experiences like these, it’d be quite fulfilling already.

As for how my road trip went, my family and I toured some old Floridian universities, then went to New Orleans. This was among the most interesting, distinctive American cities I’ve visited. Much of it catered to tourists, but there was a mix of the very wealthy and very poor, of stately cathedrals and wild bars and clubs, of people from all countries and walks of life. There were numerous local artists and musicians, and colorful architecture in florid, antiquated styles. It was a thick soup of culture, history, and people — there were so many lifestyles converging at once, so much to see and learn. Some of the famous restaurants were stuffed with tourists, but the food was unique and pretty good.

Thank you for your interest :) if you’d like, here’s a nice Scriabin piece. Happy New Year’s!

Hello! I hope you’re doing well, dear reader. It’s been a while since I last wrote here; I’ve been terribly busy with school, books, and other stuff, and I expect I shall be for a long time. But this website is a long-term project which I shall never abandon.

I never managed my aforementioned summer plan, but what I did learn over the summer is the habit of reading like there’s no tomorrow. Now I read on the bus, while walking, between classes, during lunch, before bed. Right now I’m working on Infinite Jest — which was not part of my plan, but whatever, it was cheap on eBay. Honestly, I’m surprised by how interesting the book is — some people act like reading it is the ninth circle of literary Hell, but it’s actually more funny and witty than I expected, but also depressing, with interesting insights into modern American society and how hedonistic and addicted we’ve become. True, it can be crazy at times — for example, there’s a three-page footnote talking about a dead fictional man’s filmography in extreme detail. But being crazy, overwhelming, and whimsical isn’t bad. Though it’s possible my sense of “fun” has been permanently fractured by Moby-Dick’s long whaling chapters, or perhaps I just haven’t reached the really hard parts yet…

To be honest, I’ve given up on trying to completely eliminate social media from my life. Before, I used to act like it was some deadly evil, but I realized that demonizing it so intensely wouldn’t let me forget about it and move on. “The forbidden fruit is the sweetest”, as they say; whenever I was hopeless or stressed out, I found myself logging back onto Reddit. Now, I have an account again, and have accepted that, because I live in the twenty-first century, I was taught at a young age to communicate with and seek help from the world online, and it has become a nearly irreversible part of who I am. But now that I’ve returned, I actually haven’t been using it much — not because I’m making extreme efforts not to, but because I’ve developed the routine of packing my days with so much work that I don’t have time to lie around on my bed and scroll anymore. Besides, now that I have an account, I’ve joined subreddits with stuff much less eye-catching and sensationalistic than the memes and politics on the main page.

Anyway, thank you for your interest; if you’d like, have a Rachmaninoff prelude. It is my friend’s favorite, and I am currently learning it. Have a great day ^^

Hello, I am currently reading The Grapes of Wrath and The Master and Margarita. The latter was a book I was supposed to finish weeks ago for a Neocities book club, but around two hundred and fifty pages in, I realized I didn’t know enough about the time period and Soviet zeitgeist to understand the allegories forming the backbone of the book. In other words, I had almost no idea what was going on. Therefore I am postponing it to learn more about Soviet history and perhaps huff some copium.

Throughout the summer, I shall try (keyword: try) to read the following:

• The Piazza Tales (Melville)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde)
• The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky — I have only read three of his books and I am very impressed)
• A Hero Of Our Time (Lermontov. A friend says it is a “masterpiece”)
• East of Eden (Steinbeck)
• S.P.Q.R. (Mary Beard)
• Whatever is suggested by my book club

If I have more time (hardly likely):

• Huckleberry Finn (Twain — one of a friend’s favorites)
• Dubliners (Joyce)
• The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (Dalí. He is an artistic genius but as crazy as a fox)
• Dead Souls (Gogol. Another described “masterpiece”)
• Leaves of Grass (Whitman)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bertensson, Leyda)
• The Adolescent, Notes From A Dead House (Dostoyevsky)

I tend to focus on classics, specifically Russian and American literature. Of course, (many) masterpieces come from every country, but it’s easier to understand books’ historical contexts and authors’ mindsets when you focus on one or two countries.

To address the other part of the title, this summer a friend and I made a bonfire out of schoolwork. All of our constant fear and stress turned into a pile of ashes. If you’d like to try it too, I can say three things: do it in an open area, as it produces a lot of smoke; don't burn all your papers at once, but split them into piles and gradually add them to the fire. This ensures that all the papers are thoroughly burned. Use kindling, such as dead pine leaves, or it’ll burn very slowly. Anyhow, after indulging in our pyromanic tendencies, we bought root-beer floats and hung out at a bookstore until dusk.

Thank you for your interest, dear reader. If you’d like, here’s a pleasant Scriabin prelude.

I’m planning to work on Beethoven’s Pathetique this summer; my teacher thinks it’ll help me improve my physical skills. She told me that she intended for me to eventually play a concerto, with a real orchestra. The piano has just been a personal hobby for me, something I hanker away at after school for fun; I’ve never expected that it would get this far. It’s very exciting to think about playing in front of a real audience like that—to no longer just be some nobody kid in the suburbs, but a real pianist, making a real contribution to music.

The last time I performed in public was when I was ten. I was admitted to a school talent show to play the piano. I still remember that night—wearing my mom’s fancy necklace and a glittery black dress, I stepped out of my parents’ car into the cold night air, heading to the school’s music room, which was filled with other performers. Some kids were dancers, others solved Rubik’s cubes. The room was alive with murmur; I remember seeing one vomit from nervousness. At last, it was my turn. I stepped out of the music room, onto the stage in the adjacent cafeteria. Being in the warm limelight, seeing the hundreds of faces in the shadows, it felt almost surreal, as though I were watching myself from a screen. The keys felt far away, and I pressed them almost mechanically. But when I stood up, the life returned to me, and the whole cafeteria erupted into applause. When I returned to the music room with the other performers, they all began clapping—they’d heard it as well.

But that was long ago. Life got in the way, and for years I stopped playing the piano altogether... No more limelight, just an ordinary life of homework, books, and AP classes, even when I started playing again. Sometimes I wonder how far I would’ve gotten if that hadn’t happened. A few months ago, a friend and I saw a seventeen-year-old pianist, just two years older than us, perform Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with a local orchestra. Everyone gave him a standing ovation, and I even heard some remark that he was the best pianist they’d ever heard. We were nearly the same age and yet walked such different paths in life: he was up there on the stage, a whole audience before him, and I just another member of the crowd, filing away with the rest...

Now, though, there’s a chance things could change. Not to say I could become a pianist rivaling that fellow, but perhaps I could have the limelight once again.

Anyhow, thank you for your interest; I hope you’ve been well.

Hello, welcome to my blog. This website has grown fairly quickly, and I’ve been contemplating plans for new content. The long-term focus of it will probably be my interests in language, history, art, and so on. One of my favorite parts of the Internet is when people write pages and pages about fields they’re passionate about, whether it’s the laws of physics or a dissection of a Shostakovich cantata; I’d like join them in doing so. On the other hand, though, if I make this website too academic, it will grow inaccessible, impersonal, and probably a little pretentious. I’ll try to balance it out with more personal content—in this blog, for example, and a photography page. At some point, I also plan to translate this website into Russian; if nobody reads it, at least it’s good practice.

What I hope to achieve in this website’s decoration is the image of a winter night in a New England city—spiraling snow, frozen old statues and gardens, golden lamp-posts, brick buildings, carousels, warm symphony halls, subway stations, grand galleries and exhibitions. My childhood home and the books I grew up reading bred a strong nostalgia for this specific image. I shall also add some elements of “Dark Academia.”

Plans aside, what has been going on in my life? Well, I had a dream that Shostakovich was added to Genshin Impact (though I don’t play video-games anymore.) I turned sixteen. I’ve been reading Anna Karenina and Brave New World. I’ve still been fighting to stay away from social media and gaming. It’s a real struggle to download video-games and delete them three minutes later.

Thank you for your time, dear reader; have a nice day. If you’d like, here’s a nice symphony.