The Authoress

When I started studying the piano when I was five, it was just because my parents made me, so I initially found it rather boring. I never truly enjoyed it until I quit lessons when I was eleven and started learning Chopin’s First Ballade on my own — which was impossible for me to finish at the time, but which was the one piece I sincerely loved. Now, the piano constitutes one of the primary parts of my life, and I hope to play in competitions and concertos in the future. My username, ‘Ondine’, is a reference to the first movement of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, one of the most difficult pieces in the world; my favorite composer is Rachmaninoff.

I’ve always been a reader; when I was younger, I had a reputation for sitting on the edge of the school playground to read every single day. I started reading classic literature to challenge myself, and to see how good ‘great’ literature could really be. Literature is the art that’s always come the easiest to me, compared to dance or painting — everything is laid out in front of you, in text, and all you have to do is connect the dots.

I started wanting to learn languages when I was eleven; at the time, I wanted to learn as much about the world as possible, but being unsure how exactly I’d do that, one thing I tried was learning a bunch of languages. At first, I wanted to learn at least six, but this number narrowed down as I grew older and busier. My favorite language is probably Russian — many find it harsh, but to me, it’s a cool, crisp, cutting sound. After that, Latin, but its grammar, although beautiful, is exhausting… For example, why must one learn four different stems just for one verb‽

Other than all this, I am a busy student, a girl, and an American. I came to Neocities because it allows more room for creativity, individuality, and long-form content. My website is admittedly a bit messy, and I’ll work on cleaning it up when I have more time...