Into This Shadow

 Today has been one of those days when nothing but River Song's Music will do. I have listened to nothing but The Greatest Story Never Told today! I remember watching Forest of the Dead live and having to sit on my hands once this River scene with this music came on in order not to replay it immediately right after just to make it to the end of the episode. Fabulous scene and fabulous music. Murray Gold outdid himself composing this one. I have accomplished much today and I did all listening to this one!

 

Today's questions at thefridayfive

 

1. What are three things you refuse to live without?

1 - My medications. Because not taking my medications will lead to dire consequences where Crohn's Disease is considered likely within a year or two. And if I don't take my migraine medications, awful terrible pain as soon as 24 hours but no later than 2-3 days.

2 - Fan during hot days (heat wave in English). I didn't used to own a fan, until I bought my current fan about 10-12 years ago, maybe? Honestly I don't know how I survived the summers without a fan! Now I know that the moment my fan breaks down, I'll be buying a new one! It really does help that much! I even sometimes need to use during winter.

3 - Books! Or at least stories. I can't imagine life without books/stories to read.

2. What are your three favorite items of clothing?

1 - My 4 beach dresses that I bought just to use at home during hot days (heat wave days but it's not much of a wave anymore like it used to be but constant stretch of helle or heat wave days). They made of soft, comfortable fabric and of colors and patterns I like very much. They're knee-length and have string shoulder straps and I'd love to wear them everywhere but I don't like showing my underwear (industrial strength bras) to random strangers.

2 - My bras. I need industrial strength bras and if I don't wear a bra, my back starts to hurt within an hour or two as well as developing heat/sweat rash under by breasts. In addition, being without a bra is just simply horribly uncomfortable even if it's not hurting. So bras are definitely a favorite item clothing even though it's entirely out of necessity.

3 - I had trouble thinking of a 3rd one because I don't get much attached to clothing and the beach dresses described above are the only exception that I can truly call favorites... but... a summer hat! Makes being in the sun a little more bearable by giving some shade to my face, eyes and neck.

3. What are your three favorite books?

I don't have singular favorite books that stand above all the others no matter what genre they are. More like I have some favorites in a few genres and they tend to change sometimes depending on my mood and what new books I have read. But here's some that have remain on the favorite lists for a long while:

Scifi favorites: The Expanse book series by James S. A. Corey and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. These two revealed to me that I can love modern scifi in novel format very much! I've never enjoyed reading classic older scifi such as Asimov or Herbert or Le Guin and and didn't care for the more modern ones either that I found either and for a long time it felt like that only what's in my libraries so I stopped looking at some point and just watched all the scifi tv and movies I could get my hands on. Then I came across Seveneves, then started watching The Expanse tv series and read those books and then started to look at what the readers of those properties had also liked and found some newer hard scifi (in English) that I liked.

Scifi/paranormal/supernatural/speculative fiction: Whispers, Lightning and House of Thunder all by Dean R. Koontz. Koontz used to write really good books!

4. What are three things you'd grab if you had to evacuate your house quickly?

1 - my medications

2 - my phone & laptop (these are practically always by each other when I'm home so I'd try to grab them both at the same time)

3 - my important papers, although I might forget these or not have time or can't get to them because of where they are located.

5. What are your three favorite songs or musical works?

I have so many songs and scores I love but I think I listen to these the most:

1 - Love Song by Ofra Haza. Just so beautiful!

2 - Shared by the score for the Star Trek TOS episode Amok Time and the score for the movie The Last of the Mohicans score, specifically the parts composed by Trevor Jones. Also a lot of the various covers made of those tracks, particularly cover by Shamrock Redheads

3 - Shared by The Leftovers score by Max Richter and The Piano movie score.

I love this piano piece! If I just sit and listen, it quiets my mind like nothing else :D

Last week, or maybe the week before that, there's was an article at https://www.yle.fi about the Finnish band Apocalyptica, and I suddenly remembered that in the 90s there was a song by them that I used to be obsessed with. But I couldn't recall what it was at all, and somehow googling didn't help.

Then tonight I was watching Wednesday episode three and at the end there was an instrumental version of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters playing. Now Nothing Else Matters is one of my faves and this version was so great I went to google it immediately, only to realize that Nothing Else Matters is the Apocalyptica song I had been trying to remember! There's was a lot of noise about this particular cover of Nothing Else Matters 20+ years ago here in Finland and Apocalyptica became a household name for a bit there. I love both this instrumental cover, as well as the Metallica's original Nothing Else Matters but for the life of me, I can't remember which was I heard first.

Here's the fabulous Apocalyptica cover:

 

This is one of my favorite pieces ever! I could (and have) listen to it for hours and hours.