Inge Thinks...

I was the photographer at a gigantic Christmas event, last night. Another Christmas was organised by Praiseband All in One and the choir Sing For Joy sang along, which was really cool. It was absolutely amazing! A short impression by showing a few of the 1700 shots I made, with a borrowed Canon 450D and my own Nikon D60 with my dad’s zoom lens:

Yes, this is my boyfriend. *sigh*

Well, since I’m a photographer too I figured it’d be fun if I’d post a shoot up here every now and then. I will first start of with a selfie-shoot. This one is the one that I talked about in my previous blog, the creativity one (: Soo, prepare for an overload of selfies, hihi. By the way: some of them are processed, some not.

Oke, I very rarely blog twice a day and most definitely not twice an evening, but this calls for an exception. Please look at this video and listen to this song by Matthew Mayfield, it’s beautiful!

Hello everyone! It’s been quite a while since I’ve been on here due to serious studying because of the test week. That’s all over and done now, and in a week the holidays will be here – yay! So since test week is over the weekends don’t exist of doing homework, but creativity and music get some time too. As for creativity: check my Flickr page. I’ve been spending an entire afternoon building this gigantic heart/christmas/thing-ish and I took some cool shots, you’ll see more of them. And for music: this blog is the result.

You all must have heard of OneRepublic (if you’ve never heard the song Apologize before you must live in a cage or something) but did you also know that they are a Christian band? I believe this to be very cool, because they also write awesome songs about it. In my opinion, one of the most beautiful songs they wrote is Prodigal.

We all know the story of the Prodigal Son. In short: the son receives a big amount of money from his father, spends it all on everything that’s wrong and then returns, on his knees, to his father, who takes him back again. The story has been told so many times, so many songs have been written and so many plays have been seen. But yes this song struck me more than any other song that I have heard about it. The lyrics:

Run away, run away
Like a prodigal
Don’t You wait for me
So ashamed, so ashamed
But I need You so
And You wait for me

These words outline perfectly how I feel at times. I do so many things wrong, over and over and over and over again, and each time I’m so ashamed. Each time I run away so hard from God, I spend all my money on things that are so wrong, and each time I don’t dare to return. I’m so ashamed. God, my Father, let Jesus come down to earth for my horribleness, for everything I do wrong. Jesus was crucified because of the fact that I can’t control myself. And yet, each time, I run away, I run away.

But each time I have to come back. Each time I have to walk the way back home to my Father, fall on my knees, so ashamed, and ask for forgiveness. And no matter how many times, no matter how much money I’ve spent, no matter how much I’ve sinned – I can come back. And each time the Father is there, waiting for me. At the end of that dark road, He stands, looking for me. He calls my name, hoping I’ll return. Each and every time He waits for me.

It is not about the son, it’s not about me. Yes, I am prodigal – I am lost. But no matter how lost I am, how deep I sank this time, how black the night is – there is Someone who is waiting for my return. My Father. No matter how many times I ran away or will run away, He will be there – waiting for me. Always. Forever. He’ll wait for me.

I’m frustrated, quite frustrated to be specific. I’ve just had it with this world and I’ll tell you exactly why. When you know me, you know that I’m all about arts, music, culture and people. Those things matter to me, those things define me. I, of course, understand that there are people in this world who don’t work that way. Yes, I see clearly that there are people who care more about economics and politics. I don’t mind, I understand – there should be a difference in these things. In my opinion, economics and politics are just as important as cultural aspects like art or music.

But here’s the problem: apparently the amount of people who are interested in economics and politics is far bigger than the amount of cultural people like me. This shouldn’t be a problem, if each of these two groups would keep their interests to themselves. But this world isn’t a fairytale and the economics and politics-group, to generalize, doesn’t like to keep their visions to themselves. Even worse: these people are the people who rule the world. The people who rule the school systems and the exams, the people in the government, the minister of education.

They have the power to make everyone do what they want them to do. The economics and politics-group believes that economics and politics are all that matter in this world and that cultural aspects are just details that can be fun but are absolutely not necessary for survival. Therefore these mighty people with their love for economics and politics try to ban out cultural aspects as much as possible and make the only thing that matters economics and politics. ‘Because these subjects are really useful! That’s what you need in life, right? You can’t use Van Gogh’s Starry Night to solve big money problems, so why study it? Knownledge should be useful!’ But what happened to know something, just because that makes you a better person? What happened to knowing something without knowing for sure that you’ll ever use that knowledge. What happened to knowing just because of the knowing?

According the economics and politics people there is no such thing as ‘knowing just because of the knowing’, and knowledge should, at all times, be useful. And that’s where we get to the centre of this blogpost. I’ve had more than enough of useful knowledge. And I’ll tell you exactly why.

I’m the cultural person so I picked cultural subjects like history, geography, music and arts. I was hoping to limit the amount of economics and politics by picking these subjects, and, until now, I succeeded. History was about the Romans and Greek, about philosophers and religions, it was about the Middle Ages and Chinese dynasties. Geography was about volcanoes and earthquakes, about deserts and rain. I talked about Chopin and Van Gogh, enjoyed conversations on the early Baroque artists and dreamt about visiting Greece once. These were the lovely two years before senior year.

But then senior year arrived. It showed us what we had to learn for the central exam, the exam that every student in Holland should take. Every history student in Holland has to take the same history exam and the same geography exam. I had my hopes up: China, maybe, or the Romans! Could it be about volcanoes or waterfalls? I looked forward to having the time to study these subjects deeper than I ever did and pass the exams gloriously. But my dreams ended when I saw the actual subjects:

For history: Vietnamese history. Short for: communism, modern history, war, politics and economics. Oh and the Republic and it’s Golden Age. But not about Rembrandt or music of that time, no, ‘t was all about why the Republic got só successful. Short for? More politics, economics and modern capitalism.
And then geography: No volcanoes or waterfalls but East-Asia. And not about the whole geological wonderfulness of that piece of land, no, all they could talk about was import allowances, Newly Industrializing Countries, Asian Tigers and industries.

Seriously, world? Can you sink any deeper than this? I’m disappointed, I’ve lost my faith in you. Where did the ages go when man was successful when he knew a lot, and not when he had a lot of money? Where is the uomo universalis that knew all about arts and physics? I guess the financial crisis-creating-man has driven it away.

But I’m not giving up. I’m going to be the new Leonardo DaVinci. I won’t give in to make-a-lot-of-money-FAST but I’ll study my ass of on subjects like Chinese history or Greek arts. I want to have a lot of knowledge just because of the knowledge and I refuse to believe that ‘knowledge should be useful’-thing. I will know all there is to know and I won’t care about the latest financial news, the war in Afghanistan or why Balkenende didn’t become EU president. I will ignore these economics and politics people with their useful world and live my own, absolutely not-useful, but yet the best, life there is.

[I'm sorry for all the people who feel offended or see themselves as an economics and politics person. I'm a Christian, I don't hate you (:]

Making funny faces, talking about serious things, crying when you hold me, making music, making weird noises, singing songs, walking through sweet little alleys holding your hand, annoying people with kissing in public, dancing in the rain, lying on the beach, fun in The Hague, being soooo in love, photos photos and more photos, deep conversations, being in a boat in Amsterdam, not having enough money, going to the movies, laughing so hard we can barely breathe, spending time with family, laughing laughing laughing, missing trains and catching trains, sleeping, doing homework, eating at the MacDonalds, swimming, kissing kissing kissing, missing you, biking, cooking, hiding behind the Dom-tower in Utrecht, walking in hand in hand, dancing in the rain, visiting museums and old places, playing the piano, talking about social networking, creating this website, eating at Mr. Jacks, drinking coffee at the V&D (but not coffee, because we don’t like that), going to church, buying things, eating icecreams..

and all of that, together with you, the love of my life ♥ I love you, Josh!

Hello!

I actually should be writing my application letter for the Roosevelt Academy right now, but I couldn’t help but to write a blog about my most recent addiction: Glass Pear. The Welsh Yestyn Griffiths is the wonderful creature that came up with these marvelous melodies, glorious piano riddles, stunning lyrics and so on. I stumbled across his music when I was watching Bones last weekend and I fell in love with it right away.

The song I heard back then was called My Ghost, and you can listen to it here (The video is pretty awesome too, by the way!) Of course it was played at the sweetest and most emotional scene of Bones and every girl who would have seen that scene would have fallen in love with the song straight away. But usually when I listen to songs like that for the second time, they have lost their magic and they’re just an ordinary ballad. But this time, with Glass Pear, it was different. When I searched the video at YouTube and listened to it again, I loved it even more!

I got caught up in school business for a while and I forgot about my latest invention. Yet, tonight, I stumbled across a piece of paper on which I scribbled Glass Pear. I suddenly remembered the wonderful music of Yestyn and looked it up again. This time I also listened to a lot of other songs and it was pretty clear: Yestyn has entered the list of coolness.

His CD, ‘Streets of Love’, is available on iTunes but you can also listen to the entire album at Yestyn’s YouTube channel. Describing his music is hard but I’ll give it a try. The young singer songwriter could be placed in the indie-corner but also the pop one. His uptempo songs are quite catchy but also just a tad different from the normal pop song. Listening to his catchy Vultures makes it impossible to not move your head, the sweet piano makes your hand tick up and down and your feet won’t stop moving from side to side. There’s also the lovely Listen to the music in which Yestyn manages to get some wonderful chords and harmonies out of the piano, guitar and his wonderful voice. This last song reminded me a bit of the dutch Bertolf, another lovely singer-songwriter.

The song that really made Glass Pear known by a wider audience was Last day of your life, which appeared on a Grey’s Anatomy episode earlier this year. But you all know that I love ballads more than anything and therefore the last song to which I will give my love is the beautiful Colours:

Can’t sleep because everything is changing,
You don’t want to leave things behind.
Tears in your eyes – sweet goodbyes.

I know how you feel right now,
losing dreams you’ve come to care about.
I know what you need right now,
you need to come on home
so I can hold you tight –
I’ll get you through the night.

This is beautiful song by Krezip. My good friend Wouter told me about it, last year at the end of his highschoolyears. He used the song for his speech back then and I think I understand how he felt, now.

I mean – I’m so happy that highschool is over and I can go to university. I’m so excited about these changes, I’m so excited about these new things and new challenges. I can’t wait for the finals to be done and to go to a new school. I want the new stuff, I do.

Yet a dark cloud is there. I don’t want to say goodbye to all those years of highschool. I had, and have, the time of my life, exactly where I am. I’m in the best place with my friends and Josh and I’m so blessed. I don’t want to leave the laughs and the fun behind, I don’t want to say goodbye to all those years just yet. Those friends have been my friends for five years, they know me better than anyone else does. I can be me with them, without having to change a single thing. I’m so happy now – I’m so blessed.

And sometimes, when I’m at school, it just strikes me. Next year things will be different. And somehow I feel sad about all those times that will never come back again. I love to grow up, but why does it have to go so fast? Time falls down like water floats through a river – too fast. It’s just too fast. I’m not ready for changes, I’m not ready for saying goodbye. I’m not ready just yet.

Yet the song is titled Sweet Goodbyes. And I know that, next summer, I will say sweet goodbyes. Goodbyes full of love and full of memories of times that I will never forget. I will say thankful goodbyes to all of the blessings, friends and love. I will say goodbyes that will always be locked in a little room in my heart which is called highschool. Goodbyes to the friends that will always be friends, even if they live 300 miles away from me.

Tears in my eyes – sweet goodbyes. But just not yet.

Haha, I’m soo happy! A little while back I got a Flickr message from Elena, in which she asked me for permission to use my photos. I, of course, said yes. But I never expected this! It’s so cool!

You can view the blog post here.

Thank you, Elena!