Horror Mania

Now that Halloween is over, it's safe to talk about traditional piano lessons - the tedium, the boredom, the overbearing teachers with their incessant metronome beats.

Do we really need this? Do we really need yet another polished perfomer who can play Czerny and Beethoven on cue? Don't we have enough of these skilled typists already? I think so. And frankly, I just don't get it. I don't get why anyone would want to learn how to play other people's music.

Of course this music is worthy of preserving, but I'm speaking about being creative at the piano. I'm talking about the ability to sit down at the keyboard and just play without forethought or planning.

Is there value in this kind of approach to playing? Yes! And while improvisation and composition are taught, it's not emphasized. It's relegated to inferior status while the poor student spends time first learning how to read notes and then recreating what has already been done. What a shame.

It doesn't have to be this way. We can lead with an emphasis on creativity first! To do this does not require more than a very rudimentary knowledge of chords, a way to play them, and a guided instruction on how to improvise. Imagine the joy students will feel when they realize how easy it is to create music!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music's online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Edward_Weiss

Halloween or Hallowe'en is a tradition celebrated on the night of October 31, most notably by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting sweets, fruit, and other treats. Apart from this trick-or-treating, there are many other traditional Halloween activities. Some of these include costume parties, watching horror films, engaging in vandalism, going to "haunted" houses, and traditional autumn activities such as hayrides, some of these even "haunted". A more complete coverage of Halloween customs can be found at Halloween traditions.

Halloween originated under a different name as a Pagan festival among the Celts of Ireland and Great Britain with Irish, Scots, Welsh and other immigrants transporting versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late twentieth century.

Halloween is celebrated in most parts of the Western world, most commonly in the United States, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Peru , and with increasing popularity in Australia and New Zealand. In recent years, Halloween has also been celebrated in parts of Western Europe, such as Belgium, France and Spain.

The term Halloween, and its older rendering Hallowe'en, is shortened from All-hallow-eve, as it is the evening of/before "All Hallows' Day"[1] (also known as "All Saints' Day"). The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints Day from May 13 to November 1. In the ninth century, the Church measured the day as starting at sunset, in accordance with the Florentine calendar. Although we now consider All Saints (or Hallows) day to be on the day after Halloween, they were, at that time, considered to be the same day.

In Ireland, the name was All Hallows' Eve (often shortened to Hallow Eve), and though seldom used today, it is still a well-accepted label, albeit somewhat esoteric. The festival is also known as Samhain or Oíche Shamhna to the Irish, Calan Gaeaf to the Welsh, Allantide to the Cornish and Hop-tu-Naa to the Manx. Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the púca, a mischievous spirit.

Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent (e.g. Catalan mythology about witches, Irish tales of the Sídhe).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

Count von Count (born October 9, 1,830,653 BC? [1,832,652 years old according to Sesame Street Unpaved]), often known as simply The Count, is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, performed by Jerry Nelson. The Count is a vampire obviously modeled after Béla Lugosi's interpretation of Count Dracula.

The Count's main purpose is educating children on simple mathematics concepts, most notably counting. The Count has a compulsive love of counting (arithmomania); he will count anything and everything, regardless of size, amount, or how much annoyance he is causing the other Muppets.

Some traditional vampire myths depict vampires as having a similar obsession with counting small objects, providing a means of distracting them by tossing a handful of seeds or salt on the ground. This is seen as a protection from the vampire, such as the use of garlic. The Count's own arithmomania may simply be a coincidence, however, inspired by the pun on his title of nobility. According to his theme song, The Song of the Count: "When I'm alone, I count myself. One count!"

Originally, following a counting session, the Count would laugh maniacally, "AH! AH! AH!" as thunder roared overhead and lightning flashed. This practice, however, has been discontinued because children watching the show might be frightened by it.

When the Count sings, the background music resembles Roma music, no matter what the song.

The Count bears a noticeable resemblance to Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, including a similar accent and oversized, pointed eye-teeth, but it would appear that he is different from other vampires. For example, most vampires wither in direct sunlight; the Count does not and in fact enjoys being outside, plus he doesn't suck blood, doesn't sleep in a coffin, usually sleeps at night, and never changes into a bat. In some ways, he's just like a regular human.

The Count lives in an old, cobweb-infested castle which he shares with many bats. Sometimes he counts them. Some of the pet bats are named, including Grisha, Misha, Sasha, and Tattiana. He has a cat, Fatatatita, as well.

The Count's former girlfriend, Countess von Backwards, was known for counting backwards. More recently he has been seen with a new girlfriend, Countess Dahling Von Dahling. His brother and mother have made appearances on the show. His grandparents also made an appearance. When Grandma Count laughs, it rains. When Grandpa Count laughs, it snows.

source : http://en.wikipedia.org

Horrific situations are found in the earliest recorded tales. Many myths and legends feature scenarios and archetypes used by later horror writers. Tales of demons and vampires in ancient Babylonian, Indian, Chinese and Japanese folklore, and tales collected by the Grimm Brothers, were often quite horrific.

Modern horror fiction found its roots in the gothic novels that exploded into popularity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, typified by Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). A variation on the Gothic formula that remains one of the most enduring and imitated horror works is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818, revised version 1831). Frankenstein has also been considered science fiction, a philosophical novel or a 'novel of purpose' by some literary historians. At the same time, John William Polidori devised the kind of vampire story that has since become familiar with his novella The Vampyre. This kind of supernatural character, combining evil with sinister charm, has since been much used and elaborated by horror writers.

Later gothic horror descendants included seminal late 19th century works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw. Early horror works used mood and subtlety to deliver an eerie and otherworldly flavor, but usually eschewed extensive explicit violence.

Other early exponents of the horror form number such luminaries as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft who are widely considered to be masters of the art. Among the writers of classic English ghost stories, M. R. James is often cited as the finest. His stories avoid shock effects and often involve an Oxford antiquarian as their hero. Algernon Blackwood's The Willows and Oliver Onions's The Beckoning Fair One have been called the best ghost stories. Lovecraft and Sheridan le Fanu called some of their writing weird fiction or weird stories.

Horror fiction reached a wider audience in the 1920s and 1930s with the rise of the American pulp magazine. The premier horror pulp was Weird Tales, which printed many of Lovecraft's stories as well as fiction by other writers such as Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn and Robert Bloch. At a lower intellectual level were the weird menace or "shudder pulps" such as Dime Mystery and Horror Stories, which offered a more visceral form of horror.

Some stories in highbrow "literary" fiction could arguably be regarded as horror narratives: examples include Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" (Die Verwandlung) and "In the Penal Colony" (In der Strafkolonie) and William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_story

Vampires (archaic spelling: vampyres) are mythological or folkloric creatures, typically held to be the re-animated corpses of human beings and said to subsist on human and/or animal blood (hematophagy). They are also the frequent subject of cinema and fiction, albeit fictional vampires have acquired a set of traits distinct from those of folkloric vampires (see Traits of vampires in fiction). In folklore, the term usually refers to the blood-sucking living of Eastern European legends, but it is often extended to cover similar legendary creatures in other regions and cultures. Vampire characteristics vary widely between different traditions. Some cultures have stories of non-human vampires, such as animals like bats, dogs, and spiders.

Vampirism is the practice of drinking blood from a person/animal. In folklore and popular culture, the term generally refers to a belief that one can gain supernatural powers by drinking human blood. The historical practice of vampirism can generally be considered a more specific and less commonly occurring form of cannibalism. The consumption of another's blood (and/or flesh) has been used as a tactic of psychological warfare intended to terrorize the enemy, and it can be used to reflect various spiritual beliefs.

In zoology and botany, the term vampirism is used to refer to leeches, mosquitos, mistletoe, vampire bats, and other organisms that prey upon the bodily fluids of other creatures. This term also applies to legendary animals of the same nature, including the chupacabra.

The term vampire can be used to refer to any magical creature of myth that is a predatory parasite, draining power, energy or life from unwilling victims. Mythic creatures who act in this manner are often considered part of the vampire archetype, even if they do not feast on blood.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org

How could a human being - let alone a husband - disfigure a person in this way? It happened to Zahida Parveen, and it happens to thousands of other female victims of "honor violence" each year in Pakistan.
It was a seemingly ordinary night three years ago when Zahida Parveen, then 30, was asleep in a room with her two small children. Her family was poor, but she was happy with her life with Mehmood Iqbal, her husband of four years. All that changed in an instant when she was forced out of bed, viciously attacked and left for dead, her face mutilated beyond recognition. Her attacker: her 35 -year-old husband, who did it because he was convinced his wife was having an affair.

As awful as this incident sounds, it's even worse when you consider that it's not uncommon. Parveen lives in Pakistan, a country where such attacks on women - known as honor violence - take place too often. There's a saying in Pakistan that honor is like a person's nose. "If a person dishonors you, they say that person has cut off your nose," explains Riffat Hassan, Ph.D., a Pakistani-born Islamic theologian who teaches at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "It's a metaphor, but in Pakistan people actually do it," Parveen is living proof of that. Today, with her husband n jail in Pakistan, Parveen agreed to give Glamour an exclusive interview and retell her tragic tale.
Recuperating from her reconstructive surgery, Parveen sits curled up on a leather chair in the suburban Maryland home of Nasim Ashraf, M.D., the kidney specialist and Pakistani expatriate who arranged for Parveen to have her face reconstructed. Shakir, Parveen's younger brother, is perched protectively beside her.

Parveen looks like a child. At just 4'11", her 78-pound frame practically disappears beneath her black floral shalwar kameez, the billowy pants and ankle-length dress that is Pakistan's national dress. A black-and-white-checked scarf is wrapped loosely around her head, and every so often it slips down to reveal the wavy black hair covering the severed lobes that were once ears. Her prosthetic eyes are just a week old, the two brown-pupiled glass globes held tentatively in place by a few thin strips of surgical tape affixed to the outer lids. A gauze pad is taped to the bridge of what was once her nose, now a gnarled mass of scar tissue marked by two jagged holes.

Aseela Ashraf, Dr. Ashraf's wife, arrives and pat Parveen gently on her bony back before sitting down. The two women have become close and Parveen now has two people she trusts to translate and fill in details that are too painful for her to talk about.

Parveen's first arranged marriage took place when she was about 16, which is common in Pakistan. Luckily, Parveen liked her firs husband. "We had a very good time together," she says. "He was a decent person." But it took many frustrating years of trying before she became pregnant. "When I found out I was with child, I was so happy. Then my husband died of a heart attack before our son was born," she remembers matter-of-factly, as if tragedy is an accepted fact of her life.

Parveen moved back in with her mother to deliver the child. At first, she didn't want to remarry. But soon, a local matchmaker approached Parveen's family about Mehmood Iqbal, a barber living in a nearby village. "I was excited t meet him," Parveen says, shrugging her tiny shoulders. She married him, taking her one-year-old son to live with her new husband, and three years later, she gave birth to a daughter. My husband was fine the first four years of our marriage, " Parveen insists. "If there was something wrong with him, I would not have stayed." The one thing that struck her was that Iqbal was unusually quiet. "He would only sit and listen," she recalls, as if that might explain why he came undone. But when asked why she thought her husband went on to commit such a heinous act, Parveen answers, "It was the devil."

Actually, honor killings are part of the fabric of Pakistani married life. "Once a woman is married, it's culturally believed that she belongs to her husband and is supposed to be obedient - her behavior reflects on him," explains Sheila Dauer, director of Amnesty International USA's Women's Human Rights Program. Though honor violence takes place in other predominantly Islamic countries - including Jordan, Egypt and Turkey - Pakistan has received the most attention for these crimes. More than 850 women in Punjab ( a Pakistani region) were victims of honor killings in 1998 and 1999 alone, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Amnesty International estimates that many more cases go unreported. Honor violence comes in many forms: Women have been shot, burned, strangled and mutilated with razors, axes and knives. The causes vary as well, from having affairs to asking for a divorce to talking to a man who's not a family member.
Parveen, however, says she had no inkling that her husband was jealous. Any yet, on the night of December 20, 1998, he woke her and ordered her into the common room of their three-room home in Sukho, a rural village about an hour north of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. There, Parveen, who was then three months pregnant with Iqbal's second child (but still weighed less than 100 pounds), saw a rope hanging from the raters, Iqbal, a stocky man, ordered Parveen to lock the bedroom door, but she refused, worrying that the children might wake up and call for her. "The kids are dead to you," he said. "You are no longer their mother."

Holding her captive, Iqbal accused Parveen of having an affair. Parveen insisted that she had never been unfaithful to him, but Iqbal didn't listen. Instead, he gagged her, bound her feet and hands and hung her upside down from the ceiling. As he beat her with a wooden ax handle, blood began to drip from her arms and legs. Then Iqbal, a barber by profession, traded his ax for a razor. He cut off the lower lobes of her ears, then sliced her nose at the base. "He next used a metal rod to poke out my eyes," she continues, "and then put his finger inside each socket to make sure nothing was left." Parveen hooks her skinny index finger in the air, makes a half-circle motion for effect and then holds her head with both hands as if the memory hurts. When Iqbal finished mutilating her, he cut the rope, causing Parveen to fall to the floor like a limp rag doll "He left me for dead," Parveen says, " and then he took our daughter and left." Parveen crawled across the floor, found a blanket, wrapped it around herself and passed out.

When she came to, the next morning, she heard her son crying. Realizing he was locked in the bedroom, Parveen began to shout for help. Two neighbors quickly arrived and, seeing the bloody mess, sent for the police. "They saw everything," Parveen explains. "The blood, the rope,. And I gave them a full statement." The worst moment, however, was when Parveen's son saw his mother's body caked in blood, her face mutilated and oozing. He crouched in the corner and began to wail. There was nothing she could do to comfort him.

That morning, Parveen's son went to stay with her mother, and Parveen was eventually taken to a government hospital. He story was published in two local newspapers, prompting Tehmina Daultana, then the Minister for Social Welfare, Women Development and Special Education, to visit Parveen in the hospital. Parveen credits Daultana with Iqbal's arrest, a rare occurrence given that few men who engage in honor are ever punished. "She threatened the police station," Parveen explains. "She said, 'If you don't find him and put him in jail, I'll have you all fired.'" Several days later, Iqbal was arrested at his sister's home and incarcerated without bail, and Parveen's daughter went to live with Parveen's mother and son. When Parveen heard the news, she was happy for the first time since the horrific incident. But that moment was fleeting.
Will I get my sight back?
The first few months in the hospital were difficult. Parveen had to wait for the cuts o her tongue to heal before she could eat solid food and her mutilated face throbbed with pain. The Crisis Center - an organization that offers medical, legal and psychological counsel to abused women - added her to its long list of tragic clients in need of help. One of the many ways the Crisis Center helps rehabilitate these women is by financing reconstructive surgery. The Center made arrangement for Parveen to get a new nose, but when she found out she wouldn't get her sight back, Parveen refused the operation. "What's the point of any surgery if I will never be able to see my children again?" she lamented

Parveen has never seen her youngest daughter, whom she gave birth to in the hospital in July 1999. Afar seven months in the hospital, Parveen finally left to live with her mother and children. Although she was happy to be home, it was a rude awakening. Her face resembled a ghoulish mask. "Her daughter was afraid of her, and that really hurt Zahida," Aseela Ashraf explains. "She told me that her daughter refused to sleep with her." Parveen's son, who was seven, was more understanding, but he would often come home in tears after other children teased him about his mother's condition. "It broke her heart," Dr. Ashraf explains. Though Parveen rarely ventured outside, when she did, she often overheard people wondering aloud what she had done to deserve the way she looked.
More than a year after the attack, Parveen's case went to trial. Parveen went to court only to testify, concealing her face with dark glasses and a scarf wrapped around her head. On the witness stand, Parveen told her story. "She was very brave," remembers Nahida Mahboob Elahi, a volunteer lawyer for the Crisis Center who headed Parveen's case. "You should have seen the look of surprise on her husband's face. I don't think he realized she'd have enough courage to come forward." Iqbal maintained his innocence throughout, claiming he was forced to act as he did to save his honor. Parveen wasn't present for his testimony, but she recalls, "I did hear his voice in the crowd one day. Every time I remember that moment, I shiver."

source: http://www.rozanehmagazine.com

Horror is the feeling of dread and anticipation that usually occurs before something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is also the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a hideous revelation. (Terror is usually described as the feeling that follows after the experience has occurred.) Horror has also been defined as a combination of terror and revulsion.

Compare the experience of waiting for a monster to jump out of a closet (horror) with the experience of actually seeing the scary monster after it has jumped out (terror).

Of course, horror can still be felt after the monster(s) etc. is revealed, especially when the word is used in the sense connotating revulsion. A good example is found in the film Rosemary's Baby. The horror in that film is not only anticipatory, but is equal (if not greater) at the moment of revelation at the end of the film and all that it implies for the future.

Horror is also a genre of film and fiction that relies on horrifying images or situations to tell stories and prompt reactions in their audiences.


source: http://en.wikipedia.org

source: http://www.freevlog.hu