But at my back I always hear
I have spent the day running . . . like one of those cartoon characters where the giant hand comes down and picks them up just clear of the ground and their legs are whirring like sixty and they’re not going anywhere. Well, I did have my piano lesson. That was a bright spot.* But beyond that . . . have I mentioned that it’s turned hot? A friend and I were doing competitive whining about this a day or two ago–the weather went pretty well instantly from cold and raining to blazingly sere. There was like one nice transitional day. Maybe it was only twelve hours. Everybody’s gardens are rioting out of course–a week ago my lilacs at Third House were barely buds and yesterday they were in full gorgeous smelly display–so is the pollen and the Things that Sting. Bumblebees are so slow and mild mannered you can just kind of scoot them along to the nearest open window if they bumble indoors, and I will also rescue proper bees . . . but I’ve killed eight wasps in the last three days and I’m not happy about it. In the first place I don’t like killing things, and the first couple–or the first one the first two times–I rescued as I do bees, with the glass and the piece of cardboard. After that: ARRRRRGH. I still don’t like killing things. But will you please stay the rggglmph outdoors?**
So it’s hot, and the hellhounds are melting, which is probably why Chaos didn’t want supper yesterday . . . and neither hellhound wanted supper today. Darkness changed his mind later on. Chaos . . . Chaos did the Chaos ruse of going busily at his bowl, teeth clacking, earnest look of concentration . . . and when he stops eating again you realise he’s had like two crumbs and a fragment. It’s not that hot. Also, it cools off in the evening. At this rate it’s going to be a long summer as a hellhound owner . . . maybe. We had summer in April last year, and then it more or less went away again–another way of saying this is that we had an English summer for a change, we’ve been having what most of the rest of the world thinks of as summer the last few years, you know, shorts, sunglasses, iced tea, sweaty glasses of, with mint. So maybe I should start work now on focussing on being grateful that their first summer was not too demanding of heat-sensitive hellpuppies. I’m going to be carrying them on their walks soon. That and going to bed earlier so we can get out earlier . . . No, no! Not the going to bed earlier!
But because I lost a big chunk of my good morning brain time I have spent all day feeling behind. Which is rational of me, because I am behind. Duh. So please forgive me for being a bit uncharacteristically terse.*** I might get another hour of PEGASUS in before Final Brain Crash. Or even a few minutes of Song II.
* * *
* Sort of. I’ve been working on my setting of Peter’s poem again, Song II. When I wrote my first song, which I’ve called Song, because it obviously is one, even though I haven’t found the words to it^, I hadn’t anticipated immediately plunging into the depths of this setting words racket, with a poem called . . . Song. So we have Song II. And I was wittering on to Peter about it and he said, when are you going to sing it to me? Sing? I said. I don’t do the sing. I barely do the play. I am going to try to write a proper arrangement and play it. You know what the words are! You don’t need it sung! Sing, said Peter. You have to sing.^^
So I took my smudgy pages to Oisin and said dolefully, Peter says I have to sing it. And Oisin looked at me with an evil, gleaming eye, and said, Sing? Of course you do. It’s a song, isn’t it? You aren’t getting an alibi from me.
I am going to take up the trumpet. Or the flute. Yo, all you mouth players out there–you know who you are–I hate you. You only have one line of music to play at a time and your MOUTH is occupied so you CAN’T POSSIBLY SING.
^ Yet? Dare I say yet?
^^ Or, possibly, has. You has to sing. This conversation is beginning to remind me of I Has A Sweet Potato. I wouldn’t count on the cute photo of me at the piano with a caption something like I Wuz Errrrggh however.
http://littera-abactor.livejournal.com/7748.html
I know, I know, I’ve posted it before. But it’s a favourite. I have to go reread it once a week or so, especially when I am having a bad day.
[Pause while I read it again.]
** Okay, I know I’m imagining it, but there’s a vampire tapping on my first floor^ office window here trying to do the hypnotic thing and I don’t even read Stephen King.^^ The sort of day it’s been, it’s probably a veritable, a non-fictional vampire. But I really don’t want it to be a wasp that size, so okay, let’s go for the vampire theory.
^American second floor
^^ But I read Salem’s Lot because I was living there at the time. You know, Maine. That part of Maine.
*** And answering fewer comments. I must learn to answer fewer comments. The New Blog is so civilised about comment handling that I don’t get annoyed enough to unscreen and flee.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.
Alas, I do love when you answer the comments, but it’s understandable that they eat time and brain space. =)
I’m currently dealing with the second cold war in my house; feel free to browse through, if you get a chance:
http://litsoup.blogspot.com/2008/05/adventures-of-zoe-and-gully.html
Awwwww! Poor gully!!!!!!
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Chaos! Darkness! Eat your supper right now, boys, or no dessert for you! *shakes finger*
(I suspect you’ve tried that, hmm? :S)
I am going to take up the trumpet. Or the flute. Yo, all you mouth players out there–you know who you are–I hate you. You only have one line of music to play at a time and your MOUTH is occupied so you CAN’T POSSIBLY SING.
*SNORT*
I was playing one of the May Songs (I chose two because I am a crazy person!) today for my friend over webcam. And, you know, playing a song I barely know for someone who *knows* and *loves* the song…I was getting a bit flushed, the flute was slipping off my chin (I can expect another Flute Pimple any day now. And I’d just gotten rid of the last one!) and trying to breathe… Meanwhile thinking it would be a lot easier if I played the piano and didn’t have to worry about gulping air every few measures. (The song has looooong notes, and it’s really, really slow. It’s something about dead babies, but in French by a guy named Ravel. I can find the name again…)
I think clearly our calling is with the violin! No breathing issues, and you can’t sing because you’re holding the violin. ;)
Pavane for a dead infanta. **Snork.**
The VIOLIN???!???? I like my notes to have EDGES around them.
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Yes! That’s it. Apparently everyone knows that one but me. Well, I finally found it (way later than everyone else!), and I *love* it. It’s so pretty and heartbreaking. But there’s no breathing allowed.
Re: edges. Well, yes, there is that. But no singing *and* no worries about finding a good spot to breathe. I’m pretty sure I have a red face by the end of some songs from trying to push out air I don’t have. On the other hand, when I was practicing for a couple hours a day every day, I could hold my breath a long time…
It’s always about time, isn’t it? One of my fantasies is two hours a day on the piano. **Sigh.** Yes, the dead baby tune is VERY pretty. :)
And please note someone else’s comment–and mine–there ARE singing fiddlers. Besides I LIKE the piano. I want to learn to play THE PIANO. It’s a problem. :)
Can’t escape with violin–Alison Krauss is a great fiddle player and an AMAZING vocalist, often in the same song.
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As is Eliza Carthy. And, as I say, I like my notes to have EDGES.
Well pook. So much for that idea!
This (former) trumpet player welcomes you to the party ;) I failed at piano. Or rather, I did pretty well at right-handed piano, but failed to ever learn to read bass clef. I had to figure it out one note at a time and memorize everything. Sight reading was Right Out. I was just talking to my mom about this (Mom, who DID play piano well) – bass clef never, ever made sense to me, even though I had my first piano lessons some five years before I ever picked up a trumpet…
Of course, it didn’t help that my hands are too small to reach an octave comfortably, and couldn’t possibly be made to stretch beyond that. I wasn’t designed to be a pianist.
Thanks for linking to the Sweet Potato thing again. I’ve read it before too, but you’re right, it’s always good for another laugh.
Unfortunately I have the hands to play the piano (nine note stretch: not enormous, but comfortably enough). It’s the REST of me that’s the problem.
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>a week ago my lilacs at Third House were barely buds and yesterday they were in full gorgeous smelly display
My lilacs are flowering too. In Autumn. It’s *Autumn*!!!!!! WTF??
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21742944@N05/2477085467/
I only have ordinary lilac lilacs and ordinary purple lilacs. But they smell great! :)
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You have my total empathy on the wasps. One of the unexpected joys of owning our place is the “wasp retrieval duty” I get every summer.
My husband is deathly afraid of flying insects (why? dunno…), and he’s Buddhist, so he won’t kill them. For some reason the interior of our house seems like a perfect haven to all the silly little things when it gets hot and dry outside. Usually we’ll get 1 or 2 lethargic little guys in a certain window, almost half-dead from exhaustion and wondering why glass is solid. Tupperware + index card = safe release outdoors mostly, but one heat wave we found about 25 one evening. Horrifying.
Do Chaos and Darkness even notice the wasps? Our cats think they’re toys, we’ve been lucky that none of our fur-brains have been stung yet.
Almost the first thing that happened when I brought them home in a warm spell in October is Darkness got stung by a wasp hanging out on Peter’s pear tree. This tiny puppy with a swelling the size of an orange on his THROAT. I hysterically gave him apis and ledum (homeopathic) and it stopped *growing* and then it shrank to about half size, but it took about a day to disappear entirely. Yaaaah. . . .
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“I has a sweet potatoe” had me in tears I was laughing so hard. I don’t know how I missed it before, but thank you-thank you for reposting!
I like the vampires in Patricia Brigg’s “Mercedes Thompson” books – and the gremlins and the werewolves, too. Even the revenge-rabbit graffiti! One of the vampires has a sense of humor – an old VW microbus painted like Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine. Cool.
Or if you want a vampire that won’t be banging on your window, there is Robert Frezza’s space opera “MacLendon’s Syndrome” and the follow-on “VMR Theory” The VMR (vampire master-race) theory is held by aliens. Confused by the contradiction that apparently humanity is too silly and unskilled to survive, yet appears to be the biggest power in space, the BEM’s concluded there is a secret master race that directs human endeavors. One of the competing schools of thought is that the master race is vampires, giving the VMR Theory. These stories read a bit like Laverne and Shirley meet Dumb and Dumber. Or maybe Asprin’s Great Skeeve mixed with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan. Quite irreverent.
Robert Frezza’s space opera “MacLendon’s Syndrome
********* This sounds like a hoot. I’ll have to look for it. :)
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Oh, singing isn’t THAT bad. Just sing loud and try to stay on key. One of the worst things you can do is be afraid, because then your throat closes up so you can’t hold a note and your voice wavers and you very clearly sound afraid (and not very good either).
Pretend you have confidence until you do. I belive in you!
try to stay on key.
******** VERY FUNNY. :)
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Oh, staying on key isn’t THAT hard…. Unless you are tone deaf, that is. I don’t think you’re tone deaf. Like I said, I believe in you. Warm up a bit before you try to sing out. It turns out badly when you don’t.
Don’t LIKE singing out. And it makes the hellhounds cluster round me and touch their noses to my hands. Are you all right? they say.
One CAN learn to sing on key fairly late in life. My husband used to sing very badly and slightly off key. Drove me crazy in church. Then he went to Seminary to become a pastor, and during his first couple of years he took an extra course that he likes to call “remedial choir.” The first year, it was required. The Seminary’s kapel-meister led the choir, and he basically taught these men to sing. What with four church services every day (my husband attended three, the last one of the day was Compline, in the evening, and he came home well before then), courses on the church’s liturgy, and the “remedial choir” class, my husband learned to sing on key, and well. So well that he chants most of the liturgy every Sunday (we’re Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and my husband is among those who like to stay with the classic liturgical practices).
And I actually learned to improve my singing as a very mature adult. I started out as a soprano when very young, in my teens I tended towards alto. Now I’m a tenor. I never took a singing course, but from what my husband said about his classes and lessons whie at Seminary, I started improving my breathing on my own, and practicing hitting notes straight on instead of searching for them, etc. I’m not an outstanding singer, but do well enough to solo at church with our little choir once in a while (funnily enough, usually on African American spirituals – our congregation was originally all African American and we keep some of the traditions; I’m half Caucasian half Japanese). And I’m actually not too nervous about singing in public any more.
It can be done.
Spirituals are *lovely* to sing–lucky you. I remember. My favourite singing was folk songs and what I still call old gospel thumpers. :) Except, of course, I can’t sing. . . .
I hope your hellhounds acclimate to summer (if it stays around) and go back to eating. Are there remedies for inappetance/anorexia? Or have you tried them?
The Alpha Bitch is rejoicing in the appearance of weed grass, which is loving all the rain and growing at a great rate. She loves grass and spends more time than I like grazing the fence line. But it’s better than going for tree roots, which not only are mildly toxic and emetic, but getting at them involves DIGGING. She picks up quite enough mud just running without going to look for it.
You should tell the poet that *he* has to sing the song–that’s a poet’s job, after all!
I tried just about every appetite tonic going back before The Diagnosis. Monday I will call the vet and ask if I can try anything on or within or outside of their restricted getting-their-pancreases-under-control diet. Gods forbid this should be *easy.*
I spend a lot of time fishing green stuff out of hellhounds’ mouths, because I *get tired of cleaning up vomit.* At this rate they never WILL be allowed outside the kitchen unless I’m there too, newspaper at the ready, to protect the carpets. Fortunately it takes them a few heaves–I can usually get there in time, like sliding into third base. . . .
You should tell the poet that *he* has to sing the song–that’s a poet’s job, after all!
******** Peter REALLY does not sing. Really, really, really. Or rather, when he does, I ask him not to.
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> I don’t like killing things
An important life rule.
I somehow missed the sweet potato episode before. Thanks to linking to it–that dog lives at my house too, only it’s pizza he keeps getting into. With the same nasty results.
Oh and you MUST sing. If I can do it, you can–well maybe not, but you have to anyway. Oisin said so.
you can–well maybe not, but you have to anyway
******* LOL!
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I haven’t seen your post-link to the sweet potato monster before(: That’s awesome! Thank you! Animals are funny like that. My cat’s middle name is Land Shark, because you can’t leave *any* food unattended if he’s in the room. Doesn’t matter what it is… He’s such a putz(: Kind of the opposite of your two furry beasties…
Well, you could always take up the Irish flute… it has a lovely, breathy tone, and you can get out of saying (or doing) anything at all while playing it(: But then you’d have to give up your weekly visits to your marvellously machiavellian music mentor. And that would be sad ;)
Land Shark! LOL!
Oisin also teaches flute. Dunno about Irish flute though.
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“And Oisin looked at me with an evil, gleaming eye, and said, Sing? Of course you do. It’s a song, isn’t it?”
Let me tell you a story. (I’ll try to keep it short.) A Woman was sitting in her chiropractor’s office, minding her own business, when someone announced that it was the secretary’s birthday, and then someone else hummed a pitch, and the complement pf the office proceeded to sing Happy Birthday. Except this Woman, who just smiled genially at everyone. After the singing, the Other Woman sitting next to her had the audacity and temerity to ask why she hadn’t been singing with everyone. The Woman replied that she couldn’t sing. Other Woman said, “yes you can.” Woman replied, “no really, I can’t sing.” Other Woman said “you are speaking, therefore you have functioning vocal chords. You can hear me speaking, therefore you have functioning ears. If you can talk, you can sing – you just need to learn how to coordinate what your ears are hearing with what you vocal chords are doing, and that’s a LEARNABLE SKILL. I bet you $5 a week I can teach you how to sing.”
Woman took the bet, and 3 years later, is still taking lessons. When she began, she couldn’t accurately match pitch. Now, while she might never sing at the Met, she confidently sings folks songs and participates in church hymn singing. She has sung at an office karaoke shindig, and sang Christmas carols to some clients of hers. She’s contemplating singing “Shall We Gather at the River” to her mother. And, she sings Happy Birthday now and again.
I’m not, as you might be wondering Woman. I’m the Other Woman! :-)
If you can talk, you CAN SING. It’s just a matter of learning the coordination between ears and vocal chords. You can learn to do that. *grin* You just need lessons! :-)
Music is kinda like malaria. Once you get it, it flares up in all sorts of strange ways and places, and you never know when it will bite you again!
Sing your song for Peter. I’m sure he’ll love it. If you want lessons beforehand, you are always welcome to call me, for remote instruction! :-) I’m sure Oisin also has some thoughts in that line!
Smiles,
Jeanne Marie
LOL! Thank you very much! You aren’t anywhere near Hampshire, are you? :) I *have* kind of wondered about that look of Oisin’s. I may harry him about this a little. I know *he* can sing. He’s really very *distressingly* musical. He’s not just an organist who also plays and teaches piano: all kinds of things come up and he’s already there. When we were going through what I’d done with Song II’s setting, he was so *on top of* this fitting music to words thing, which is not, you would say, immediately in the scope of teaching someone to play the piano. But . . . like I need MORE stuff to do. I used to be able to more or less carry a tune, but at the moment, no, I can’t even match pitch without a lot of humming around.
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Unfortunately, I’m in Kansas City, but I’m sure Oisin can warble with you! He sounds like a very accomplished teacher! If he balks 9which I doubt), then feel free to call and we can work on matching pitch over the phone – and, hey, you’d have the “it must be electronic phone interference” excuse for any inaccuracies!
I understand about the “stuff to do” difficulty. I have two junior high kids who want to start voice lessons, and I’m trying to figure out where to stuff them in amongst my other two jobs and my other 5 students and the Chorus singing…oh, and the lawn mowing (*sigh*). Still, you can at least practice singing in the shower: you can pretend that no one else hears, and it’s actually very good practice, since you get a nice reverberant effect in the shower!
Smiles,
Jeanne Marie
PS – not sure why I as listed as “anonymous,” I thought I’d registered here, but maybe not…anyway, you’ve also seen me as “JM in KC” back in the LJ Dark Ages… :-)
Happy day!
I don’t have a shower. (Only a bath.) I can’t POSSIBLY learn to sing. :)
I hope you have some time to take a few pictures of all your wonderfully blossoming gardens while they are in their sunlit glory, and before the rain drenches them again. I have been feeling very much like your cartoon man on the invisible treadmill running in place. I have been translating on this project now for a month and a half (with a few side forays into my regular flow of work) and am now beginning to feel like an archetypal case. (These are texts from the late 18th, 19th and early 20th century, most in a very archaic form of Modern Greek that is exhausting figuring out: think difference between high German and everyday spoken German) I am certain I am past hysteria, made a pause at schizophrenia and now going through paranoia (this will never end) to dementia. I have to get this finished soon! If I see another weekend of psychiatric writings i will go loco.
I did, however, get out to attend a concert (the Ensemble Wien) and the first thing they played was Mozart’s Divertimento (KV136) and I sat there thinking, I know Robin would like this. It was a lovely evening of music (Schubert and Brahms followed), marred only in the second half by the ill-mannered teenager sat in the row behind, either talking or pounding this shoes into our chairs, despite repeated glares from me. I complained to his mother at the end, and she decided that she should tell me off for daring to criticise her darling. Now I know where he gets it. (Mutters and rant deleted).
I can’t *believe* that someone would have the bare faced effrontery to object to someone objecting to bad behaviour during a CLASSICAL MUSIC CONCERT. Send them both to Hampshire and I’ll bury ‘em under a rose, roses like dead decomposing things.
I would have loved the music.
And good luck on the translating! Why have they decided this is worth it! I thought psychiatric thinking has moved on quite a lot since then!!! (Have you read Discovery of the Unconscious? Can’t remember author. Fascinating.)
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It’s an anthology of old psychiatry, psychology and neurology papers, lectures and announcements. Actually, on one level it is truly fascinating. Seeing how much things have changed. How hard it was for the scientists to get a grasp on these issues. How much was mysterious and unknown. There is a part of me that is sat there entranced by the history of science aspect to it. The other part of me is beginning to feel like Dorando Pietri, staggering to make it to the finish line. I had a mini-breakdown mid-week and decided I need to sleep a bit more. I am aiming for five hours a night, six if I can find the time.
Kiddo, you **need your sleep**! This is NOT a good way to make your deadline!
Actually I spent the first twenty five years of my life being an insomniac, trying to live up or sleep down to my family’s ten to twelve hours a night credo and I couldn’t do it. I do very well on six hours with the occasional seven. But lately I’ve been averaging four and a half to maybe five. Which is not enough for me. It’s the weekend, I took a half-hour nap in the afternoon before the concert.
Well, exactly. And I think anything less than six is probably just . . . not good. Human beings were not meant to thrive on less than six hours’ sleep.
You have so got to get a bug buster from Lakeland. This is the handiest gadget. It’s a tube with a sucker and it slurps up insects and then you can shake them out the window upstairs and they can climb back in downstairs. If you’re really good with it – my husband is – you can slurp up a flying wasp. Not that we compete or anything… Well, you know how it is…
I’ve seen them in the catalogue. Hmm. But I don’t WANT wasps flying back in again downstairs–I put the first two out with the old-fashioned glass-and-cardboard technique–I DON’T LIKE WASPS. They, you know, sting, and later in the year they get nasty-tempered. English bees are mostly pretty mellow (aside from the honey issue which helps make me tolerant).
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