Wet wet wet
It’s okay. I can write a blog tonight. Darkness ate dinner. *&^%$£@#~}+!!!!!!!!!!! Cathy, on the other side of the table, is breathing a deep sigh of relief. She’d made the perilous, not to say fatal, offer to write another guest blog if I found myself incapable on account of the extreme reprehensibleness of hellhounds and the resultant need to wail and rail incessantly all evening.* Which is to say, Darkness stopped eating. Yesterday.
I know, I know (and you regular readers know, you know). Normal dogs—well, normal sighthounds—miss meals occasionally. It’s not a big deal. It’s a big deal with these guys because of their history. And it’s a big deal to me because I’m the human supposedly in charge of managing they survive their history. And they are a lot better, about food, about eating food, and about stopping eating (food) and about looking like they’re at death’s door after about twenty-four hours of not eating. And I may have an ever so slight tendency to hit red alert before it’s absolutely necessary. But. . . .
If you graphed hellhound appetites and the amount of food I actually manage to get in them, the lines would swing up and down wildly anyway, like the surface of Lake Superior just before the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. I’m used to this. I don’t frelling like it, but I’m used to it. Occasionally, however, one or both hellhounds ship a really big wave and head for the bottom. If I hadn’t been distracted by having fun with Cathy—because I am an irresponsible dog owner and a horrible selfish thoughtless human being—I might have noticed that the current oh-well-maybe-I-will-and-maybe-I-won’t food mood was hardening into something more drastic. It had crossed my mind that the current lack of enthusiasm phase was going on a little long.
AND THEN . . .
It has not been a good day. Today was our last chance to get out into the country and look at bluebells. And it rained. Again. It’s been raining all week. It was raining when I picked Cathy up at the train station.** It was raining as we both arrived at and left the abbey.*** It was raining most of Sunday in both Hampshire and Bristol, although Cathy managed to find a little sunlight and follow it around for a few hours. It rained on my voice lesson.† It rained on our going to Glaciation to ring with Colin. It rained on our trip to Mauncester yesterday.†† IT’S BEEN RAINING FOREVER. IT IS GOING TO RAIN FOREVER.††† It is just about hip deep around town and squelching out over the countryside when Cathy only has two pairs of shoes with her is not really a credible option.
AND THEN DARKNESS STOPPED EATING. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
It has not been a good day.
But Darkness ate dinner. Enthusiastically. So I can revert to being all wet and soppy and droopy and soggy, not about the rain, but about the fact that Cathy is leaving tomorrow. . . .
* * *
* The deep sigh of relief may have been as much to do with the lack of incessant wailing and railing as the fearful prospect of coming up with another 1000+ words that could pass for a coherent synthesis of some damn thing or other only two days after the previous guest blog.
** It had only just started raining (again), fortunately, since I was late. Of course I was late. I’m always late. And then we had to hare off at extreme speed for the Reification of the Overgoddess at Forza. I have rung my first service at Forza del Destino.^ Eeep. This blood-freezing adventure began last Wednesday, when Ulrich said at practise that it was an all-hands-to-the-pumps situation Saturday afternoon for the reification. I looked away and shuffled my feet because I am not, after all, an abbey ringer, but Gemma said, oh, go on, I’m going to. So I checked with Cathy about train times and then, in fear and grovelling, although it’s difficult to get grovelling across in an email, I wrote to Ulrich, asking if they still needed extra hands for the reification, and he wrote back pretty much by return electron saying they’d be happy to see me. Oops. Now I’m for it.
In fact they didn’t need all of us shmo-level ringers, but they were nice enough to pile us all on for rounds on forty-eight. And Og came by with his clipboard and said to me, smiling in what I’m sure he was under the impression was a friendly manner, You are now on my LIST.
I may have a bell tower again. That is, I admit, may. I’m still expecting them to pull themselves together and bounce schmos like me.+++ And I wish it weren’t a gigantic, ancient, tourist-magnet, one hundred and twelve bell frelling ABBEY. However, I’ll take what I can get. And they’re still, with an irony so shiny and sharp it needs a scabbard++++, my best practical choice for a new tower. Hahahahahahahaha. Ouch, that hurts.
^ I’m feeling just a trifle creeped out by my having long ago carelessly blognamed+ it The Force of Destiny.++
+ I invent a verb. I feel it could have wider application however.
++ It could be a lot worse. I could have named it La Traviata or Aida.
+++ Or I could revert to not being able to ring anything. Anything. But we are not considering this possibility. We reject it.
++++ And its name may be Doomblade.
*** With a spectacular escort of guards. Yeep. We never had guards at New Arcadia, but then we didn’t rededicate goddesses either. But Cathy and I crossed three different cordons, getting in—I’m a bell ringer! I kept squeaking, feeling a complete fraud—and two getting back out again. Our favourite was the nice German lady (in the scary guard uniform) who wanted to know about bell ringing.
† Yes. I took Cathy to my voice lesson. And if she tries to write a guest blog about that I will destroy her.^
It was pretty interesting though. I hadn’t thought about this when I asked Nadia if I could bring a friend that Monday, but it was the day after Diana’s memorial and I was going to be another jigsaw for Nadia to put back together, as well as in (fractured) avert mode because There Was Someone Else Listening. It was not my most brilliant lesson—but it was not, in fact, my most embarrassing either. Nadia says sometimes your worst practises and your worst lessons are the most educational—and this one taught me some stuff. Nadia spent some time talking about channelling emotion into your singing. The impulse—my impulse anyway—is to stomp all that slithery, squishy stuff down, and the stomping process is a lot of what breaks you up into jigsaw pieces. Feh. I’ve told you about the frelling chasm between what I can do at home when no one is listening, but where I don’t have all of Nadia’s tricks for getting a better quality of sound out of me, and what I can do for Nadia, whom I want to please and therefore am afraid to get stuff wrong for—I mentioned that I’d torn the heart out of Che Faro over the washing-up and Nadia said briskly, I look forward to hearing it next week. EEEEEEP. This is pretty much the same kind of exciting and same kind of terrifying as the prospect of maybe having a bell tower again. I would LOVE to work on Che Faro with Nadia, but I’ve assumed that was seriously down the line from where I am now. And it probably is, you know? I’ll take it in to her and . . .
^ No, wait, I can’t destroy her, she’s helping me with New Thing.+
+ And in answer to some forum question or other, yes, it will get a title, at least of sorts, as soon as you learn the protagonist’s name, which is in ep nine or so.
†† More *&^%$£”+=}]~#@!!!!!! Our trip was supposed to produce a certain outcome which was going to produce a particular blog post. And we were FOILED by . . . well, never mind what we were foiled by. I’ll get there in the end. And then I’ll write a blog post about it. Grrrrrrrrrr.
††† I tell myself, rain is good. We’re in a drought. We need this rain. I AM SURE I AM GROWING MOULD ALL OVER MY BODY.
A whangblamming thunderstorm and dazzling blue sky kind of day
. . . in more ways than one. In the first place yes, the weather is completely crazed. Because of other issues* the hellhounds got a series of short hurtles today rather than one long and one medium-length one, and trying to fit these in between cloudbursts was all part of the jolly fun. So I’d just had the latest bit of bad news about the weekend’s Adventure** and I was blitzing around the cottage in a dangerous, bruising torpor because the archangels were due ANY MINUTE*** . . . and I finally thought to check my email and the archangels were going to be an hour later than scheduled.
I could have had a little more sleep.
I could have given the hellhounds a little more hurtle.
I could have hung from the rafters screaming about the reality of Sunday travel a little longer.
I did make myself a second cup of tea, left it on the Aga to stew, and took hellhounds for their second sprint of the day. And got back to the latest parcel of little live green things, longing to be potted up and too tender to leave outdoors. I’m hauling in trays of the little ratbags every night—and back out in the morning. I’m running out of trays. And the sweet peas, which arrived weeks ago, are starting to need repotting. ARRRRRRGH.
The archangels arrived†, were here for two hours . . . AND COULDN’T DO ANYTHING I WANTED THEM TO DO. With the exception of a few bits and pieces, and getting the kanji-support Japanese download installed.†† But I need both Pooka and Astarte, both i-gizmos, frelling updated . . . and they couldn’t do it because my broadband is TOO SLOW. Meanwhile, my so-called provider has changed hands, changed its name and logo, raised its prices and lost my Direct Debit details. And claimed never to have received the archangels’ email, attachment and fax from a month ago about upgrading . . . they plainly raised their prices to pay the designer for the new logo which is undoubtedly larger, flashier, and in full colour, and which will cost more money to produce every month at the top of your invoice.
So the archangels sent it all again, and then went back to wrestling with various gremlins, ogres and unidentified snarly things.††† Raphael checked in with my nonproviders in about fifteen minutes. No, they hadn’t received the resend. Half an hour. No, they hadn’t received it. An hour. No, they hadn’t received it, hahahahahahahaha, isn’t this comical? Meanwhile Gabriel had taken the lid off my phone housing, or whatever you call it, where the wires come in from outside, and did a hissing-between-his-teeth equivalent. You will remember when this came up a week or something ago, that there’s nothing I can do about Brit Telecom’s utter indifference to the connectivity trials and tribulations of a small cul de sac in New Arcadia, and BT owns all the wiring. Gabriel stared thoughtfully out the window at the telephone pole that various hysterically-laughing linemen have nearly fallen off. Your Problem Is Obvious. However between them they think that Raphael can bedevil my provider into providing something, and Gabriel can do something about the connection between Outside and Inside.
But meanwhile . . .
I took hellhounds for another sprint and fulminated. Work did not go at all well in what remained of the afternoon. Also meanwhile . . . I had to go to Forza tonight. I’d missed last week’s practise due to family arrivals and Morse-code electricity, the week before was some rangleblagging scheduled cancellation or other, and I’m going to miss next week because they’re having one of their forty-six-and-a-half bell practises.‡ I didn’t want to go tonight. I didn’t want to go a lot. I’m completely demoralised on the subject of tower ringing and I’ve pretty much turned the fact that I can’t deal with the abbey into a self-fulfilling prophesy of doom, and I’m short of sleep, dreading the pogo-stick journey on Sunday, and totally furious with my technology. I’m clapped out on adrenaline and I’m exhausted.
I had to go.
I went.
Oh, and did I mention it was TIPPING it down? On the way over in Wolfgang we were creeping along in third gear because I couldn’t see out of the frelling windscreen.
And when I got there there were people crawling around with cameras. What? Leaving now. And the Scary Man was in charge. Whimper. Why was I ever born?‡‡
The Scary Man swooped down on me and said, Come ring some Grandsire Triples. —Wait! No! I was going to run away!
. . . I actually haven’t dwelled on how bad it’s been, the last few times at the abbey. I had what I thought was that little breakthrough ringing on six bells rather than eight a while back . . . and then it went away, and I couldn’t ring on six either. I am not joking about the demoralisation. If it weren’t that it felt like either go on facing the abbey or give up ringing, I’d be staying home with a good book.
Anyway. Yeah. Clearly I’m setting you up to say . . . it was okay. It was okay. I didn’t ring frelling Grandsire frelling Triples flawlessly, but I was ringing it. I wasn’t just blindly pulling on a rope and doing what my minder was shouting in my ear, which is mostly what it’s been so far. I am going to do this. I am going to learn to cope with the abbey. Which is to say I may even have a bell tower again. I’m sorry it’s a frelling abbey . . . but it remains the nearest tower that rings methods if I’m not going back to New Arcadia and, hint, I’m not, and therefore my best option is an abbey. . . . where things like BAFTA-winning documentary makers come round and frelling film you. Apparently we’re going to be part of a son-et-lumiere deal for some Hampshire festival. We had exactly thirty-seven ringers for our thirty-seven bells and the Scary Man told us all to catch hold which therefore . . . included me. We just rang rounds . . . but I’ve told you about this before: when you’re ringing rounds on four hundred and twelve or even only thirty-seven you pull off and then hold up for frelling EVER while you’re waiting for the other thirty-six bells before it’s your turn again. This doesn’t happen on six. It’s very disconcerting to someone who is used to ringing on six and finds eight a stretch. Oh, and if you see the film . . . I’m wearing a bright turquoise cardigan which would not have been my choice if I’d known I was going to be immortalised. I’d have gone more for dark brown and a bag over my head.
I also have to say a big fat shiny word for Gemma here. She’s an abbey ringer, and she knows what a struggle I’ve been having. She’s the one who’s kept saying, no, no, they will not tell you to go away and furthermore you will catch on. She’s also the one who suggested that I try a different bell for triples because she found it easier to see from . . . and she’s right. I think that’s one of the things that helped tonight. She does keep smiling at me in this Rather Amused Fashion, but I have this effect on some people for some reason. And I was so giddy tonight that I let her convince me to come to the pub after. . . .
I may have a bell tower again. My life is not over.
And the OTHER THING? I HAVE A NEST FULL OF ADORABLE FLUFFY BABY ROBINS IN THE GREENHOUSE. They’re so cute you could die. I rushed out and bought mealworms.
* * *
* Including sleeping really badly because I’m starting (early) to stress out about an Adventure I’m slated for this weekend that I am dreading extremely. So . . . of course. I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep in one fluid movement. The sleep I’d spent the last x hours not getting.
** You cannot go ANYWHERE on a Sunday in this country. They close the roads^, they close the railway lines, they lock all the barn doors before and after the horses have fled, they glue the wheels of all locally-flying airplanes to the runways, and the Sunday dog sled teams are booked years in advance. Maybe if I started walking now. . . .
^ Including bicycle paths and rickshaws.
*** And I’d overslept. See above.
† Gabriel reported that they had been given a very suspicious look by one of my neighbours. Hey, two young men in hoodies. And Gabriel has a two-day beard.
†† Do I even have to tell you that this did not go the way it was supposed to and I would have gotten totally screwed up and berserk if I’d tried to do it myself? Whatever. They pulled out one of their Magic Discs and made the software(s) talk to each other. And now my Learn Japanese site isn’t mostly little empty rectangles.
††† I sat on the floor and knitted. With some help from hellhounds.
‡ The half is the tower captain’s gerbil.
‡‡ Don’t answer that.
Handbells, and further bulletins on comparative ickiness
Niall and I went haring across the landscape this evening*, looking for Curlyewe. Our new lot of handbell ringers are from Curlyewe and last time they came to New Arcadia Niall suggested, despite my frantic gestures,** we come to them next time. ARRRRGH. I do not commute. Commuting is something other people do.***
Niall picked me up tonight, so all I had to do was hold onto my seat.† But Curlyewe is in the same section of enchanted landscape that Tir nan Og†† is, which is to say that you can’t get there from here, and even if you could, you’d miss it in the fairy mist. Maps lie, and signposts move around. Possibly Niall had in mind outrunning the magic.
I guess it worked, since we got there. Eventually. I had been even less enthusiastic about our expedition when I found out they were expecting us to ring at the church. Doesn’t someone have a sitting-room we could use? A nice warm sitting-room with mod cons like an electric kettle and a loo? Whimper. So I was wearing six extra layers and fingerless gloves††† and a good thing too. Although there was both a loo and a kitchen with an electric kettle . . . there was even an electric fire, which Enoch put up on a shelf and angled down at us as we sat in our little circle . . . and I was still freezing to death.
But handbells were rung. Farrell is back at university, but Oliver is beginning to ring little touches of bob minor; Enoch is beginning to get through plain courses of bob minor; and Olga . . . needs more self-confidence, and an iPhone with Mobel on it. She is bringing back horrible memories of Niall and Esme trying to teach me. . . .
But the main thing is, the three of them really aren’t ready to cope alone, and neither Niall nor I have a regular free evening left. I don’t know what we do now. Pity we can’t use a little of that fairy magic and call up a handbell-ringing golem. . . .
* * *
* At an extreme rate of speed. Frell it, honeybun, I want to live to my sixtieth birthday.
** You could see him thinking, poor thing, she has cramp.
*** Yes, I’m a cow.^ But it’s a little like judging a book by its cover. There are too many books. If I really, really hate the cover well, great, there’s one I don’t have to buy. DISCARD. YAAAY. There are too many interesting things to do and see and get involved in. If they take more than twenty minutes to get to, great, there are closer ones. DISCARD. YAAAY.
I admit there’s a sliding scale about this. If Nadia were a bell tower, I’d be looking for something closer.^^ And the Japanese conversation lessons I’m still promising myself after I finish SHADOWS, which is a little perverse, but there’s no way I have brain or energy to start now, will be farther away than Nadia. However, they have helpfully said that a good deal can be done via Skype.^ While they also, equally helpfully, send me occasional links to interesting events at the Japan Society in London.
Anyway. Niall is a nicer human being than I am. If it were up to me, if a bunch of beginners want to learn to ring handbells, they can come to us. A bit like I go to Nadia—or to the language school.#
. . . Oh, and yes, both my Japanese cookbooks arrived. Someone on Twitter (?) asked a few days ago. I think that’s one of the things that got buried in the post-flu avalanche of Missed Stuff. It’s not that the flu was all that severe—it was a ratbag but it wasn’t serious—it’s just that I’m always not quite coping as a way of life, so any spanner in the works really does me in, like a mild wind will knock over a cardboard house. I was going to blog about my new cookbooks—they’re lovely. Maybe I still will. I can pull them off the shelf## and add them to the pile of things to be dealt with NOW. RIGHT NOW. I MEAN NOW.
^ I’m also a cow with ME, and driving is a genuine bugbear.
^^ On a heavy Monday, let’s say when I’ve done a particularly intense stint of work before my voice lesson, and Niall isn’t going to Colin’s that night so if I want to go I have to drive myself, when I get home again I may be just beginning to see the little smoke wisps in my peripheral vision that mean STOP NOW.
^^^ Supposing Skype is in the mood. A language I know—which is to say English—is usually pretty challenging and video? Are you kidding?
# Which may indeed turn out to be too far. In which case I will have to find a Skype pixie/hobgoblin/troll and bribe the frell out of it.
## Yes. They’re on a SHELF. I hope you’re impressed.
† YAAAAAAAAAH. It’s amazing what a 15-year-old Peugeot can do.
†† Er—Tir nan Og, Hampshire. I have rung there occasionally. When I can find it.
††† NO NOT THOSE FINGERLESS GLOVES. They’re still in a bucket in the greenhouse.
Diane in MN
I’ve never had a plastic bag break, but oh how I appreciate the ewww grossness of your situation. I have taken to using plastic gloves–the disposable exam-glove kind–when doing public pick-up duty with my critters, and keeping an extra one in my pocket just in case of some unexpected disaster. So far so good.
I have a large-economy-size box of those disposable gloves because I seem . . . to get myself in icky situations, one way or another, somewhat regularly.^ But as a town dog owner, I go through one to four plastic pick-up bags a day. Even if we get out to the country for the long morning hurtle, the afternoon hurtle is pretty much invariably in town. That’s a lot of plastic. The local pet store, after listening to me whine about it for several years, finally found a source of biodegradable dog crap bags that seem to be genuinely biodegradable even after you’ve read the fine print . . . but it’s still a lot of plastic. I certainly use the gloves . . . but I’m under the impression the bags leave a smaller, you know, footprint.
Re Williams
As someone who milks cows on a dairy farm two days a week, I can tell you that it does wash off.
Well personally I draw AN ENORMOUS THICK LINE, LIKE MAYBE ABOUT A MEDIUM-SIZED ASTEROID WIDE, between herbivore crap and carnivore crap. I’ve spent years of my life mucking out stalls, but I think I’d have trouble working at a kennels, and I’m even a dog person. Herbivore crap is just not that big a deal.^^ I’ve come into direct personal contact with . . . well, an awful lot of horse, including scouring foal, which is pretty unpleasant, cow, which is always sloppy, goat, including scouring goatling, sheep and rabbit. There are probably others. But it never occurred to me in my barn days that washing my hands and putting my jeans and flannel shirts through the washing machine wouldn’t be enough.
PamAdams
I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse.
Oh gods. Oh gods. I’m not laughing. I’m really not . . . RRRMBGGLK. NOT. LAUGHING.
b_twin_1
| I would argue that rolling over in one’s sleep, only to discover one’s face in a pool of kitty vomit, is worse. |
. . . given the number of people on the forum who have access to animals with copious excrement of all types I humbly suggest we don’t carry on with “mine’s bigger than yours”
::notgigglingeither:: ::NOT:: I don’t think that’s what was happening here, but you’re probably right we want to ensure that it doesn’t. But I’d differentiate between indoor pets and you farmers. I’ve worked on farms, and it’s also a different mindset. So PamAdams’ interesting experience and my exploding dog bag are in the same category, as are you and Re Williams in the same other category.
^ This includes in the garden. I scatter pelleted chicken manure by hand, because it’s quick, easy and efficient that way. The bags all say STERILIZED but I am much happier in gloves somehow. And I once had a carton of mealworms break all over the kitchen floor, and having very promptly shut up hellhounds, scrabbled (most of) the escapees out from under the corner overhang of cupboards and so on by hand. Speaking of mealworms I haven’t checked on the robin’s nest in a couple of days. . . .
^^ Which, since there’s so much more of it, is a very good thing.+
+ I don’t think I’d do too well mucking out the big cat cages at the zoo either.
Singing and a ’cello
I had FOUR new songs to learn, or to try on for size and choose from, the last fortnight, since Nadia, the lazy slut, was taking Easter Monday off,* they just don’t make voice teachers like they used to.** And then I had flu.*** I’ve only been really singing for about the last three days.† So, at rather a pelt, I learnt a song and a half: Long Time Ago arranged by Aaron Copland†† and half of When Daisies Pied by Thomas Arne†††.
In some ways the increasing gap between what I do or can do at home and what I do or can do for Nadia is INCREASINGLY FRUSTRATING. I do my most emotive singing . . . mostly over the washing-up. Please. But there’s something about having something that is just slightly distracting‡ to do with your hands and about one-tenth of your brain, as well as no audience‡‡, that enables all kinds of freedom. I caught myself breaking my heart over the dead Eurydice some time this weekend . . . and of course the moment I noticed it went away and I couldn’t get it back. Arrrrgh. But in terms of sheer howling frustration at the perversity of self-consciousness . . . I was doing scales at the sink. It was, again, some time this weekend. I’d been singing for a day or two at that point but this was my first attempt to get back into my top end. Oh dear, I thought, that A is still very squeaky. So I went to the piano because sometimes having the piano to lean on is comforting. And it wasn’t the A. It was the B. I don’t have a B—yet—but I’ve thought I probably will because I have the A# most of the time at home and an occasional chalkboard squeal above that. This was definitely a B, and while it was far from a thing of beauty, it was real enough that if I could make it on demand it would be useful in a choir where I’m being covered up by a lot of better Bs.‡‡‡
Of course it only lasted long enough for me to go, glibberglingglang, that’s a B! That’s a real, live B! Whereupon it went away so emphatically I could barely hack my way to the A. Siiiiiiiigh.
When I went in today the first thing Nadia did was make me do a lot of physical stretches to get the bits reconnected since, post-flu, they’ve all shut down in postures of rigid defense. The point being that I was even singing badly . . . but I had still managed to produce that top B I don’t have (yet) simply because I knew I had had flu and wasn’t expecting much. ARRRRRRGH.
She then asked me what, of whatever I was singing, I’d most like her input on, and I pulled out Long Time Ago. And here’s the thing . . . she didn’t say anything about the notes and all that basic stuff (despite the fact that they are not perfect). She went immediately into phrasing and interpretation.
You know this improvement scam is kind of intimidating. . . .
blondviolinist
|
cicatricella wrote on Fri, 13 April 2012 22:02 |
| Re: the violoncello thing. I know not how it might apply to voice, and why there would be both a ‘cello’ and a ‘violoncelle’, but ‘cello’ is actually an abbreviation (or was originally anyway). ‘Cello’ is a diminutive in Italian and a ‘violoncello’ is a ‘little (contra)bass’. That’s why some books (especially older ones) write it ” ‘cello” |
Yep. So the performer who listed it as “cello” was probably a nice enough person, and the performer who listed it as “violoncelle” was full of themselves.
I did wonder. It’s the ‘violoncelle’ performer that we missed. The cello player was a nice young man—and I think I remember he placed in the instrumental category. I did know about the “ ’cello” from reading lots of old books, but I assumed that since this was in some other language it must be some other instrument.
Diane in MN
Unfortunately he’s not the least interested in opera and unless he has a voice teacher at some point who wakes him up to the glories of the operatic repertoire I think we’ll lose him to the West End. Feh.
How good are you at subverting voice teachers?
SNORK. That approach hadn’t occurred to me. Well, the family have been threatening to move south, to be nearer the rest of the clan. . . .
I didn’t hear Traviata this afternoon and from your description, I would have disliked the production a whole lot. As when:
[. . .] she realises he’s asking her to give up Alfredo forever SHE TAKES HER DRESSING-GOWN OFF and trails around in her slip. Oh gods how I hate the wandering around in your underwear to indicate vulnerability and innocence thing. (She does it again later at the party. [. . .])
This would have taken me right outside the performance,
YES. THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT DOES. ‘Surreal’ has rules (even if I’m not sure what they are) just like ‘fantasy’ does, and if you break them, you ruin the story, and the spell. The end of the first act, when she’s singing about how she has to be free, and then she hears Alfredo off stage singing about the power of love, in his wet way, and it stops her . . . in this staging, he comes on stage and confronts her, although I think you don’t have to know the standard set-up to recognise the dream-like quality of it here: she is confronting herself really. And it works. That’s one of the things that works a treat. It’s hard to believe that someone who came up with this would also come up with trailing around in your slip.
even if other elements (like Alfredo in his underwear) had failed to do so.
Indeed. I was having a little trouble, although I would have coped, with the cabbage roses. The boxer shorts broke my suspension of disbelief snap. Reasons Never to Be A Stage Actor: your director can make a fool of you and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I dislike and am distracted by staging that wants to trump the music or libretto or both. Aaargh. It’s too bad that on top of that, the singers were not at their best.
Yes. And part of the frustration is that a good deal of this staging was really interesting. But . . . I was talking to someone else who saw it, who agreed that Dmitri sang like a stick. It may have been characterisation—Papa Germont is a stick—but it was not a good choice.
Blondviolinist
I haven’t seen many productions of La Trav, but I’ve yet to see one in which the 2nd act didn’t bore me. (Well, except for Papa Germond’s aria. He’s being a jerk, but oh! is it gorgeous music.) This includes two of Zeffirelli’s stagings. Maybe the act is simply hard to stage effectively.
We-ell. . . . I wouldn’t say boring, myself, but then I love the opera too much. I do absolutely know what you mean. For me the music, well sung, can deal with anything (and Dessay, even not in top voice, was well worth watching, and I’d see her in it again without hesitation). What I guess happens with me is that I look forward to all three scenes, and I would have said that it’s pretty hard to get both Germont and Violetta and the party scene wrong, they’re both oozy with easy drama. All right, it’s not hard: put Violetta in her dressing gown, and then make her take it off, and then wander brokenly around the rest of the stage pulling all the cabbage roses off the furniture. ARRRRGH. Anyway. It shouldn’t be hard to stage both those scenes. The rough one is the one between Papa the Thug and Alfredo the Wet Brat.
And yes, since you ask, I’m insane, we knew that, I’d love a chance to try. . . .
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* I think this was a toddler-minding problem rather than a desire to loll around at home in her dressing-gown all day eating bonbons and watching soap operas.
** WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHILE SHE’S ON MATERNITY LEAVE FOR TWO MONTHS? I’LL FORGET EVERYTHING.^
^ Drama queen? What? Clearly you don’t take music lessons from a Nadia.
*** I know. I still owe you a what? blog about how the New Thing came to be. It may be some help if I mention now that ‘raving with fever’ had something to do with it.
† And I still have one spectacularly blocked ear which is very, very boring.
†† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8wqsmkYT8 So I have a thing for baritones. Sue me. Of the half dozen that come up immediately on YouTube this is my favourite. And having listened to all of the ones I liked twice (and this one three times) I have STOPPED because Nadia doesn’t like me listening to YouTube—I told you this, that she believes that you pick up interpretations without meaning to and she wants her students making their own mistakes. And their own not-mistakes. As recently as when I was first learning Dove Sei I thought she was straining at gnats with me—I could certainly see why she’d be thinking about this with a student who, you know, had a real voice and was really singing—but . . .
Um. Okay. Yes. I’ve crossed that line too.^ Granted that Long Time Ago (or When Daisies Pied) is a simple song, but my excuse for heading for YouTube was to learn the actual line as quickly as possible without worrying about my eccentric piano-playing. But I was pretty much ignoring the melody because I knew I could pick it up, and listening to the phrasing. How does he do that—oh. Oops.
EMoon
It is amazing, as I take more lessons and crawl slowly forward in the singing, how much more I can hear in others’ singing.
Yes. Exactly. I’ve been aware of it increasingly—as I mentioned again on Friday after the Pan-galactic finals, that your listening is different in kind if you’re having even a feeble and talent-free stab at doing whatever-it-is yourself. But I don’t think I had realised till I started listening to good professional singers singing Long Time Ago the other night just how far down this road I’ve come. Oh wow. Look. Elephants. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.
All I need is more work, more work, more work, and no other things interrupting it. (Bwah-ha-ha-ha! she sings, with expression and only the right amount of vibrato. . . .
Well . . . that might be true with you people with voices. It’s certainly true that I could use more practise time to good effect but . . . I’m still going to hit the wall with this voice-equivalent sooner rather than later. Good reasons to keep singing off the McKinley Obsession List.
My friend Susan . . . mentioned today that a great contralto died a few days ago at age 90, Lili Chookasian. I knew nothing about her, but Susan gave a link to one of her recordings and I was completely wiped out by it, tears and all. Well below both our ranges, on the low end, but in case you’re interested, here’s a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZTUm8IUAU&feature=relat ed
Oh my. Yes. (Which is why I’m sticking it in here, for musical blog-readers who don’t look at the forum.) I would love Kathleen Ferrier anyway, but I also love her because she’s the only true contralto I’ve pretty much ever frelling heard of.
I also sing Blow the Wind Southerly and even though I love the song and there’s no reason I shouldn’t, still . . . why? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvHg9cBriw ^^
^ For better and worse. Generally speaking I’m fine with the fact that I’m not going to be a (very) late-flowering Beverly Sills. But I do kind of catch myself wishing that I had the chops+ to be a big frog in even a very small pond. Some of this is worrying about the future of the Muddles: I’ve told you we’re going to be getting a new director and Who Knows. And thanks to having more throat trouble this last year than I have had since I was a bronchitis-prone preteen and that the Muddles have lots of long breaks from rehearsal, I’ve never quite fully committed to them. If our new leader wants us singing medleys of old Beatles hits I’ll be out of there so fast I’ll give myself road burn.
+ Er . . . croaks?
^^ And Che Faro. And He Was Despised. And O Waly Waly. She sang a lot of my favourite repertoire. And I am a glutton for self-punishment.
††† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxiTrRwsW0E
‡ There are good musical moments out with hellhounds too.^ But you can never afford to be too distracted from continuously scanning your surroundings for sudden perils. And I’ve never had a spoon or a tea mug leap out of my hands and go scalding off after a rabbit.
^ Even if Chaos will not stop looking up at me earnestly when I sing. When we’re out hurtling he trots at my side. At home he gets out of the nice comfy dog bed to stand near me and stare. No, I’m not in pain. Go away.
‡‡ Other than a deranged hellhound.
‡‡‡ Or at least Griselda. You really only need Griselda.
Uncomfortably numb
It’s funny how different something looks from one perspective than it does from another. I thought that the first few words of the first sentence of New Thing* would clearly, unmistakably and irresistibly label it as fiction. People who read the blog even occasionally (I thought) would be aware that I mention Peter from time to time** as an ongoing part of my life***—and if people who don’t read the blog at all might be intrigued at the possibility of one of those scary train-wreck blogs where people describe their bosses as pustules and how they had it off with the plumber last Saturday† while their spouse was buying Marmite at the corner shop,†† hey, whatever keeps them reading. But it never occurred to me that even the least regular reader could get to the end of the first sentence, and we will pass over the reference to computers and conferences since not everyone knows who Peter is†††, absorb the reference to the fourth volume of The Epic of Flowerhair and not at least suspect the presence of a fragrant rodent. The Epic of Flowerhair? Seriously? I must be even farther out of touch with my genre than I realised.‡ And the only reason this blog exists is because I’m a writer. A fantasy writer. Um. People do read sidebars, don’t they? Where mine outs me as a fantasy writer. I always read sidebars. There is vastly, universe-crackingly too much content out there in internet land. You need a fast way to say ‘no’‡‡ occasionally. Sidebars (sometimes) provide one.
And haven’t I been chirpy and upbeat about the New Thing? Well, I thought I’d been being chirpy and upbeat‡‡‡ about the New Thing.
Anyway. It’s fiction. There will be more of it. And, you know, thanks for worrying . . .
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I know I promised you a What? You’re doing what? semi-explanatory blog tonight but I’m several leagues beyond shattered and I have to get up EARLY tomorrow.
About six weeks ago, I think, we received a very chirpy email, speaking of chirpy, from the parents of one of Peter’s grandchildren, informing us that the grandchild in question had reached the finals of the national division of the Pan-galactic Gargle Blaster Young Musician of the Year competition, which is being held in Dastardly, which is not impossibly far from here. So we’re going. Tomorrow. EARLY tomorrow. We’re going (EARLY) because we’re getting a ride—from Georgiana and Saxon who are getting out of bed even earlier to swing past here and pick us up. They are noble and wonderful human beings.§
It’s going to be a clan gathering—I believe they’re pegging off one whole section of the arena for us—but the finalist grandchild and his immediate family swooped through here a day early and stayed overnight last night at Third House. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good idea before I had this flu§§ and it still seemed like a good idea up until the electricity started flashing on and off like an urgent Morse code message yesterday morning. I was (serendipitously) out buying batteries when one of the other clerks came flouncing back in the shop and announced crossly that both our little local grocery stores were closed, allegedly because of automatic-till problems. Oh. My next stop was some little local grocery, for supplies for the troops who were arriving in a few hours. . . .
With reference, the other night, to the question of protecting your technology from erratic power delivery: I have this great boulder of an object under the desk at the cottage, which is both hard drive back up, enough battery to let you close your desktop down without data loss or meltdown if the power goes out, and a kind of super-whammy surge protector, in that it cost ridiculous amounts of money, but you don’t have to keep changing the freller every time something like yesterday happens. It has a major drawback, however, which is that while the power is out it screams. It screams incessantly for as long as the power is out—and it doesn’t stop screaming until the power is back on again AND you have reset the wretched thing.
It spent a lot of yesterday screaming. I did not enjoy this.
And then when I finally got to Third House to make up the beds, I couldn’t get the frelling heat to turn on. The OLD boiler§§§ was thirty (or forty) years old and it had pretty much two settings: On. And off. And it had a dial, so you could set the temperature. That was about it. It also made a reassuring roaring noise when you turned it on and it came on. I am capable of understanding this system. The new boiler, which was installed when I had all that fun having the Weight Bearing Floor built for the attic a couple of years ago, will make a cherry pie, sew a fine seam, and calculate pi to 1,000 places. All I want it to do is heat my house. And I couldn’t figure out WHY I COULDN’T TURN IT ON. I wasted a lot of time on this, to the detriment of the bed-making, but it was cold last night#. . . .
They had been keeping me up to date with their progress by text, including the indefinite delay when the M-something motorway stalled out due to a traffic accident. Then I didn’t receive the last two texts about their getting underway again, and the next thing I knew there was a sudden influx of tired, chilly human beings who were bemused by the fact that Wolfgang was preventing them from parking in Third House’s drive, and after everyone is home from work there never are spaces on the street. Oh. Technology, you ratbag. You get careless, when things are working. You assume they will go on working.
I have to go to BED. I have to get up EARLY. PS: our grandchild is going to blow the rest of those weaselly little suckers out of the water. . . . ##
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* It doesn’t have a name yet. You will be the first to know.
** See: I am my own best material because I don’t have to worry about taking my own name in vain or hurting my own feelings. And poor Peter suffers the disability of being the only other person who doesn’t have an alias. So I do try to protect him.
*** I suppose, since I’m always reminding you how much I don’t tell you, you could have leaped to the sudden, horrified conclusion that our marriage is actually a seething rancorous mass of barely restrained mutual loathing, and that this had broken out at last. Um. No. And even Gelasio isn’t a villain. At least I don’t think so. At least not yet. I suppose he could . . . mmmph mrgle gmmmph.
† Cheaper than weekend overtime rates. If the plumber fancies you.
†† Sorry, you hopefuls. I don’t write that kind of blog. Nice knowing you.
††† http://www.peterdickinson.com/
‡ Hoist by my own petard again. I also keep saying that I’m very under-read in everything because I’m a very slow reader and read over too wide a range. True.
‡‡ Or even ‘yes’, unfortunately. Noooooo! I do not want to receive email updates! Noooooo! I do not want to be on your RSS feed! Nooooooooo!
‡‡‡ And annoying.
§ I believe there is also a classic Jag involved. Oooooooh. May I be awake enough to appreciate it.
§§ There was a noxious miasma hanging over Bologna this year. I know several people hitherto innocent of any crime who went home plague-bearers.
§§§ Furnace
# Yes. I am extremely tired of bringing this year’s baby plants indoors every night.
## PPS: The boiler had turned itself off at source. I guess because it got tired of the Morse electricity. It did allow itself to be turned back on again—when someone other than me figured this out.