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
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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. . . .
* * *
* 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.
La Trav and other less salubrious topics
The delicate, easily disturbed and faint-hearted should look away NOW. (You can skip down to the opera review.)
GROSSNESS ALERT. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.
So, what is the worst thing? The very, very worst thing?
Think about it a minute. I can wait.
Hint: It has to do with dogs.
Do I see a certain dawning horror in your eyes?
Yes. That’s right. It’s when your plastic bag breaks and you find yourself holding a NAKED HANDFUL OF DOG SHIT.* And have I mentioned lately that hellhounds, due to their little digestive issues, tend to produce squishy excreta?
I was also wearing fingerless gloves at the time. So maximum vileness, disgustingness and destruction of personal property.**
I WILL NEVER USE THIS BRAND OF PICK UP BAGS AGAIN. Part of the complete scenario here is that I know these bags are, ahem, crap, but I was loath to throw out the rest of the packet not because it was a waste of my money—pick up bags are cheap—but because I worry about all that additional plastic in the environment that town-dwelling dog-owners produce and so I’ve gone on using them checking them carefully first. HITHERTO the breakages have been visible as soon as you drag the thing open to use it. Not today.
And no, we weren’t even on the river walk at the time, with nice easily available water.
I will spare you the details of the rest of the walk home. In this case hurtle is an understatement.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.***
* * *
I wasn’t sure even La Traviata, my favourite opera, could save this day. When I was failing to get to Manon last week due to the remains of the lurgy I was telling myself that NOTHING was going to stop me going to La Trav this week. NOTHING. And in fact nothing did. Not even the need to keep washing my hands every five minutes.
It was Natalie Dessay’s first Violetta† and I’m a big fan of Dessay—she’s an actor as well as a singer, so you don’t have to close your eyes and concentrate on the music. And she had Matthew Polenzani as her Alfredo—and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as her Papa Germont. What could go wrong?
Well, the first thing is the production—it’s the famous Willy Decker Red Dress, Big Clock and Doctor Death production. I’m embarrassed to say I’m not sure if I’ve seen it before or not. I don’t like surreal††, so it’s not naturally going to, ahem, sing to me. And there was a lot of it I didn’t remember—but there was quite a bit I seemed to remember so . . . whatever. Maybe that’s all part of the surreality. At least with this team a lot of it did work. One of the built-in problems with La Trav is that Alfredo, the romantic hero, is a nasty, spoilt, self-centred little wet. I don’t know how he does it, but Polenzani is good at making wet-tenor characters you badly want to slap understandable and appealing. He managed it here, but this is also one of the things the production (I think) gets right: he is really persecuted by the dissolute crowd Violetta hangs out with and you can sympathize with him going a little off the rails.
Another inherent problem is that the only reason you know Violetta is dying of consumption is because the plot says so.††† What you see is some singer strong enough to carry an extremely demanding role. In this production Violetta totters onto the stage during the overture, spends some time bent over coughing (silently) and has her first encounter with Doctor Death. So you’re set up for the situation. And you see her pull herself together and morph into the heartless courtesan as the party starts. (This is the sort of thing Dessay is really good at too.) And she periodically addresses herself to the doctor during the action, which reminds you that she’s under a death sentence. I thought this worked really well.
The things that didn’t work so well . . . in the first place, poor Dessay was having an off night. You could hear it, and during the intermission interview she said as much—and you could see her dismay in her face. I’d guess her to be a perfectionist, possibly beyond the perfectionism any Met singer needs, and here she is in her first Violetta, which is one of the plum soprano roles, at the Met, and on the Live in HD night broadcast across the globe. . . she’s having to nurse her voice along and still isn’t quite succeeding. Her speaking voice sounds like she has a head cold, but that wouldn’t necessary screw up her singing voice. Except that it did.
After a killer first act—Alfredo’s wooing and her response is especially effective—I thought most of the second act sucked pond scum. The basic stage set is very stark, which is fine, and the beginning of the second act, when Violetta and Alfredo are tucked up in their jolly country love-nest, everything is draped with great swathes of fabric covered in big fat pink and red cabbage roses. Duh. Okay. Got it. They’re wearing dressing-gowns of the same stuff and—first mistake—our hero, under his dressing-gown, is wearing an ordinary business shirt and boxer shorts. This is not a look even a major heart-throb could bring off, and the pudgy Polenzani does not succeed. The business of Alfredo finding out that Violetta is bankrupting herself to keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed is bungled . . . and then Papa Germont shows up. Violetta is still in her dressing-gown. What? She’s an effing courtesan and this is the seriously bourgeois dad of her lover. She would be rupturing herself to be as proper as possible—and when he starts out being rude and she says that she’s a lady in her own house—done well this is terrific putdown but SHE’S IN HER DRESSING-GOWN. And . . . the awful truth is that I was not convinced by my hero Dmitri. He sang well but . . . but . . .
And then 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. OH STOP IT.) The face-off between dad and son is no better. This is an inherent problem that this production did not solve. Dad starts the ‘come home to your loving family’ routine just as Alfredo has read the letter from Violetta saying she’s leaving him, so he’s not at his most relaxed and persuadable. And the poor actor playing Alfredo doesn’t really have anything to DO except fulminate for several minutes while dad sings. I’ve never seen this done persuasively. In this case they made it worse by Papa slugging his son . . . and then instantly dropping back into his ‘all is forgiven’ refrain. What? Who needs to forgive whom here? Papa Germont is the most awful thug to begin with. He doesn’t need any help.
The third act was a mixed bag. I was smarting from the second act—and there’s no way to get around the fact that the reason the Germonts come to see her is because they know she’s dying and won’t mess up Papa’s snug little middle-class life much longer. Although the surrealism does mean that they get away with the doctor saying authoritatively ‘she has only hours to live’ which kind of whacks your suspension of disbelief in most stagings; and that there isn’t a bed solves the problem of whether Violetta, with only hours to live, gets out of it and runs around or not. And Dessay is a very, very good actor. I usually do burst into tears at the end—indeed I feel all coitus interruptus if I don’t—but I didn’t have to think about it this time. I was totally heartbroken.
Oh, and that second leg-warmer is almost done.
* * *
* I admit this may tie for first place with projectile diarrhoea indoors, which I also have some direct experience of, but despite the sheer grossness factor the really distressing part of that isn’t the clean up but the throat-closing, heart-squeezing worry about your critter.
** Can These Gloves Be Saved? Probably not. I’ll boil the right one a few times, but . . . probably not.
*** I’ve washed my hands so often the skin is coming off.^
^ Will I Ever Use My Right Hand Again.+
+ Probably. Typing one-handed is a ratbag. And while I can use chopsticks with my left hand, it’s not a fun time.
† At the Met, anyway. I think she said in the intermission interview it was her first ever.
†† I like practical fantasy. I like the magic to have rules, and I want to know where the latrines are and if they’ve got good drainage.
††† And whoever wrote this year’s synopsis is a moron. It begins: ‘Violetta Valery knows that she will die soon, exhausted by her restless life as a courtesan.’ SHE’S DYING OF TUBERCULOSIS, YOU CRETIN. Her lifestyle is certainly contributing to the speed of her decline, but if that were all that was wrong with her she’d last a good while yet.
Mouth breather
There will be an ANNOUNCEMENT at the end of this post.
Oh, stop it. It’s not one o’clock in the frelling morning. That’s an optical illusion. The kitchen clock hates me, and I’m sure I need a new prescription for my glasses.*
I was thinking, as I snarled my way out of bed this morning, that I’m very grateful that horrible as this flu has been it’s not maintaining the extreme fevered purple-spotted torture level forever . . . but it would still be very nice to be able to hear and breathe again some time soon.** I was too busy being a pain in the neck last night*** to let reality deflect me from my malign purpose, but Peter and I had an adventure yesterday, visiting a friend who has recently moved to this area. Not all that recently. She and her husband have been here several times. But I keep bottling out—or the ME bottles out for me—of going to visit them. You know, driving. On the roads and everything. I’d rather be knitting.
But I wanted to get it over with, that first assault on Everest† . . . not least because she and I are supposed to be going to a concert together next week at her local hall. Which means I need to be able to get there. And on the whole I’d rather wreck Easter Monday lunch with the anticipatory nervous breakdown than a concert you’ve bought tickets to. So Peter and I added two boxes of tissues to the emergency kit in Wolfgang’s boot†† and set off.†††
Hey. Wow. Gosh. Actually the way there is pretty straightforward. I can do this.‡ And their new house is adorable—it has no right angles in it anywhere, and a Charles Rennie Macintosh surround on the (tiny) dining room fireplace—and the typical town garden that isn’t much wider than you can spread your arms, except this one goes on and on and on. And on and on and on. And on. It’s like the far end is in Norway‡‡ it’s so long.
But my point is . . . it’s more embarrassing having a lurgy in someone else’s house, even when you’re pretty sure you’re not leaving it behind for them to enjoy in your absence. Oh gods I’m a mouth breather. No one will ever invite me anywhere again.
Niall is forced to make use of me, however, because I can hold the line even against the worst assaults of beginner handbellers. Niall is applying the high-intensity inauguration system with this new group—he’s booked them (and me) in for next Tuesday too.‡‡‡ Mind you, Farrell is starting to scare me: you just hand him a pair of bells and say ‘do this’ and he does. I won’t be ringing with him much longer because I’ll be beneath his notice. § But Enoch is needing the standard beginner grind, and they’d brought a tasty new mutton chop, I mean person, with them tonight, Olga being unavailable, whom we will call Oliver. Oliver once in the dark days of foolish youth had begun to learn to ring handbells and had sensibly given it up . . . I’m not sure what Enoch has on him that he agreed to come along tonight. A good grind was had by all, one way and another, although whether or not it was a pleasant evening might be open for debate. But . . . carrying around a superfluous lurgy was not on my mind when I was developing my nascent handbell habits. I tend to look down—I only want to see the bells out of the corners of my eyes, although in my peripheral way I’m watching the treble like a hawk waiting for that rabbit to wander just another step farther away from the hedgerow—and looking down makes all that crap in my head shift forward and lodge like cement in a slurry pit. Mouth breather. Arrgh. This too will pass. I hope.
ANNOUNCEMENT: THE NEW THING WILL DEBUT TOMORROW.§§
* * *
* The many advantages of touch typing. Also most of the letters on the keys have worn off.
** Also I have a cough that scares small children, but that has its uses. Not being able to hear has its uses too^, but not enough of them. Not being able to breathe has no uses at all.
^ Take 1,000,000 empty bottles to the dump, dear? Sorry, I can’t hear you.
*** Heh heh heh heh heh
† She lives on a HILL. Do you have any idea how much I loathe parallel parking on a HILL? Especially a crowded residential hill where the spaces are all at best .0326 inches longer than your car? When there are any spaces?
†† trunk
††† Leaving hellhounds to sulk at the dog minder about the rain. At least it’s good rain—it’s a bit whimsical, liking to lure you outdoors with the blue-and-sunny trap before it yanks the black wall of water on and lets you have it—but it is raining determinedly while it’s raining, and gardens and ponds and frogspawn and reservoirs are liking it. Not so the hellhounds. FOR GODSSAKE GUYS YOU WON’T MELT. Darkness is tentatively willing to take this on faith. Not Chaos. Chaos can feel every drop penetrating his liver. Rainy days it’s always a dice roll: do I put their raincoats on them so they comprehensively hate the entire hurtle, Darkness affecting stoicism and Chaos doing his upside-down backwards and sideways Maybe I Can Shake It Off dance with much tail-lashing, or do I leave their raincoats off so they only hate the part when it’s raining, but then spray house, car and me with strangely knife-edged mud droplets which furthermore have an inexplicable capacity to stain more damningly than black tea? They also sulk longer post-hurtle if they’re wet . . . but this is English weather. If you’re lucky it won’t rain while you’re out in it, and there are four little beady eyes, when I pick up harnesses in preparation to going out, beaming the message noooooooooo raincoats. . . .
‡ I had a revolutionary thought. I could learn to drive slower. Ugggh. I get behind the wheel, I want to get it over with. And the speed limit on motorways and A roads is 70, which is Mario Andretti’s idea of a crippled amble, but it’s my idea of pedal to the metal, and if the sign says 70, I go 70. But the faster you’re driving, the more acute that hyper buzzy awareness you’re using to stay alive is, whether you’re aware of it or not, and this is tiring . . . which is where the ME comes in in my case, and why I drive as little as possible. I’m not sure the neurological stress level is that much different between driving 45 and 70 . . . but I could find out. Sigh. I’d rather just have a chauffeur. Then I could knit.
‡‡ What? There’s a bridge over the North Sea, of course. It’s long and narrow too.
‡‡‡ We’re going to them next week. I think this may be Penelope losing patience and wanting her sitting room back. I don’t think I can get five people in the cottage. Maybe I should suggest Third House.
§ Very scary. Remember I told you he’s a dancer? He auditioned—and won a place for the Olympic opening day ceremonies. Yeep etc—better him than me. But I hope he’ll tell us about it.^
^ I hope he keeps ringing handbells. Despite the immediate prospect of my being discarded for insufficient skill, I want to hold onto this boy for the greater good of our mutual art.
§§ Unless of course I change my mind again.
Unnnngh, continued indefinitely
Diane in MN
Your condition reminds me of the last time I had real, honest-to-goodness influenza, a couple of decades ago. I made it worse by attempting to go to work on the days I felt marginally better–that was the first week; the second week I just stayed home. My husband had been out of town the first week, but since he caught it as soon as he got home, we were both knocked out the second week, barely able to stagger downstairs to heat up soup. I hope you do NOT have honest-to-goodness flu and see the end of your current affliction very soon.
Yes, along about the third day you have trouble getting out of bed you start thinking about the Spanish flu that killed 50 million (or so) people in 1918, right? A little learning is a dangerous thing, especially when you’re ill and less emotionally stable than your usual calm, sane self.*
I finally heard from Hannah today (we having missed connections mainly due to germ ramifications this last week) that she got home and went down with bronchitis. Joy. I can’t wait to find out that’s next on my agenda. At the moment it’s mostly a really alarming head cold with this bloody cough, and some fantastically exciting gastric complications. And I didn’t fever-spike last night which I want to believe is a good sign. I’m getting the hellhounds hurtled. Where is my medal. But I do miss breathing. And tasting my food. And my eyes not starting to go fuzzy after about two hours of reading or staring at a computer screen. Yet another mark for the excellence of knitting: you can knit when your eyes are too fluy to focus on print.
EMoon
I agree–don’t know how I survived waiting and boring events before knitting.
Boring events including having flu. Here I thought it was just about badly organised handbell evenings and very long stoplights on your way to your voice lesson.
jmeadows
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I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I am not merely working on the second leg warmer, but that I cast on and immediately started ribbing—not only without having to redo the first few rows about forty-seven times, but without even thinking about it. I cast on and started knitting. Yaaay. Progress. |
YAY!!! *so proud*
Well at least you’re continuing to accept responsibility for your part in my yarny downfall.
Isn’t that an awesome feeling? Just . . . casting on and knitting?
Um. . . . Okay. Yes.
I won’t lie and say you’ll never have to fiddle and retry ever again
If at the point where I can do the exact same ribbing I just did for 1,000,000,000 rows for the first world’s longest leg warmer without thinking about it for the second, there were no challenges left ahead of me . . . knitting would clearly be unworthy of us. So what a good thing I HAVE MANY HOURS OF BEING DRIVEN OUT OF MY TINY FREAKED-OUT MIND to look forward to.
– because it happens to EVERY knitter no matter how long she’s been knitting –
Especially if she keeps being drawn farther and farther into the dark side. A friend is sending me the pattern for a rose intarsia pullover—or I think it’s intarsia; I don’t actually need to know at this stage—that I have about as much chance of making successfully as I do making the world safe, happy, peaceful and environmentally sound by pointing out that the majority of our heads of state are morons. And blondviolinist tweeted me this today: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0307586715/ref=sib_dp_pt/181-5660244-9068349#reader-link which I instantly found over here and ordered, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure even the flowers the author has labelled ‘starting out’ will be beyond me—and besides, I want to knit the rose, which is probably in the ‘resolute’ category.
but that’s a great step.
Yes, actually, it is, isn’t it? Hee. Also, I really need to FINISH something.
Mockorange
But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday’s blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting
Well, naturally. Some of us are knitting again for the first time in years entirely due to your proselytising on this blog. Let’s see if we can derail to knitting again. KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING! KNITTING!
All right, you woodwork-lurking knitters: go for it. And I’m delighted to be able to provide the evil role model of degradation and despair for a few of you that jmeadows and blondviolinist so generously offered to me.
Birdreader
I hope you feel better soon. Of course you had your knitting. It can be an ice breaker, with some curious person coming over to be interested in what you are making. (We shy people are absolutely not hiding behind handiwork – of course not!)
Well—are you certain it is shyness? Shyness has the implication that you can’t talk, that your mind goes blank or you’re overwhelmed or something. Maybe you just don’t want to talk, maybe you don’t want to be in this situation, whatever it is, and knitting is a way of preventing you from doing something you might regret later, like throwing a chair through the window and running away.** Most social occasions make me uncomfortable and I’m mostly bad at them, but it’s more about being introverted and cranky with it.
Diane in MN
You were absolutely primed to be a knitter by ringing handbells. You HAVE TO COUNT if you’re a knitter, too. (You also have to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Knitters get plenty of arithmetical practice.)
I am not hyperventilating. I am not hyperventilating. I no longer fear and dread maths. I don’t. No.
. . . But I’ve told you, haven’t I, that the tower captain at my old tower—East Persnickety, a million years and a century ago—used to say that his wife picked up change ringing instantly because she was a lifelong committed*** knitter?
PamAdams
Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†)
I find that cats are equally helpful in an emergency such as this. During my own bout with the Martian Death Bug earlier this year, I was constantly surrounded by and/or covered in cats.
Oh, the Martian Death Bug? Maybe that’s what I have? NOBODY SHOULD FEEL THIS CRUMMY. ESPECIALLY NOT DAY AFTER DAY. Oh, and let’s have a little sideswipe at ‘the wisdom of the body’, okay? I love homeopathy, and I do think it keeps me on the road—and, for example, is the reason why hellhounds are still being hurtled right now and I’m not in an oxygen tent at the local hospital—but there are times when the la-la-la aspects do get to me a little, and now is one of them. So, in the depths of my illness, what does the wisdom of my particular body declare? Chiefly that it craves strong black tea and champagne†, and it doesn’t want ANY FOOD AT ALL.†† And if I attempt to remonstrate with it, it turns nasty. Oh, and ‘if you feed a cold you will have to starve a fever’? Bulltiddly. Or maybe this depends on what stage of life and/or immune system you are. But I have to eat. Aside from being dragged out behind a brace of hellhounds twice a day.
† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.
On the other hand, they do make adequate substitutes for the electric blanket……
It’s the self-motivating factor I find problematic. This includes the bizarre hierarchical struggles to do with Contact with the Hellgoddess. The last generation got this sorted pretty well immediately. These guys are still at it after (almost) six years.
. . . . Is it late enough? Can I go back to bed yet?
Ajlr
|
I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3 |
I’m more of a Radio 4 addict – sleep comes peacefully after listening to the Shipping Forecast.
That’s it! I need an endless loop of the Shipping Forecast!
* * *
* Who? What?
** Not an option the other night. In the first place we were in the undercroft, and in the second place, Niall was my ride home. I wasn’t going to make seven leagues on foot, thank you very much, especially not this week.
*** No remarks please
† Cider, prosecco, whatever. Alcohol with bubbles. But it needs to be alcohol. Fizzy water is inadequate. And my wise body wants more than its two units.
†† Not even chocolate. I am truly not myself.
Placeholder
Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah SICK. Blah. SICK.
I’m actually better—sort of—but not all that much, and after hurtling hellhounds twice and doing some work, now by evening blog time I’m pretty much cole slaw again.* Not being able to breathe really takes it out of you. And I have a cough to frighten small children. Hell, it frightens me. I have to stop and lean against a wall, or a hellhound, if that’s what’s available. I’m also at the my-nose-has-been-running-for-so-long stage that smiling makes the entire centre of my face crack painfully. My ears and forehead throb. My stomach doesn’t want to know about food. Since I realised last night was going to be grim I left the radio on—Peter sleeps with the radio on pretty much every night which I am sure has a detrimental effect on the quality of his sleep but we won’t get into that here but I close the book and turn the light and the radio off in the same habitual gesture. Last night I left the radio on and it was comforting in the dark unpleasant hours.** And then—I can’t remember if it was at 6 or 7 o’clock—it suddenly got all chatty. I am an obsessive listener to Radio 3, which is classical, with a few unappreciated-by-me forays into jazz, and they don’t do the in your face DJ thing on classical stations. But they can get fatuous*** and they can certainly get garrulous. And apparently the given wisdom is that people staggering around getting ready for their office jobs want chat. Uggh. People late (even for them) in bed with demonic head/upper respiratory colds do not want chat. Blah. Sick.
It took me three tries to get out of bed at all and then I only remained upright long enough to shiver downstairs and let poor patient hellhounds out of their crate. Then I went back to bed (which was popular with hellhounds†). It was after noon by the time I managed to make and drink my first cup of perilously strong tea . . . gods. It’s PERFECT gardening weather†† and I’m too wasted to take advantage. My fritillaries are blooming away like anything, my robin is still sitting on her nest and my new roses came three days ago and I haven’t been up to anything but ripping the packages open and making sure the roots are damp. Today I at least got them heeled in and roses will last a surprisingly long while merely heeled in . . . ahem . . . although planting them would be preferable.
Blah. Sick. Blah.
I’m also reading another perfect book for low lurgified distraction—Patricia C Wrede’s A MATTER OF MAGIC, which many if not most of you know since many (if not most) of you have recommended it.††† And now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’ll go lie down again and read some more of it.‡ Well, no, first I’m going to go back to the cottage and bring the frelling sweet peas indoors again.
Blah blah blah blah SICK blah blah blah blah blah STILL FRELLING THRICE BLASTED SICK BLAH.
* * *
* And I’m sure my mayonnaise has gone off.
** I can’t believe the timing of my electric blanket going phut. I’d managed to buy a new one before the lurgy prostrated me . . . but I presently haven’t got the energy to spare to rip the bed apart^ and put the freller on.
^ It’s an under-your-bottom-sheet one, which seems to be standard over here, and what I’ve got used to.
*** As during the week of non-stop, all Schubert all the time, which is finally over. I love a lot of Schubert, and Schubert lieder make me want to get to German sooner with Nadia^, but not continuously, relentlessly, day after day after day after frelling day.
^ Although this is a classic case of, we have Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, so why? Stick to Jingle Bells, honey.
† Oh reckless dog owner beware of precedent.
†† Except for the fact that we’re having ANOTHER FROST TONIGHT and since I didn’t know that earlier everything at the cottage is still outdoors . . . but in fact I probably will get home earlier than usual tonight. Like . . . maybe now.
††† For any of you who read the originals, it’s a one-volume of Mairelon the Magician and The Magician’s Ward.
‡ But may I just say that it amuses me that yesterday’s blog, preoccupied as it was with not only handbells but the miseries of illness, roused comments about what on the forum? Knitting. Most of you remembered to say off handedly ‘oh, hope you feel better soon!’ but clearly your focus was on the knitting.