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Skylarks
The Skylark
by John Clare
The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o’er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.
This is the third year in early spring that I’ve said to myself, the day I hear my first skylark I’m going to hang Clare’s* poem on the blog.** And then I forget. It’s a long time from morning hurtle—when we’re out somewhere we might hear skylarks—to the middle of the night when I’m squeezing the last remnants of semi-coherent thought out of my brain for a blog entry. I’m remembering this year, finally, perhaps because it’s so late—usually I start hearing skylarks in February. Apparently they haven’t liked this winter any better than us humans and hellhounds. I hope the extravagant cold has merely stopped them singing and that the local countryside is not dotted this spring with unmarked skylark graves. Skylarks are endangered, but not around here; we’re teeming with the things. I hope we’re still teeming with the things. I love them. Love, love, love, love, love. I can be in the blackest, bleakest mood, stomping grimly after hellhounds because hellhounds must be hurtled, and . . . for the duration of a skylark’s song I am the world’s greatest living writer, the Dalai Lama, the Archangel Michaela, and the inventor of Green & Black’s mint dark chocolate, all rolled up into one. It’s a thrilling sensation. It’s a thrilling song.
There are plenty of recordings of skylarks on the web, but I’m not even bothering with a link. They don’t sound like much, recorded. Oh, you can tell it’s probably an exciting noise—but it isn’t exciting when it’s tinging out of a computer at you. It’s like the difference between a poster of [insert name of chosen iconic heartthrob here***] and Zaphod Beeblebrox† himself. WOW.†† I like to say, grandly, that I’ll take skylarks over nightingales any day . . . but I’ve never heard a nightingale live.††† And I’m happy with my skylarks.
And I’m glad finally to have heard one this year. Except when I’m complaining about the weather I like the middle of March, because the days are suddenly as if impelled by rocket launchers getting longer—it’s about this time of year I always really notice that they’re getting longer. We had sunlight this morning too so hellhounds and I had a delicious hurtle, accompanied by a skylark who is apparently ready at last to set up housekeeping.
I had read very little John Clare before I moved over here; he’s one of those slightly obscure English English writers who [cheesy generalisation alert] while you may have admired them in a semi-engaged sort of way‡ suddenly make profound and exhilarating sense when you’re standing on English ground viewing English landscape. And, if you’re very lucky, listening to English skylarks. There’s a solidity, a reality, to Clare’s skylark that appeals to me—the song is the thing, but what produces it is a little brown dust-spot with ‘happy wings’—I like the happy wings. I also like the hare ‘like some brown clod the harrows failed to break’—which nests on the ground among those clods. None of the aerial high jinks of swallows, say; any metaphor you want to hang on a skylark has to include the low nest in the corn.
And my low nest among the corn at present is the frelling proofs of PEGASUS.‡‡ See you tomorrow.
* * *
* No, not frelling Shelley and frelling Shelley’s very famous skylark. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/ode_to_a_skylark.htm
I think frelling Shelley is a big washy self-regarding pain in the behind. Sure he was talented. He wasn’t as talented as he thought he was and gods does he go on.^ He’d’ve been scary if he’d lived in the computer age, when everyone goes on too much.^^
^ HAVE YOU EVER READ ADONAIS? CHEEZUM ZORK.+ GAH. ETC.
+ Here speaketh the Phi Beta Kappa English lit major.
^^ Ahem.
** There are, I’m sure, plenty of copies of it on the web, but I’ve typed this one in so it’s here.
*** No, I’m not being coy. I don’t seem to get crushes on photogenic celebrities any more.^
^ I keep telling you old is better. Although maybe you enjoy your overheated fantasies more than I ever did. This may be a downside to having this vivid an imagination: coming back to ordinary reality always felt like waking up to discover I was a liver fluke. The better I’ve got at channelling this stuff into stories the happier I’ve become.
Although this does bring up a sensitive topic. I don’t like graphic on the page—I have a number of rants inappropriate for these (mostly) clean family pages on the subject of Bad Silly Literary Sex—and I’m damned if I’m going to write it. I think the best steam is produced in pressure cookers with the lids on.
† Oh come on you Windows programmers. You’re giving me a jagged red underline for Zaphod Beeblebrox?
†† Although in Zaphod’s case, probably not a good wow.
††† Peter says we ought to have nightingales around here, that it’s the right habitat. They don’t think so.
‡ For at least having the decency not to be William Wordsworth^
^ Yes. Another of my unspeakable prejudices. The English department at Bowdoin College and I really did not get on at all well. Even Peter has trouble with my attitude toward Wordsworth. Another of these fatuous spoilt self-regarding blokes who thinks that golden daffodils shine out of his backside.
‡‡ Not feeling too archangelish at the moment.
Aggle redux, etc
What I haven’t been telling you is that the ungleblarging ME is back. Sunday night I was thinking, mmphf, maybe I’ve overdone it a little* . . . and then Monday was a wipe.** Bad. Really bad. Big major ick and bleeurgh which is the sound you make when you pour floppy and gasping off your chair.*** Sigh. I spent all day Monday and this morning trying to convince myself to cancel my voice lesson this afternoon . . . and about noon-thirty today, having just tottered back in from a rather abbreviated hellhound hurtle, I was fishing my RaspBerry out of my pocket and perversely hoping that I hadn’t got round to putting Blondel’s phone number in it because then it would be on One of Those Little Pieces of Paper . . . somewhere. And then, rats, there it was, on the RaspBerry. I stood there (possibly swaying a little) and thought, but I don’t want to cancel. Supposing I can manage to focus my eyes to drive that far. And besides, it’s now less than three hours off and unless the house is burning down or I’m in surgery I don’t think I can cancel this late.
And . . . well, frankly, the ME was a good excuse. A desperately needed good excuse. Remember I said last week that I thought maybe that the hard work had just begun with He Was Despised? True. Geezum crow, all that you-against-your-accompaniment thing, as if you’re two different things, it was a disaster. First few run-throughs we hit the ‘he was despised’, ‘and rejected’, where the singer has to come in all alone, not to mention the on the right note aspect of the situation . . . I just stood there. Silent as a peak in Darien.† Siiiigh. And when I did manage to make some noise . . . it would have been better if I hadn’t. Well, I had told him I have a slight paralytic stage fright problem. And I’ve told you I have no voice worth developing—this is just to find out about singing from the inside, so I can write better songs. I shouldn’t be allowed to come in alone without a nice supportive drowning-out-type accompaniment. SIGH. And I had worked on it this week, knowing that I was finding it difficult.
Next week has to be better . . . doesn’t it? ††
* * *
* I even got out in the garden this weekend, hauling out decrepit annuals and stuffing spring bulbs everywhere.
** I’m sure the adrenaline spike caused by the Attack of the Fifty-Foot Spider didn’t help, but the ME was already on the train to Hampshire.
Baybelletrist wrote:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH*ahem*
Robin, that’s not NICE. Springing (and I do mean springing) a picture like that on a poor unsuspecting reader. I might suspect you of trying to give me heart failure, but I know you’re not that kind of Hellgoddess.
Well, what do you think seeing it ALL SPREAD OUT ON MY WALL DID FOR ME? At least it’s in a glass! And there’s an off switch on your computer!
Black bear wrote:
Is this your friend, Robin? http://www.uksafari.com/housespiders.htm
Ewwwwwww. Yes. The thing I find the most horrifying however is that this is . . . the common house spider?? You mean I could find one of these things AGAIN some day? . . . Maybe my roots in southern England aren’t quite as deep as I thought. Antarctica. Antarctica doesn’t have a lot of spiders. Although you really can’t put them outdoors there if you find one indoors with you. . . .
I notice that it says these spiders are more active in autumn, as this is mating season. I’d bet you had a gentleman spider there out looking for a girlfriend…
Well, I’ve always learnt that the female spiders are bigger . . . AND IF THIS IS A SMALL MALE I’M MOVING TO ANTARCTICA. TONIGHT.
I’m not sure I believe the business about house spiders dying if you toss them out, though I’ve heard that also; the main species of indoor spiders we have around here I also see in sheltered areas around the edges of my house (particularly in my canoe.) I usually compromise by throwing them onto my back porch.
I figure if geraniums and snapdragons can survive (sometimes) snuggled up against the outer cottage wall facing (west) into the walled garden, so can house spiders. After all, a house spider can move around and find the coziest spot. To which it’s welcome. Outdoors.
Bookgal71
Well, I’m from Melbourne and I think your attitude to Wolf spiders is perfectly rational!
Oh good.
In fact, my rules for spiders (other than daddy long legs and other weeny harmless things) boils down to if you come inside the house, you are declaring your desire not to live any longer.
I am philosophically compelled to try the glass and cardboard approach. But you know aside from the fact that we are all brothers and sisters in the unity of the universe . . . I don’t want to squish something that large. I’d have to frelling repaint the entire frelling wall.
The large hairy ones (mostly huntsman round here but sometimes other things) give me the heeby jeebys and many of the others are capable of nasty bites and there’s no way I’d be brave enough to do the glass/cardboard route. Plus huntsman JUMP
. . . and there you have my ultimate worst horror about Things with Too Many Legs. Some of them JUMP. AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH. I’m under the impression that wolf spiders jump. I gave those sitting room curtains a very wide berth. But really . . . the speed at which most of these things scuttle is quite horrible enough. And when THEIR LEGS ARE LONGER THAN YOURS ARE. . . .
(usually towards the poor hapless person attempting to catch them…!!) I’m fine with mice and rats
I seriously do not do rats
and snakes and all other general forms of creepy crawlies so I allow myself one category of semi-phobia. In the interests of fairness, I did announce my policy to the backyard when I moved in and if I spot one outside, I remind it in firm tones *g*. So far it’s worked.
I tried telling the mice eating my flower bulbs to piss off and it didn’t work. Snarky little frellers. So now it’s the netting. And I’m going to try traps in empty cardboard loo-rolls this year too. I could probably come around to spiders bigger than my hand if they’d promise to eat some mice.
Diane from MN
I’m not a good eco-greenie either: I see no excuse for houseflies or mosquitoes or slugs or cockroaches.
Quite right, too. And don’t forget ticks and fleas . . .
And greenfly/aphis/aphids. And whitefly in your greenhouse. And those serried ranks of curly caterpillars that eat your rose leaves in late summer. Yes.
Audrey Falconer
I don’t mind the odd big spider
Do you hire out with a glass and a piece of cardboard? Have you thought of relocating to southern England?
(and yes, they are big here in Melbourne!) in the house and I ignore them, but my husband (who comes from Brisbane) objects to them and imposes a “top two feet of the house” rule on them. If they come within reach (we have 10 foot ceilings) they’re for the glass and paper and outside!
They JUMP. They LET THEMSELVES DOWN ON THEIR WEB THREADS. They SCAMPER DOWN WALLS. I’m willing to put up with two foot of lush and superabundant spider webs at the top of a twenty-foot bell tower ringing chamber—or I’m willing to put up with it just until the day that I get a grapefruit-sized spider running down my bell rope at me—but I’m not welcoming anything on my ceilings.
Mrs Redboots
Spiders really don’t worry me
Feh. One of us is a different species.
- oddly, I prefer those ones with the long legs that look a bit like daddy-long-legses
I agree . . . BUT THERE ARE LIMITS. Daddy long legs do NOT have legs (almost) as thick as your fingers WITH SPIKY GOTH HAIR ALL OVER THEM.
to the ones with thick furry bodies & legs,
One of my awful little secrets is that I think tarantulas . . . are kind of cute. I’m not sure this would withstand meeting one however. Almost certainly not on my upstairs hall wall at mmph o’clock in the wee small morning.
but I was brought up to believe that spiders were Nice People
I was brought up to Kill on Sight and then I started thinking, you know, wait a minute, aren’t we all sisters and brothers, blah blah blah (except houseflies, mosquitos, slugs, greenfly, ticks and fleas . . . ). Practical response was a lot easier when it was just Kill on Sight.
and definitely of the race that knows Joseph…. although I do put them outside when I find them in the bath.
I’ve told you, haven’t I, that I leave my bath mat at an angle, so spiders who fall in the bath can find their own way out? I have to rescue them from the sink occasionally however.
I gather they are more numerous than usual this autumn, also daddy-long-legses
This thought didn’t bother me quite so much till Sunday night.
AJLR
Could have been this one?
NB Anyone of a nervous disposition, or arachnophobic, should probably avoid clicking the link.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH. Yes, that’s definitely my . . . friend. It doesn’t seem to say they bite . . . Trying hard to find a bright side to look on. . . . I am so totally freaked out that this is the common house spider.
Black Bear, who obviously likes spiders way too much, posts again:
Now, those who hate spiders generally shouldn’t click this link either–but in trying to find a species name last night, I came across a marvelous video of a male jumping spider trying to woo his lady friend. Jumping spiders are already the charmers of the spider world, in my mind… and this little guy is just trying so hard to impress her! But she is unmoved by his prowess. If you do watch it, turn your sound on, as the little buzzing noises he’s making are pretty hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D92AUXhYZ0M
It’s an ak-ak! It’s anti-aircraft fire! It’s little teeny anti-aircraft fire! So now we know where the military scientists came up with the idea!
*** Hellhounds say, Sofa? Sofa?
† I know I’m misquoting. It’s a joke. Mountains rarely sing Handel.
†† Except that next week it’ll be two days before PEGASUS due date. I should probably start a countdown. . . .
AGGLEBLAGGLEDORGLE* URK! Also GALVINIZED BLISTERING EEEEEEK!**
Or, there are Serious Disadvantages to Living in a Separate House from Your Husband, husbands being made for dealing with Certain Things. Look at what I found waiting for me at the cottage last night:
[insert more strong language HERE. Blah! Arrrgh! YAAAAAH!]
Peter always says ‘oh, poor thing’ and picks it up gently in his handkerchief. EEEEEEEE. I’m not a true arachnophobe; mostly I pursue a policy of live and let live.*** And I think I told you I had an ethical crisis when I found out—not all that long ago, given my age and my fond belief that I pay attention to crittery things: while we were still in the old house, AKA Spiderhaven—that house spiders die if you put them outdoors. Oh gods. Okay, okay, I can stand a few indoor spiders.† BUT THERE ARE LIMITS. This one is clearly and definitively over the limit.††
I don’t think she was too happy to see me either. She was spread-eagled—and I mean eagle—on the upstairs hall wall, probably screaming in a little high beyond-human-ear-range, especially middle-aged-human-ear-range spider voice: Turn that light off! She was sufficiently dazzled that I had time to race downstairs and grab a glass and race back upstairs again, slap it over her—which EWWWWWWWW required convincing her to DRAW HER LEGS IN A LITTLE EWWWWWWWW—and then stand there, sweating and panting and thinking, uhh, I forgot the piece of cardboard.††† Gaaah. Fortunately there were two (or possibly three) empty cardboard boxes sitting on the stair-ladder to the attic‡ at my elbow (ow). I will leave the details of ripping a flap off one of them with one hand, two feet, and some teeth to your imaginations.‡‡ We got there in the end.
She was probably further traumatised by the camera flash going off in her face. I hope it will give her a dislike of the cottage.‡‡‡
And then I dumped her out the window. And closed all the windows on that side of the house.
And it was cold last night. I am a bad person. But just in case you’ve forgotten since the top of the page, this is what she looked like.§ Look at those hairy legs! Look at those mandibles! 
Do you really want this hanging down from the canopy of your four poster some morning as you’re groping for glasses/radio/kitchen timer§§/alarm clock/brain? I don’t think so.
* * *
* Peter wishes me to point out that words like ‘ungleblarg’, ‘dranglefab’, and ‘aggleblaggledorgle’ are clearly derived from the Dickinson vernacular.^ This is true. They are directly inspired, not to say stolen, from the sort of thing Peter says when he drops something or trips over something or is otherwise confounded and discomposed by the material world. Some of us just swear.
^ The urk is mine.
** It is a source of continuing sorrow and frustration to me that Wordpress titles won’t go bold or italic.
*** And one of this summer’s peak experiences—have I told you this already?—was whapping a housefly midair—sometimes you can knock one down long enough this way to finish the job—and having it sail straight into a spider’s web and stick there, buzzing furiously. The spider got it. Yaay. I’m not a good eco-greenie either: I see no excuse for houseflies or mosquitoes or slugs or cockroaches. Most things I’m willing to negotiate with/about.
† Especially if they catch houseflies, even if this does result in having to clean the corners of remarkably adherent remains of dinner and spider effluvia.
†† I’ve got a UK things-with-too-many-legs guide somewhere but I can’t find it. So I’ve been cruising the web^ hoping to find a good UK spider ID page and what I find instead is a cheery site saying, hey, we bet you think that you’re safe in the UK. Wrong. There are all kinds of UK spiders that would loooove to sink their fangs into your flesh! Let us tell you about them!
^ Shudder
††† And before anyone, for example, from Australia, wants to laugh condescendingly and send me some links to Australian spiders . . . I don’t live in Australia! The wolf spider that lived in the sitting-room curtains^ of the house we were staying in when we were in Melbourne “oh don’t worry, just leave it alone” cured me of ANY lingering romantic feelings I might have had about further exploring the territory that produced Elyne Mitchell!^^
^ I know I’ve told you this story before. I will tell you again too. There are certain milestones in my life you’re just going to have to get used to seeing here occasionally. If you say Melbourne to me I will still say kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, dingoes, Healesville+, mangoes++, bougainvillea, eucalyptus, wolf spider in the sitting-room curtains.
+ http://www.zoo.org.au/HealesvilleSanctuary Nice bats too. Note: I am not a koala fan.
++ The memory of fresh mangoes almost overcomes the memory of the wolf spider. Almost.
^^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyne_Mitchell I spent a sizable proportion of my preteens being Kunama, Daughter of the Silver Brumby.+
Elyne Mitchell probably had whole packs of wolf spiders in her sitting-room curtains. She wouldn’t have minded. I am a wuss.
+ I’ve probably told you this before too. See above.
††† You all know the glass-tumbler-over, piece-of-cardboard-under method of dealing with unwanted wildlife, yes?
‡ As there often are. I have a love-hate thing with cardboard boxes. When you need one, you never have one in the right size. This leads to hoarding behaviour.^ I had managed to break myself of this addiction when we moved into two little houses but Third House’s attic is affecting me like offering Green & Black’s to a someone on a slimming diet. No, no! The attic is for backlist! —Oh, I’m sure there’s room for just a feeewww cardboard boxes!
^ In the old house we had an entire attic devoted to my cardboard box collection. No, really. But we did have five attics.
‡‡ Moments like these I get a little wistful about Lassie. I’m sure she/he knew how to rip cardboard flaps off boxes if Timmy asked her/him to. Hellhounds say, What do you want cardboard for? She’s no fun to chase in a glass!
‡‡‡ Er. Not the kind of dislike that results in her and her sixteen Godzilla-sized friends coming back for a rematch.
§ I had two service rings yesterday, the second one for the harvest festival at Old Eden. While we were waiting for our last stragglers we were looking up at the ceiling, as we often do at Old Eden, where the cobwebs are thick and luxurious—and well beyond the reach of anyone but a tall person on a ladder with a broom-handled duster, and life is short. Vicky was saying that it has been a particularly good summer for spiders, and I was nodding sagely. . . .
§§ Best alarm clock I’ve ever had. Except I occasionally have a little difficulty with the adding and subtracting thing. Let me see, six hours from now would be. . . .
Mamee mamee oo oo oo
No, I haven’t lost my mind.* It’s a vocal exercise. Today was my first voice lesson in—eep—three weeks. Life has kept getting in the way.** And for a variety of reasons, including that it’s been three weeks since my last lesson*** and I’ve only just started voice lessons and I have no clue, I was expecting it to be kind of a disaster. Blondel would be very nice about it, because he’s a nice young man, but it was going to be bad.
Starting with the fact that I got to bed at 4:30 am this morning.†
No, sadly, I was not boiling on in a hot haze of creativity and miraculously finishing the third draft of PEGASUS while the last shadows of the 31st of August still lay in the unswept corners††.
There was a wasp. And not just a wasp, but a wasp of wasps, a titan of wasps, a veritable leviathan of wasps, with a buzz that shook the floor. You could see the light fixture tremble in its socket as this behemoth bashed against it. It was not a lot smaller than my thumb, and no, I am not exaggerating. It’s the biggest frelling wasp I’ve ever seen. Its head was as big as my thumbnail, if a little more triangular, and when it turned its head and looked at me every cheap horror movie I’ve ever seen ††† rose gibbering out of my memory and mocked me.
I tried locking it up in the bathroom with the light out, the window open, and the kitchen-door-into-the-garden light on. I tried this for a long time. I’d close the door and go . . . pay a few bills. Renew my subscriptions to The Society of Homeopaths and the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths. Donate to a few more charities.‡ Rub upside-down hellhound tummies.
Check bathroom.
It’s still there. It’s nesting among my clean sheets.
Open window wider. Go back to office. Reread the currently most salient bits of FIND YOUR VOICE‡‡. Whimper.
Check bathroom.
It’s still there.
I finally killed it. I didn’t want to kill it, both because I don’t like killing things and because it frelling terrified me. And I had a godsawful time doing the killing, trying to get anything like a decent shot at it—the cottage is not set up for getting decent shots with a flyswatter at zooming fiends, especially zooming fiends more realistically faced with a shotgun—whining with fear and shaking with adrenaline: but there was no way I was going to sleep with that thing in the house.
So I rolled out of bed this morning very late, and stupid with the aftereffects of murder and epinephrine—and needing to get my soggy, lumpy self going because I had a voice lesson in a few hours. The omens were not good.
And then sometimes you just totally luck out. Today was one of my days for lucking out. In the first place I was just happy to see Blondel: ah yes, the deranged young gentleman who thinks he can teach me to sing. What larks. So to speak. But I’d got myself in a no-no-I-can’t-do-it posture of helplessness and despair about correct breathing during the last three weeks, and in hindsight my salvation, I think, is that I more or less said ‘okay, can’t do it, fine, just get on with it’. I can do my funny exercises‡‡‡, which I have been doing, which are mostly various scales on various vowel sounds, and I can stop to breathe at the end of each scale, and I can learn the melody of my songs enough that—eventually—the melody will be the one thing I don’t have to think about when I’m trying to sing the wretched things.
I can also, in a mwa ha ha ha ha two for the price of one way, get on with my transcriptions. Since I last saw Blondel I’ve transposed Beethoven’s ‘The Miller of Dee’ and ‘The Pulse of an Irishman’ down a few steps to make them more easily in my range. I didn’t have the top notes for either one and it also just seems wasteful to have all these notes at the other end and never use them. Transposing probably looks like a mindless, mechanical exercise, and for someone who knows what they’re doing it probably is. It isn’t to me. In the first place I have a messy sort of mind, and the idea of going through an entire song and counting down two or five steps for every note and writing that down sounds paralytically boring. So I just gave myself a first note and made it sound like the original only lower, and wrote that down. I found it really made me look at the music, what the composer is doing and how he’s put it together,§ and the mwa ha ha ha ha part is that I figure I can use this with Oisin as well as Blondel. But I’m already scuppered: having flourished my manuscript paper at Blondel today he said, hey, that’s great, well done, bring me the piano accompaniment next week. Uh. Well, I was planning to do a piano accompaniment: but I was planning on simplifying it quite a lot. For me. Blondel is a real pianist. As well as a singer. Frell.§§
Even my breathing is better! And I have no idea why! I murdered§§§ Sebben Crudele so much less savagely this week that Blondel was actually trying to convince me to add a little expression. One more thing to remember. Go away. But I wasn’t getting dizzy with hyperventilation at the end of every phrase this week, which was giving Blondel ideas.¤ I think what has happened is the ‘okay, you can’t do it, just get on with it’ thing of merely singing has been getting me used to singing. I sang—well, I was making noise¤¤—pretty steadily for the entire hour, and I am not hoarse, and I am not going to have to take the next day or two off. I also guess that that year of voice lessons I took back at the dawn of time left one or two permanent traces, and my long-disused singing voice is saying ‘oh—yeah—actually we can do this’. Now, I suspect, is when the real work begins.
We finished with a pass through Panis Angelicus, which did not, I admit, go as well as Sebben Crudele had: it felt weirdly high, and the notes kept not being quite where I expected them to be, which meant I totally blew the timing of the last page, which looks straightforward and isn’t. I thought oh well, never mind, I’m getting tired, it’s been a pretty relentless hour. And then Blondel noticed that he hadn’t flipped the automatic-transposition switch on his fancy electric piano back off again—his Sebben Crudele is lower than mine—so the Panis Angelicus he was playing was higher than I was used to, and the notes were not quite where I was expecting them to be. . . .
Same time, same station, next week. Excelsior, and all that.
* * *
* Um. I think I haven’t lost my mind. I don’t guarantee it.
** His life! Not my life! I don’t have a life! I’m too busy doing stuff!
*** And now that term has started, Blondel says, he will be as steady and reliable as Renee Fleming hitting a high C.
† Well. Maybe 4:27.
†† Unswept Corners a Speciality.
††† I only watch cheap ones. The expensive ones are too scary.
‡ Mostly I subscribe to charities because it’s easier. But there are two or three that I’ve never quite signed on for who have hit on the wheeze of sending you address labels and saying ‘this is to thank you . . . blah blah blah’. If, in fact, I use their dranglefabbing address labels^, I send them a donation, although I disapprove in principle of printing all those address labels on spec.
^ If they spell my name right and have some decorative plant icon, preferably a rose
‡‡ by Jo Thompson, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Find-Your-Voice-Self-Help-Singers/dp/1904411258/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251839443&sr=8-1
‡‡‡ I thought mamee mamee oo oo oo was silly enough—the ‘oo oo oo’ are supposed to be done with sharp little kicks from your belly muscles, which of course I haven’t got and can’t do. I had managed, partially in self-defense I think, to forget how this exercise goes, or is supposed to go, and Blondel kindly reminded me today, and, no doubt to discourage me from further wriggling out of things by forgetting, gave me an even sillier exercise. You stick your tongue out as far as it will go and then try and talk, or rather sing: ma-na-la-va: up the scale and down again. Supposedly this is going to make your consonants crisper, when you fold your embarrassed and exhausted tongue back in your mouth again. Yes. And I’m Maria Callas.
§ Clever bloke, that Beethoven
§§ Meanwhile, because getting tangled up in your own machinations is always amusing, Blondel was playing the scales for me to sing today, and after a while he stopped. I had told him that my voice just shuts down between one half step and the next, and it hadn’t yet, so I looked at him and he said, I don’t think you need to go any higher, and tapped the note we’d got to . . . which was the top note of the Miller of Dee. Oh. Another object lesson in how expecting yourself to fail is a self-fulfilling prophesy. I’ve been playing those scales the last three weeks and topping out several notes lower.
§§§ There seems to be an awful lot of blood and violence in this entry
¤ This is the problem with all real teachers. They keep having ideas.
¤¤ This is something else about teachers that fascinates me: they have to be able to ‘hear’ something other than what’s being produced or they’d run screaming to the nearest job agency and ask for something easier like finding the equation for cold fusion or a solution to global warming. The hearing is literal in the case of a voice teacher: I sound like a cat being strangled, but Blondel, who, as I say, has a gorgeous voice himself, is hearing that I’m improving.
The Thirty-First of August
Ratbags.
I was going to have PEGASUS finished by the 31st of August. Last spring when I was floundering in several million words* and had this fabulous life-saving lightning flash of creative problem-solving and decided to whack it in two and have PEGASUS I and PEGASUS IT’S NOT REALLY A SEQUEL, IT’S THE REST OF THE SAME STORY, for about six hours I knew all was well. I could get PEGASUS MOCK I** done by the end of the summer, no problem.***
And then the doubts started. There was quite a little flock of the frellers† by, oh, say, the beginning of June.
By July I was saying, okay, I can get through the third draft by the end of August, and while it would have been nice if that was it, it isn’t, and I’ll just have to print it out and sit down with the red pen, the scissors, the yellow legal pads, and the disbelieving computers sniggering in the background. I can do this. Gods know I’ve done it before.
But I’m not there either. I’m near the end of the third draft. I am still going to get it done in time to turn it in this autumn. I have a PhD in catastrophic behindness. I got a First in not turning things in. I know what it looks like. This isn’t it.
But it is the 31st of August, and I’m not through with the third draft of PEGASUS ONE.
Ratbags.††
* * *
* Nearly. Well, not as nearly as Patrick Rothfuss. http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/2009/02/concerning-release-of-book-two.html ^
Especially the ‘my book is long’ part about halfway down. The part that says NAME OF THE WIND is over 250,000 words^^ and the next one is likely to go over 300,000. The best-selling part of Rothfuss’ life is pretty appealing^^^ but juggling over 300,000 words all at the same time? Not to mention remembering what the hell you did in the first over 250,000?^^^^ Nope. No thank you. Uh-uh. In fact, ewwww.
I also, because Worry Is My Middle Name#, worry about Mr Rothfuss. I hope he’s happy juggling his over 300,000 words. Because I have spent most of my professional career behind on deadlines, and while this is a lifestyle you learn to live with like you learn to live with ME or menopause or hellhounds because here you are, you are not necessarily having a good time.## And I notice that that same link from the 26th of February is still answering the book-two question on the 31st of August.
^ I haven’t quite bookmarked this page but I can find it with remarkable grace and aplomb. (You go to his web site, click on the FAQ, and click on the first question, When is volume two out, and click on the blog entry. Just in case you want to know.) Every couple of months or so I find I have to go look at ‘Kindly die screaming in a fire. Your tears are delicious to me’. For some reason.
Have I mentioned that I’ve had several ‘We think you should write a sequel to SUNSHINE/are you going to write a sequel to SUNSHINE/why haven’t you written a sequel to SUNSHINE there’s all this stuff you left out’ emails over this long holiday weekend just to brighten my day and make me smiling and happy and relaxed and even readier than usual to deal with the droves of idiots and their hysterical off-lead dogs and their hysterical off-lead children+ that even half-cooperative-weather bank-holiday weekends bring out of the woodwork? No? Well, I have now.++
I did however, during a desk-escape with hellhounds, have a nice chat with another local two-legged dog adjunct, a tiny little not-really-old-she’s-probably-my-age lady, out walking her infinitesimal terrier, who is also scared silly of our local swan population. She has reason: a good-sized swan could probably pick her up and fly away with her. And the terrier. It would take two or three swans working in an unswanlike posse to carry me away+++ but I worry about them nailing a hellhound, since hellhounds are necessarily on short lead as we pass any wildlife, and they wouldn’t be able to dodge. This is a bad time of year for live-and-let-live, it’s-their-river-too with swans: this summer’s new generation is almost as big as mum and dad but they’re still living at home, and they’re starting to practise their hissing and striking techniques. Eight swans all lined up on the riverbank coiling and uncoiling their long snaky necks and going hsssssssssss does not gladden the heart of the hellhound-hurtler.
Um . . . where was I. . . .
+ My favourites are the ones that run screaming up to your dogs and then jump up and down, still screaming, waving their hands in your dogs’ faces. WTF?
++ Today I also had one of those, Check your real-o-meter, Sophronia, I think we may have slipped out of our usual space-time continuum, emails, which requests me politely for a review copy of a book by someone I’ve never heard of. In the first place, no. In the second place, no. In the third place . . . no.
+++ They’d need an alliance with a couple of merrels to carry the hellhounds.
^^ Yes, I know. It takes up nearly as much space on my shelves as thirty-six volumes of collected Kipling.+
+ I said ‘nearly’
^^^ Now there’s a man who took his first royalty check and had steel braces put under his soon-to-be-backlist-bearing attic.
^^^^ He’s younger than I am. He may still have a functioning memory.
# Some people get good middle names. Some people have middle names like Trouble or Terror or Fabulous or Greatest. I get Worry.
## I am reminded of the Robbie Burns prayer that begins:
Some ha’e meat that canna eat,
And some nae meat that want it . . .
That would be menopausal me and the hellhounds.
** Ha ha.
*** I would even keep up with the garden this summer. Although I didn’t anticipate the voice lessons.
† Speaking of things that hiss and strike. And how fast the new generation grows.
†† Major news flash. Hellhounds ate their supper. With such an omen on such a significant day, can there be any doubt that a beautifully polished up, completed and ready-for-delivery PEGASUS I can be far behind?
