Author Archives: Autumn

Stuff

I am officially sick. Right on time, too; I have an audition in four days. Nasty headache, sore throat, coughs and sneezes, the whole cold package. I’ve been feeling increasingly off all weekend, last night I slept horribly, and I’m cranky. So I’m in bed with my laptop, and when I’m done here I’ll curl up with A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the rest of my pot of peppermint tea, and furry hot water bottles that purr.

Well, well, well – Chretien is going to take Kyoto to Parliament. About bloody time. HRH will be pleased – that was going to be his next rant. Along with building a big air-proof dome over the Kyoto-scorning US, he was saying something about short-term sacrifice on the part of companies to ensure a long-term benefit of saving the planet.

I printed out the sixty-five pages of the story that I’ve been working on, and I read it all at one go last night. It’s rather gratifying to see that things flow. I even found some lovely unintentional foreshadowing and dramatic irony that was unplanned but which works quite nicely. For things like that to happen I have to be in the right headspace, and evidently I’m occupying it on a regular basis. There are snags, and I need to smooth things out here and there, substitute other words, but all in all, I like it.

I mentioned that I’m reading Possession again. In only three chapters an innumerable amount of references to thesis-related concepts that I didn’t find while I was doing it have leapt out at me. I must have been so focused on the particular angle I was after that I filtered out these other ideas, which is good for what I was doing at the time, of course. Now, though, it makes me want to write another paper. Hmm. Maybe the use of research and the character of History in Byatt’s work. Angels & Insects would be perfect for that, both the title novella and its focus on natural history, and its sibling novella about mediums and reaching into the spirit world for news of past family and lovers. So would Virgin in the Garden, which is all about staging a Renaissance-related drama.

Uh-oh. Do I sense another project coming on?

I have been taken with the whim of attempting to publish something; perhaps I’ll focus on an academic periodical and see what happens.

The Luthier

After a semi-disastrous day that imploded around six o’clock, I managed to get my cello to the luthier last night, half an hour before they closed.

As soon as I walked in, I relaxed. Wilder & Davis is in an old townhouse on Rachel street, just a block west of St Denis. As I lifted the cello up the stone steps to the doorway, a woman in an apron enjoying the night air on her break smiled and said, “Bonsoir.” As the door closed I could hear, somewhere upstairs, a cello being played very slowly. To my left was the empty reception area, which has a lovely bay window and a fireplace; to my right was the workshop, wide open. “Bonsoir,” said a youngish luthier; “votre violoncelle?” I explained that I needed the bridge replaced and the fingerboard examined. He beckoned me into the workshop (into the workshop!) and motioned for me to take it out of the travelling case and lay it on the workbench while he cleared a space for it. We stood on either side of it as he squinted at the bridge (“Ah oui,” he said immediately. I wanted to apologise; I know I should have brought this in a couple of years ago, but I held my tongue) and then pulled out a level and moved it all over the fingerboard. “Vos cordes – ils brisent ou?” he asked. (Actually, he tried in very broken but quite earnest English: I had explained about the bridge and fingerboard in my mother tongue, since in my imploded mental state the French terms for “bridge” and “fingerboard” had completely escaped me. I insisted on speaking French after that initial mind-blank, though.) “Mes cordes ne brisent pas,” I explained, “c’est le vernis; ca s’enleve pendant que je joue, mes doigts se rendent tous noirs apres seulement quelques minutes.” “Je vais le nettoyer quand je remplace le pont,” he said after he’d grabbed a bottle of cleaning solution, then looked at the viola he’d been working on next to him. I have a funny feeling that when he goes to clean it he’ll get a swipe of black colour on his rag, but he’ll figure something out to stabilise the stain, I’m sure.

It was so peaceful. I felt like collapsing in the papasan chair by the plants in the front bay window and just closing my eyes. The whole place smells like orange oil, and wood; there’s no sense of the busy St Denis strip a few hundred metres away. He filled out a work order, looked at me anxiously and said, “Mercredi prochain, ca va?” “C’est parfait,” I said. Actually, I knew darn well that as soon as I didn’t have it I’d want to play it, so getting it back today would have been nice, but my husband has a whole three days off in a row because it’s Labour Day weekend, and I wouldn’t end up playing it anyway. So Wednesday is just fine. (I did, in fact, indulge in a pre-emptive strike against seperation anxiety in the form of a Mendelssohn trio yesterday. I love Opus 49 in D minor.)

The bonus: I get to go back next week. Hurrah!

Scheduling Minor Cello Surgery

I did something I haven’t done in a few weeks.

I walked past my cello, paused, and said, “I really should play something.” Before I could talk myself out of it, I sat down, pulled the cello towards me, picked up my bow, and just started playing whatever was on my music stand. It happened to be the second movement of a Breval sonata. When I’d done that, I flipped the page with the tip of my bow and started playing the next thing: the Prelude to the first Bach solo cello suite. The I played both Minuets from the same suite – with repeats.

Not bad. Not bad at all. Nice sound. I now have throbbing fingers, however.

Then I picked up the phone and called a luthier. I haven’t played my cello these past three weeks because the bridge is so badly warped that I’m afraid that it will slip and smash the belly of the instrument, turning a minor repair job into a major disaster. Not only can the luthier replace my bridge ($120 – eep), they can stabilise the black stain that’s wearing off the fingerboard and onto my fingers every session. (Ick.) This is a good thing, of course.

Naturally, however, now that I will be bringing the cello in for minor surgery, I’m getting all antsy. I just know I’ll want to play it while I don’t have it. I’m taking it in on Thursday afternoon, and I’m already wondering how much playing I can safely indulge in tomorrow without threatening the safety of the instrument.

He’ll Become George Clooney Or Something

So I finally saw Bridget Jones’s Diary last week, hard on the heels of reading the second book in the series, and discovered that the film was a blend of both books. I think what might have happened was that Helen Fielding, who co-authored the script (love it when they actually get the author to work on the film) was writing the second book while coming up with a couple of key scenes for the film, and ended up using similar versions in both movie and new book, never dreaming that a second film might be made.

Clicking on Bill’s link to Bridget Jones today, I discovered that they’re making a film based on the second book.

Er?

This should be interesting. How they’re going to top Colin Firth and Hugh Grant pounding each other and crashing through windows on a snowy street, I truly do not know.

The other wonderful bit of meta-fiction, Bridget’s obssession with Pride & Prejudice‘s Mr Darcy and Colin Firth, was by necessity disposed of in the first film, since, well Colin Firth was in it, providing fans of the book with a deliriously smug in-joke. (And heaven forbid we mention Jane Austen in a pop film. Pride and What? Good Lord, no, we might lose the audience!) The second book has Bridget actually interviewing Firth in Italy. However, and I quote (although I have cleaned up the spelling and the punctuation), Colin Firth has suggested that the scene in which Bridget interviews, er… Colin Firth may not appear in the sequel. Firth said in a recent interview, “He won’t be there, he’ll become George Clooney or something.” This may not have quite the same effect as the original way Fielding intended but since Firth is not in the scene maybe they’ll simply hope the audience doesn’t notice the remarkable resemblance.”

The statement made me laugh. Probably not for the right reasons, but I laughed.

Fun and Games

Yesterday we cleaned out the fridge. We do this out of self-defence periodically; not because we’ve run out of room, but because we don’t know what might be back there. We liberated a few Tupperware containers from bondage and discovered not one, but four bottles of wine that were open. This comes about as a result of people bringing wine over for parties and such, not finishing the bottles, and saying, “Hey, that wine in the fridge, it’s all yours,” as they leave. I forget it’s there until a time such as this.

“How many bottles of wine are in here?” my husband asked, peering into the depths.

“We should pour them all together in a pitcher,” I said. I was joking. But then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t. “We could mix them and blend them with 7-Up and have kind of a sangria,” I said. My husband looked at me oddly, but gave me the bottles of wine. I tasted each first to make sure it hadn’t soured; nope, the three whites were fine. The single red, however, was definitely past its prime. I wouldn’t even be able to cook with it. Down the sink it went while the husband went to buy 7-Up. I found a bottle of lime cordial in the fridge that had only an inch or so of cordial left; I poured that in as well, being minus the lemons and limes I like to put in mixes like this. And the whole thing tasted divine.

We made dinner, poured glasses of the mystery mix, and decided to play Junior Trivial Pursuit. Ordinarily this means it’s a quicker game than the adult edition. However, the edition of Junior Trivial Pursuit I own is the original version, dating back from 1984. (Go ahead. Count on your fingers. Yes, it’s perilously close to twenty.) This means it asks many questions based on contemporary pop culture like information about hockey leagues and now-defunct sports teams, and the question that stumped us both: what is the Sugar Crisp bear holding on the Sugar Crisp box? The box has since been redesigned, so it was more of a challenge that we’d anticipated. This is definitely a game we’ll have to pull out at a party, just to watch people rummage around their two-decade old store of history. It was terrific; a mix of a walk down memory lane, a high school reunion, and a realisation of how much the world has changed.

Hallowe’en 02

Operation Hallowe’en has begun.

Muah-hah-hah-hah!

I have cut the paper pattern out; I have cut jacquard pieces out for trim; I have dyed said jacquard pieces; I currently have another six meters of dyed fabric drip-drying in my bathtub. I have purchased Fimo and sparkly things and been successfully creative in that department as well.

The dryer downstairs is being used by someone who obviously does not comprehend how imperative it is that I dry those six meters of wet fabric RIGHT NOW so I can cut out more fabric and move on to the sewing. I’m on a roll, here. S/he is being most annoying.

I was worried about the dying process, but it was a beautiful success. What was once a medium blue is now a lovely ripply pewter grey, and the jacquard pattern shows up much better to boot. I’m now a dye convert. Now if I find a fabric that I love in a shade that’s not quite right, Dylon it is! None of that Tintex stuff; I’ve had such horrible results with that before. (It occurs to me that I have enough of the blue jacquard left to make a corset. A-ha! Do I leave it blue, or do I find a sage green dye? Must put that on the List Of Things To Think About.)

Onward, ever onward. Muah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

That Art Thing

So, my husband is an artist.

This may come as a surpise to those of you who have known him only as Unemployed or Terraforming Engineer (aka landscaper). It grates severely upon his soul that he’s still paying off student loans for a career he’s not currently enjoying. (Never mind the fact that he paid off about $15, 000 of student loan debt in the four or so years that he was working as an artist.)

He’s going into his ex-place-of-employment today to remind them all that he’s still alive and available for high-paying work – er, rewarding career-focused creative exercise, I mean. I hope things go well. He loves landscaping, but he misses animation a lot.

He’s good at what he does. Really good. He designs backgrounds for animated TV series, and he’s aces. He’s also an excellent supervisor of others – a good motivator, a terrific communicator, etcetera – and that’s what he was doing at the end before the industry started its downward spiral into the crumpled, dry thing it was for about eighteen months.

I think it’s because he loves art so much that it’s bothered me for the past couple of years to see him have no interest in sketching at home any more. He used to sketch all the time, but over time it has petered out to the point that in the past twelve months, I think I’d be lucky to count half a dozen sketches. He designs pieces of furniture, which he then constructs for people here and there, but drawing for the pure pleasure? It went the way of the dodo.

Which is why I’m so thrilled that he walked out of Omer De Serres today firmly intent on beginning oil painting again this fall.

I’ve never seen my husband paint. (Apartment walls really don’t count.) There are pieces of artwork stored at his parents’ house, and his colour and black and white works framed on their walls, but I’ve never actually seen him put brush to canvas. I’m wild to see him do it. So wild, as a matter of fact, that when my next cheque comes in, I’m going to pick up oil paints and brushes for him, since his old ones are all dried up and falling apart. (Thus falls the plan of picking up a piece or two of new clothing every cheque; on the next one I have to replace the badly warped bridge on my cello, which will cost about $120, and I want my husband to have those paints. Well, I bought shoes yesterday; I’ll use that as part of my clothing goal.)

Understandably, everyone wants to leave work behind when they come home at night. It’s disturbing, though, to see an artist come home and not be able to draw for fun and relaxation, since they’ve been doing it for someone else all day. I’m all for this renaissance in my husband’s artistic life. I’d also love to see him back in his original career. This time, though, I’m going to make sure he keeps up the personal artistic expression as well as the work sort of art. I think oil painting and designing backgrounds are varied enough that he can stay interested in both.

Cross your fingers.