Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

I’ll See Your ‘Damn’ And Raise You An ‘Oh Hell’

Last night I pulled out the Vivaldi double concerto and looked it over. I was working on it a few months ago, and I thought that I’d try it out on the 7/8.

Today I played the first movement on my cello first. Then I took the 7/8 out (Number 3 for those of you with scorecards) and played it again.

Oh, hell.

See, the size of the 7/8 actually does make a difference. It’s finally coalescing. My arms don’t have to be out so far in front of me to play; the energy and motion used in bowing is more efficient when I’m using the 7/8. It’s all closer to the body and it’s easier to use gravity as an aid instead of struggling against it.

Okay, fine. I’ve proven that to myself. The 7/8 is a better size for me.

The sound was nicer too, but again, that may just be the newer strings.

And finally, I don’t feel like the 7/8 is going to twist or angle oddly under my bow. I don’t have to brace it as much as when I play the 4/4. It feels sturdier in just about every way.

The finish of Number 3 is even growing on me.

I have done my damnedest not to get attached, and to be as objective as possible. I think I’ve finally proven to myself that the size is important. I’m still not completely convinced about this 7/8 being The One!!1!, but I am convinced about the size. I’d like to try a couple more. I’ll sign the Number Two (AKA the Scarlatti) out from Wilder & Davis in early August. It may be a thousand dollars more, but it’s worth a listen at home. There’s a 7/8 four grades higher than Numbers 1 and 3 for sale through a private luthier in Alaska too (an AE405, if anyone’s dying of curiosity) that come with the hard case I want and a bow three times better than the one that comes with this SE/VC100. It’s had finessing work done on it (including a carbon fibre endpin! and a new French style bridge!) and is $1,100 cheaper than the list price (and the basic list price doesn’t include the upgraded bow or the bonus hard case, only a mid-range bow and a soft case). Of course I’d have to order it on trial, and I’d have ten days to decide at home if I liked it or not. If I don’t, I’d ship it back and absorb the shipping cost ($100 each way, which sounds like a lot but is cheap for this kind fo thing, I assure you, wow!). But here’s the kicker: the cost of this several-notches-higher 7/8 with upgraded bow and hard case is only five hundred dollars more than good old Number 3 here, with its soft case and bottom of the line bow. If I added the $500 hard case to the cost of the VC100 here, I’d be looking at $2,000 anyway. Normally I am violently opposed to buying instruments over the internet, but the numbers are very persuasive, the luthier is reputable, many people have dealt with her among the online community and they say nothing but good things. I’ve chatted with her in forums and on bulletin boards on occasion and she’s honest.

It’s an option. And I’m serious enough about this that investing $200 in a cello I might not keep is acceptable, because the payoff could be wonderful. And if it ends up being only as good as the VC100, well, I’ve still snagged myself a deal. I find myself measuring things in freelance work now: a new printer is one evaluation, a new computer will be five, and so forth. So if I tried this and wasn’t happy with the cello I’d only have invested two evaluations in it.

Not that this is a done deal; I want to visit The Sound Post while we’re in Toronto to play some of their stock, and while we’re there I may as well swing past Remenyi as well. I have all summer to do this.

*facepalm*

My life just keeps getting more and more interesting. Unfortunately it’s in the Chinese curse sort of way.

Yesterday my internet access went down, thanks to Microsoft sending out an XP patch that didn’t play nicely with ZoneAlarm, the firewall I and millions of other people use. I spent sixty-nine minutes and 28 seconds on the phone with an unintelligible person manning an outsourced help desk last night. We finally got things back up and running.

And then this morning, the laptop died. It’s dead. D-E-D.

For those of you keeping score, that leaves me with no computer. None. I am stealing time downstairs on HRH’s computer to tell the world that yes, I am actually alive, but I sure as heck can’t work down here. I may come down to check Gmail tonight, but apart from that, nothing. Looks like I’m writing longhand during this afternoon’s writing jam with Jan.

Mitigating today’s severe technological ARGH was the wonderful wedding ceremony I performed yesterday for Scarlet and Blade, with the assistance of HRH, Jess, and Winterwolf in the ritual. It was a wonderful day with perfect weather and a lovely potluck buffet afterwards. I like performing marriage ceremonies for friends; I’m allowed to play with them during the ritual.

Right. I can’t stay here any longer. It’s claustrophobic and very damp. If you need to get in touch with me, do it by phone.

ETA: It’s 11:14 and Blade has just finished closing up the ADZO tower HRH borrowed ages ago and has been hanging on to in order to transfer the last few files to the second ADZO tower he officially acquired. I have internet (and proper browsing via Firefox, thankyouverymuch, first thing I installed), a functional computer, and thanks to my external hard drive that I love with much love I’m fine backup-wise. I can even use my external monitor again! I have a whole desk in front of me instead of a laptop! Speaking thereof, we’ll try a reinstall XP on the laptop and kick it back into shape. I’ll lose a couple of pictures but that’s about all. Muah-hah. I’m still installing Thunderbird and setting up my email addresses even now. Did you miss me?

Catch-Up

Friday morning: government refund cheque on overpaid student loan insurance. Small, but enough to put gas in the tank and food in the cooler. Thank you, money fairies! We can go to the godforsaken howling wilderness on Saturday after all!

And so we enjoyed a lovely afternoon, evening, and morning chez Fearsclave and his lovely wife, along with t! and Jan, new local house-owners (though not local dwellers till the end of summer), and Mousme. Those twenty hours away did us a world of good. The boy stayed home with his local grandparents and didn’t miss us at all. There were shandies (or straight beer if you were pretty much everyone other than myself), burgers and sausage dogs, a bonfire and roasted marshmallows, blessedly deep sleep, then a lovely clear morning. We have now partaken of t!’s justifiably famous french toast (made with bread specially developed for this purpose by Jan), served with lashings of thick bacon and beer-boiled sausages. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate.

Yes, that was the weekend: food, relaxing, sun, friends, nothing much else. Cats, yes. Also Jack the dog. And several uninvited mosquitoes.

I slept horribly last night here at home.

This morning the boy and I cruised the local pet store for fun, then visited the Melange Magique for incense and to poke around at nifty other stuff. The boy went Tequila-hunting (smart cat hid from him a lot), played in the ‘tents’ (AKA the reader’s corners), and practised going down the stairs headfirst in a controlled fashion. Nightdemons even gave him a little coloured onyx egg of his very own. He would have chosen a blue one if he hadn’t discovered that one of the six year old girls he idolises would choose purple. Naturally, he instantly chose a purple one himself. I came home with light floral incenses to cheer me up in general and put a research book aside for later purchase. Lo and behold, upon our arrival back home, there in the mailbox was my first cheque from the freelance gig I began at the end of May, so huzzah! All the work I’ve been doing to get the damn money moving seems to be paying off (literally). Also not a huge cheque, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Last night I finished reading Ink & Steel, the first part of The Stratford Man duology by Elizabeth Bear. I’ve already geeked out on her journal about how excellent it was. I direct you to her website to read the available excerpted material and get yourself hooked. No, you don’t have to read Blood & Iron and Whiskey & Water to read Ink & Steel and Hell & Earth; they’re all part of the same universe but not in a serial fashion (beyond the loose duology of the first pair, and the definite duology of the second pair). Very, very worth reading. Bear continually astonishes me with her versatility and her ability to handle any genre at which she tries her hand. The heart of her success is most likely related to the fact that she writes a good story, about real characters with flaws and irrationalities as well as strengths, and makes it happen in a setting that has enough detail to create an entire atmosphere without going overboard. Also Elizabethan England, vile playwrights, and Faerie pretty much covers all the stuff I squee about, so when tied together, huzzah!

I have no idea what I’ll read next. The beginning of July was pretty much centred on Ink & Steel. Kind of like how my life in general can’t be planned beyond the Canada Day concert because I’m so focused on it during the months leading up to it, I hadn’t thought about what I’d read once I’d consumed Ink & Steel. Non-reading-schedule-wise, there’s a wedding to perform on Thursday, and I have a birthday coming up for which I’d like to do something but I’m so exhausted right now I can’t think of what I’d actually enjoy. Maybe just a Hurley’s thing, despite how crowded and loud it can get; if it’s my birthday I can leave whenever I like, after all. Except that necessitates babysitting, which I can’t afford. And I don’t want to have people over because that’s also exhausting on several levels, and although we all tend to forget it (including myself until I do something stupid) I do live with a chronic fatigue and pain syndrome. I just got off the phone with my mother, and she suggested a picnic in one of the local parks, an idea which has mountains of merit. I think I’ll talk that through with HRH tonight.

Canada Day Concert Recap

Can I get away with saying “Best Canada Day concert ever?”

Not really, I suppose. And it wouldn’t do posterity any good, either. The main reason I journal is so that I can go back and refer to it, after all, so a bit more detail is necessary.

First of all, hearty thanks go out to the following in the order I saw them before the concert: my mum and dad, MLG, ADZO, t!, Jan, Lu, Ceri, Scott, Marc, Miseri, Mousme, tcaptain and J. One of the reasons I love this concert is because I see friends I don’t see often. Your presence was deeply appreciated, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. And thanks go out to everyone who wanted to be there but couldn’t as well.

And of course, deepest thanks go to HRH and the boy, for making it an extra-special concert. This was the first concert the boy was old enough to attend properly and be aware of what was going on. He’s known for weeks that it was coming up, and as the date approached I reminded him, shared some of the music with him, and looked through his book about instruments to explore the different kinds of things he’d see. He stayed for the warm up and by all reports enjoyed himself thoroughly, sometimes tapping along with the rhythm on the back of the pew in front of him, sometimes conducting like Douglas. After the warm up he pulled me outside to a jungle gym-type thing next to the school across from the church where he proceeded to throw himself up ladders, across hanging bridges, and down slides in all possible ways, encouraging me to do the same. Then MLG and ADZO showed up and he exhorted them to join him in his play too. Then he called some random teenagers over: “Hey, hi! Come play with me! Come slide!” and he did it with such openness and enthusiasm that they did so with decent humour. We met up with a few other people (Lu brought me swag from the BEC! I have an TSFT lace hairband among ARCs and books for the boy and other things!) and then I headed back to join the others preparing for play. (The music kind, not the jungle gym kind.)

We were fortunate in the weather. There have been awful, awful days when the night has been dreadfully humid and sticky, and there have been nights where the wind has been so bad we lost music and stands. But this night was just about perfect. It was hot (it’s July, after all) but fingers weren’t slipping on keys or strings and shirts weren’t sopping wet. It was pretty much perfect.

There’s something remarkably special about playing the national anthem. First of all, the cello line is so unlike the melody we sing that it’s really unique to hear how it all fits together. Second, there’s something very powerful about how the drum roll steadies and then initialises the orchestra. Third, it’s incredible to sense the audience suddenly recognising what’s happening and surging to its feet, joining in with the vocal line around the third note. Finally, it’s just so damn cool to play it and to hear a few hundred people singing the anthem to orchestral accompaniment. And there’s always an extra bonus when people applaud. Traditionally the anthem isn’t applauded, and while I’m sure there’s some sort of philosophical reason for it, I can’t think of a time when I’m more prompted to applaud than after a stirring rendition of the anthem, partially for the anthem itself and the nation (yay us!) and partly for the performers. Besides, it was Canada Day.

While I never hit the cello zone, I was very comfortable throughout this performance and please with my work. I enjoyed myself a lot, which on its own is huge. I had no major technical issues during the concert. The finger I use for pizzicato froze up during “Younger Than the Springtime” as it always does, but apart from that and some minor intonation issues (I can’t hear a thing in that church, it melds all the sound together), and a bit where both the principal and I stopped in frustration because the cellist behind her was playing very loudly and racing ahead in a certain passage in the first piece and we couldn’t hear things well enough to keep the proper pace going, it was a very good concert from the performance side of things. It was lovely from the artistic side, too. I like to begin with a piece I find pretty because it gives me confidence for the rest of the night, and the Symphony no. 3 (by not-really-Mozart) has a beautiful and expressive second movement that I love to play. I greatly appreciated not beginning with the Figaro overture, as it has some finicky technical stuff that would have frustrated me had I played it cold. As it was we did a very good job of it, nice and quick. The church may muddle sound but it also makes it sound very large and well-blended, so the overture had a very nice overall presentation that allowed some of the less precise stuff to slip through without calling much attention to itself. The 32nd symphony went well too.

The second half of the concert was the musicals, and we nailed them. We absolutely nailed them. In the past we have done passable renditions of some medleys, but these are decent arrangements and we were really on. It helps to have a good brass section for these things, and ours handled things just fine, thanks. I heard people in the audience singing along at a couple of places, and there were people crying at the end of The Sound of Music medley (of course they were, the ‘Climb Every Mountain’ arrangement was specifically designed to rip shamelessly at heartstrings). It’s always good for the ego to see people surging to their feet almost as soon as the conductor has cut the orchestra off, and to hear the wave of applause crash into us.

Sitting right next to the conductor means I make a lot of eye contact with him throughout the concert, and I get to see his face as soon as we’re done each piece. He winks at us with a crooked grin, or beams, or clenches a fist in a “yes!” motion, or nods and places his baton on his stand, or gives us a wordless smile to tell us we aced it before turning around to accept the applause and bow. Seeing his immediate emotional reaction is worth a lot. He’s genuinely happy for us, or thrilled at what he pulled out of us; he acknowledges what we’ve done. I like to smile back at him and nod, to reinforce what he’s given us and to thank him wordlessly in return. I often get a chance to thank him in person after the concert as well, and he always seems so hesitant, so unlike the caught-up-in-the-moment triumph in the moments following the final chord. He told us at the dress rehearsal there would be no encore, that he’s not “an encore kind of guy”. “Leave them wanting more” is more his style, and I can see his point. It’s great to leave things on that much of a high, vibrating with that much energy. An encore is satisfying in a very different way. (Besides, where could we go after ‘Climb Every Mountain’? Nowhere, that’s where.)

My deepest hope for this concert was that the boy wouldn’t fall asleep or get so cranky that HRH would have to take him away from the concert. He was fine but squirmy, and HRH took him to sit on the steps to listen to the music. And when we began the Sound of Music he looked at HRH and said with excitement, “That’s from my movie!” “Do you remember what it was called?” HRH asked. “Sound,” the boy said after thinking about it for a moment. “The Sound of Music, that’s right,” said HRH. Another parent with a girl on the steps looked at him incredulously and said, “He’s how old?” “Three,” HRH told her, “but his mother is in the orchestra.” (We apologise for his precociousness, it’s subject-related, we assure you.) HRH brought him back in during the post-concert applause and they both applauded. HRH tells me the boy applauded enthusiastically after each piece during the whole concert, too. I was so pleased that he’d lasted the whole night, and that he’d had the opportunity to listen to the Sound of Music medley. I knew it would be exciting for him to hear us play something he knew.

As we’d expected, the boy was tired enough that we had to head directly home; no fireworks for us this year. He laid his head against the edge of his seat and stared out the window until he pulled his cap down over his face and drowsed. When we got him home at ten o’clock he went right to bed. I snuggled next to him, and he said sleepily, “Oh no, Mama, we forgot your cello at the concert!” I assured him it had been in the back of the car and it was safely home again, and he was asleep in seconds. We heard the faint sounds of fireworks in the neighbouring boroughs as we got ready for bed.

This was one of my favourite Canada Day concerts. It also marks the end of my seventh season with the orchestra. This time of year is always bittersweet for me, because I like to ride the high of a concert and use it to propel me into the next set of music. Without the structure of rehearsals every week I tend to lose momentum and stop playing. I have the ongoing search for the 7/8 to keep me going, but being on hold financially takes a lot of steam out of that project, and without rehearsal to test the various cellos in a group environment I lose out on that aspect of the home trial. (In fact there’s a post due on the current 7/8 trial; it will come soonish.) It’s hard to walk out of a concert on that kind of high and know you won’t see everyone again for two months. We all scatter with instruments and stands and sometimes you can’t even find section mates to bid them a good summer. I did get the chance to thank our substitute principal for stepping in to help keep us even and confident for this concert, and thank our conductor for a wonderful concert and an excellent season. The orchestra as a whole thanked our secretary/librarian/general manager with a lovely bouquet of roses; she really has done an incredible amount of work this season.

I’ve gained a lot of technique this year, and I owe a lot of that to our section leader. I absorb so much by simply sitting next to her. There’s also a certain amount of pressure that comes from sitting right in front of the conductor (oh gods, he hears every wrong note I play), and it’s done me a lot of good. I think my expression has firmed up a bit too, partly from the kind of music we’ve been playing, and partly from reading things like The Art of Practicing, Making Music for the Joy of It, and Rosindust, all of which talk about the emotion associated with playing and how to communicate it. It’s important to remember that we make music because we love it. I think one of the reasons I prefer to play in ensembles is because I can relax more and merge my sound with someone else’s. (I had a partial solo of two notes this concert! Yes! I played them with the principal, sharing the first note and playing a different note afterwards! If you were there you probably didn’t notice. That’s okay. I know it was marked ‘Solo’ in the music and that’s what counts. And yes, I played it very nicely.)

I should really think seriously about lessons again.

Okay, this is very long, and more than enough. It was good, it was great, I loved it, I’m very pleased with how I played and with the overall evening. The end.

No, wait, one more thing: I hate it when audience members rush the stage to talk to people or to get to the bathroom before anyone else. We have sensitive and freaking expensive instruments here, people, and there’s a mess of stands and chairs. The amount of times I had to step in front of people so they wouldn’t kick my cello or knock a stand over onto someone or another instrument was unreal. Sheesh. At one concert we made an announcement to the effect of “stay back you thoughtless mob until the musicians have left the stage, thank you”; I think we should do it every concert. Also, people who won’t step out of the way when one is attempting to carry an instrument past/around them annoys me greatly as well. I move to the side as much as I can, but they just stand there. I’m not sure what they expect me to do, other than to politely repeat “Excuse me, may I get past?” Gnarr.

All right, now I’m done.

ETA: No, I’m not. I added photos. Finally someone has taken a picture of me playing in the orchestra! HRH did a simple point and shoot while corralling the boy while we warmed up. I like it. I needed to lighten it a bit, but it’s decent regardless. The only problem? It demonstrates how a mid-calf length skirt is Just Too Short on a cellist. Damn chairs; damn cellos. A bit too much leg, there. (HRH: “I liked it.” ME: “Yes, and I’m sure the most of our friends did too, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s inappropriate.”)

Blue

I don’t know if it’s the weather, the new to-the-penny financial stress (one wonders what the point of trying is, really) or scheduling hassles that are getting me down, but I’m down today. Actually, I think it may have begun sometime yesterday afternoon in a pale lilac shade, has slowly deepened more towards a violet, and now is well and truly blue. Part of it is the post-concert blues, of course. These are always especially bad after a concert as excellent as this past one, because there’s more of a high from which to tumble down. There will be a concert recap later today. Part of it is also the ongoing stress of waiting for paycheques that don’t come. Every day I think, Hey, today could be the day when there might actually be a cheque in the mailbox! and every day I’m disappointed.

I had a good day with the boy yesterday. We didn’t do the caregiver thing as is customary on Wednesdays because we knew he’d be up late on Tuesday and that he’d be off on Wednesday as a result. We paid the car registration (while we waited, the boy entertained himself by bringing me leaflets and saying, “Let’s read this book, Mama!” Sure, kid. How about I skip the words in the one entitled ‘In the Event of a Hit and Run’ and we just play the ‘identify this road sign’ game?), chased butterflies on the way back to the car, then went to the big book store to pick up a book I’ve been waiting for for months and months. (I now have my very own copy of Elizabeth Bear’s Ink & Steel, having finally tracked down a staff member in order to ask her to check in the back, because despite the computer insisting that there were two in stock there were none on the shelf. She returned reading the back cover copy and said, “Wow, this looks really good!” so I cheerfully did a reverse hand-sell of all Bear’s work to her. Nothing like selling to a book store employee. Good times.) The boy actually agreed to only look at the trains and not play with them, and he was very nearly true to his word. He very transparently steered me down an aisle and affected surprise when it opened up into the play area, saying, “Oh, look, Mama, the train table!” I let him put his train on it and run it around a bend before reminding him about our deal to go to the pet store to see the animals instead of playing with the trains, and he came quite willingly. So to the pet store we went and saw many many animals, including a very sweet Senegal parrot who quietly leaned its head against the bars and gazed into my eyes until I reached a fingertip in and scratched its head gently for a few minutes. It never took its eyes from mine. It broke my heart to eventually walk away.

After a lunch the boy went down for a nap (three hours! well, he didn’t get to bed until ten after the concert, so it wasn’t unusual, just very welcome). I fully intended to read Ink & Steel all afternoon but I’d only read the first couple of chapters when I realised I wasn’t in the right mood to do Bear’s work justice, and as I’d been waiting for The Stratford Man duology for so damn long I didn’t want to ruin the reading of it. I picked up Frank Conroy’s Body & Soul instead and read it cover to cover by bedtime. I somehow also managed to read all of Charlie Bone and the Hidden King. Go me; three books read this month by July 3.

I wish I didn’t feel so melancholy. My throat is swollen and my eyes are stinging for no particular reason. I should go light a whole bunch of candles. They’ll help take some of the water out of the air, too.

The State of Autumn

Pretty wiped, actually. Very languid. Not much energy at all. I think it’s partially due to the weather (How much more damp can it get? Can it just rain properly, already? It feels like we’re walking through mist all the time, the air is so wet.), partially due to the intense rehearsals and lack of sleep after them (I’m doing the skating through light sleep cycles thing and waking up a lot these days), and partially due to something I haven’t quite figured out yet. Plus there’s that kid who lives here who gets cranky in high heat or humidity, loses his appetite, and sleeps abysmally. He’s been getting up at five-thirty in the morning, and didn’t nap at all yesterday.

We had a pleasant day with my mother in law yesterday. She had a test scheduled at the local hospital and finished early, so she called us and we picked her up. She took us out for lunch (which the boy did not eat, despite ordering enthusiastically) and even bought us clothes. I took her home with us and plied her with a nice refreshing white wine on the back porch under the new awning. This would be the day the boy wouldn’t nap. He was all right until we went out to pick HRH up around four, and he drowsed in the car for about half an hour. He slept in till sevenish today, thank goodness, so hopefully we’re back on track.

We went out to the luthier this morning and I picked up the new 7/8 cello for a two week home trial. (I have to take it back on my birthday. How depressing is that?) I played it for half an hour straight after the boy went down for his nap, and, well, I don’t know. I liked the first one better; I think it sounded a bit more mellow. (Oh, how I wish I’d had the idea of recording them when I tried it back in May!) The colour on this one is more orangey-red, kind of a deeper version of the one I have now. I preferred the brown-amber of the first one. It has nice resonance, and is easy to play, and feels all right under my fingertips. I haven’t tried the bow yet; I used my own. I’m just not completely in love with it the way I was with the first one. I am, however, completely in love with the soft case it comes with (three handles, including a double handle on the side to carry it like a suitcase! Lots of pockets! Padded straps! So well padded overall that it almost stands up on its own! Extra padding around the bridge! And I got to see an Eastman hard case, the one with wheels, which was so light I thought I was dreaming. It too had multiple handles. I was having a geeky day, evidently, to be so impressed by multiple handles. I also got to see the finish in person, which was important, because all the photos I’ve seen of them made me very wary, as the finish is pebbled and looks almost iridescent. This one was blue, and while I’d prefer a deep green (but they don’t make a darker one) or an ivory or black, I could live with the blue if I had to. Mind you, if I’m going to drop $500 on a hard case, I’ll darn well get them to order the colour I want, thanks. (Oooh! The Z-tek Deluxe model is now available in dark emerald green! Hmm. Duly noted.)

It feels a tiny bit bigger than the last one, too. But then, I didn’t switch between the 7/8 and my full-sized cello when I played it, like I did the last time. I checked the windings: it’s strung with a Helicore C and G, and Larsen D and A strings. It has a really deeply arched back, too.

The A doesn’t blend as well as the last one did. But that’s something that can be adjusted by poking the soundpost. It’s certainly resonant. I’ll post more notes as I play with it over the next couple of weeks.

People requested pictures. Here’s a shot of the two cellos side by side, so you can see the difference in size and proportion.

4/4 and 7/8, June 28 20084/4 and 7/8, June 28 2008

Indoctrination

We had a great weekend, partly due to a financial snag smoothing itself out thanks to HRH’s willingness to do some freelance reno work over the his vacation. It’s astonishing how much better we feel with bills paid and a full pantry.

We also joined the other local coven of our tradition in a Solstice celebration. True to our experience of the gods loving irony, it started to rain as soon as the celebrant invoked the Sun God. Fortunately, we’d gone out that morning and bought a 9’x9′ awning for the back porch, something we’ve wanted to do for a while, so we all sat there and did the ritual anyway. And when it was over and the celebrant spoke a thank you for the Sun God’s presence, the rain stopped and the sun came out. It’s a good thing our trad formally recognises laughter in circle. Then we all had an excellent, excellent barbecue, and I had the great satisfaction of making a salad with ingredients mainly pulled from the garden. The boy woke up from his nap and joined us for the last half-hour, munching happily on hot dogs and showing off his new Wall*E figure.

When everyone had gone home and the boy decided to go inside to play, I asked him if he wanted to watch a new movie and he was very interested. So I put my new The Sound of Music DVD on (hurrah for gift cards), and he watched attentively through the opening scenery shots, whispering, “Do you hear that?” when the wind picked up. He was entranced by the swell of music and Maria running through the grass. “She is happy!” he said. “She is running, and singing!” And he kept watching, asking questions now and again, and I’d explain what people were doing. (Upon seeing the nuns in church, he whispered, “Do they talk?”. “Not in church,” I whispered back. “They do talk!” he said, beaming, when the scene in the courtyard started.) Once in a while his attention would wander during longer stretches of dialogue and he’d start playing with his trains or Wall*E, but whenever someone began to sing his eyes would snap back to the screen and he would be still. After the “Do-Re-Mi” sequence (also riveting for him, partially due to the children, partially due to the music, and partially due to the many different architectural and decorative details in Salzburg) I thought I heard him humming ascending three-note phrases while he played but I dismissed it.

Then we reached “The Lonely Goatherd” sequence and as the opening music played I said, “Liam, I think you may recognise this.” He’d already recognised it on the CD earlier in the week. And when Julie Andrews began singing he said with great delight, “This is the Muppets song!” (Episode 217, of course, is where he first encountered Andrews and this particular song. I love the Muppets in general, but the delicious irony of having Andrews sing “The Lonely Goatherd” with a bunch of puppets is positively exquisite.)

He sat in front of the screen and watched raptly. When the sequence was over he said, “Can we watch it again?” So we did. And a third time, too. He mumbled something under his breath at one point, but we didn’t catch it. It wasn’t until we said that we really needed to watch the next song that he let the film continue. He watched “Edelweiss,” which wasn’t as visually fascinating but nonetheless familiar to him, being one of the lullabies I used to sing to him when he was very small, and then started playing with his Wall*E again, moving it along the back of the chesterfield.

And then we heard it clearly: he was singing “oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee, oh-de-lay-lee-ooh,” and making Wall*E dance.

I looked at HRH, and HRH looked at me: we both had idiotic smiles on our faces, trying not to laugh. “Your heart must be ready to burst out of your chest,” said HRH, “judging by what mine’s doing.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“You’re so blogging this, aren’t you,” he said.

“With great delight,” I said.

We also heard him do a rough approximation of the beginning of “Edelweiss” too before the ballroom scene, by which point he was on HRH’s lap. “I need my cello!” he exclaimed upon seeing the chamber orchestra, so I got it for him and he played it (matching the rhythm quite well, too) before he strummed the lowest string so enthusiastically that it slipped off the bridge, so I put it away.

And, irony of ironies, I stopped the film at the wedding because it was past his bedtime.

I wonder how long it will be before he asks to watch it again.