Category Archives: Cello

2007 In Review

Things I Did In 2007 That I Have Never Done Before:

– bleached my hair (slipped that one in under the wire, on Dec 31!)
– signed a contract for my fifth book (there is only one number five, after all)
– played a gig on a real stage in a real bar (I am such a rock star)
– worked as a writer/editor on not one but two video games
– made a counter-offer on a contract instead of just accepting what was offered
– introduced my son to his great-gran in person
– bought a fretless electric bass
– submitted unsolicited fiction to a publisher

Things I Did in 2007 That I Am Proud Of:

All of the above, plus:
– stood up for myself in two very uncomfortable and potentially self-damaging situations
– said goodbye to one bad situation (although this ostensibly happened in January, it dragged for me through till mid-November when I privately took the final step, admitting to myself that it was over. Now I need to stick to this, and it’s going to be hard because it involves other people.)
– accomplished a specific wish I made for 2007: spending more time with two specific individuals. Interestingly enough, this was accomplished through two separate writing jam commitments.
– reviewing my writing records, I’m surprised at and proud of the amount of novel and short story writing I did in 2007
– sitting second chair in the celli at orchestra
– finding even more ways to ecologically streamline our lives, and reducing our impact on the environment
– less posting, more living

Good Things About 2007:

– discovering Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective novels
– acquiring a Nintendo DS and beginning to play video games
– making it out to see the Once Upon a Time Disney exhibit at the Beaux-Arts museum
– an awesome and excellent Vernal Equinox ritual, led by t!
– fabulous spiritual retreat at the Autumn Equinox
– cooking an entire meal over an open fire outdoors
– indirectly working with t!, lunching with the gang
– meeting Fearsclave and Carolyn
– HRH’s new job
– the existence of the credit line (thank all the gods)
– resolution of financial challenges (now, to pay off that credit line!)

There’s more, of course; a lot of this year was good. But these are what surface in my memory.

Not-So-Good Things About 2007:

– Knick-Knack going to the Summerlands
– contract negotiations
– the financial challenges (and that debt we incurred on the credit line)
– the ongoing tension with the downstairs neighbour

(I am very happy that I had to actually look for bad things to list here.)

How Did I Do With My 2007 Wishes?

– Less self-inflicted head trauma for Liam.

Yes! Yay!

-To regain some sort of interest in food.

This hasn’t been wholly successful, but in general I have become more interested in food again.

– The re-initialising of enjoying being with people.

Not bad. At least I didn’t hate being around others this year, which is an improvement.

– Spending more time with certain people.

A complete success.

– For the emotional burnout to stop.

I handled this a lot better this year than I have in the past. Quite simply, I cut down on the time spent with people who drain me.

– Rediscover the joy in music in general, and classical music in particular.

Hmm… not as much of a success as I wanted it to be. I wanted to rediscover my CD collection, and I haven’t. My music-purchasing has dropped to almost nil as well. This is a wish to carry over to 2008.

– Rediscovering the joy in playing the cello.

The better I get, the more fun it is. But I’m still not at a place where I can just play for the enjoyment of it (although the Resident Fan Club may argue with me). I am still lazy and don’t practice enough (you could almost leave the latter word off and have it be true).

Look at that; no wishes about writing and/or career. Things are pretty okay there. Sure, I wish my fiction would take off the way my non-fic has, but there’s time aplenty for all that.

Submitting the unsolicited young adult novel to a publisher has certainly been a huge, huge step towards this not-a-wish.

Wishes for 2008:

– Rediscover my CD collection
– Make time for practising my spirituality in a more aware fashion
– Make a stronger commitment to practising the cello
– Let up on the second-guessing of the decisions I make, and the self-doubt I feel about my work
– Remember frequently that I am a wonderful, kind, talented person
– Focus my time so that I don’t waste as much of it
– Take up formal study of another spiritual path to complement the ones I already practise
– Take care of my body so that the chronic pain thing doesn’t negatively impact my life, as it’s beginning to once again (I’m hoping it’s the damp and the cold that’s made it increasingly bad over the past month)

If I had to assign a value to 2007, I’d say that overall it was a good year, even though there were moments where it was not good at all. And the end of the year has seen us in a better place than we began it. That’s one of the best things to work out in a year-review, and something for which I am very, very thankful.

May 2008 be even better!

My Resident Fan Club

BLADE: I moved to play my DS into the room above you the other night when I realised you were playing your cello.

HRH: Yeah, it sounded pretty good, you know.

A: You heard me? Both on the floor above and below? I was playing with a heavy practice mute!

HRH: Your end pin is a sound conductor. I was sitting at the other end of the basement and I heard it just fine.

A: I can’t believe this. For some arcane reason I feel moved to play scales and then a nasty Dotzauer etude full of evil little shifts, and you guys think it sounds good and want to hear more?

BLADE: I wondered if it would be acceptable to bang on the floor and yell, “Play louder!”

Bow Woes

Last night was the last rehearsal of the first third of the LCO season, and the first sight-reading rehearsal for Gounod‘s first symphony, which very few of us know. It’s going to be very pretty. We now have six weeks off.

And because the universe works on the principle of synchronicity and checks and balances, when I went to pack a second back-up bow in my cello case last night I decided to take my heavy viola bow that I bought a couple of years ago to use as a light cello bow, instead of the heavy off-balance cello bow. And I found that the viola bow is broken, too: the ferrule has snapped off the little plate that lines the underside of the frog, where there’s a little tab that slots into the ferrule. It can no longer be tightened.

Augh!

(In case anyone else is keeping score, that’s two bows broken out of three, and one bow too wonky to use except in emergency (or in case of the Ramones or Metallica). I do have a 3/4 fibreglass bow with zero responsiveness that came with my cello when I bought it from its previous owner; I may have to drag that out to use until my main bow gets properly fixed.)

There really isn’t much point in buying a new bow right now, as I seriously want to start testing new advanced cellos late next spring (payment upon delivery of current book + HRH theoretically will have a permanent job with steady income = money that can be divided between investment and cello), and a bow that suits this cello won’t necessarily suit a more advanced one. Of course, it’s not that I’m planning to buy a cello next year, just to start researching and testing with luthiers, a process that can take ages until I find something really responsive with the tonal colour I like, all in my price range.

Except now I’m working with a main bow that has a cracked frog, one back-up bow that’s broken and unusable, and another back-up bow that has bad balance and hurts my hand as I try to control it. It looks like I’ll have to call my luthier and ask how much it is to replace a frog on a basic no-frills bow.

They’re putting up reindeer, And singing songs of joy and peace…

Not dead, just run-off-my-feet busy. I haven’t sat down at the computer in days.

Over the last twenty-four hours there has been lots of snow. Official reports vary, but according to our backyard we’re looking at around eighteen inches. It’s stopped, but we’re due to get about fourteen more centimetres tomorrow. (How very Canadian: Imperial and Metric describing accumulation in the same paragraph.)

The boy stayed home today and HRH took the car in to work after spending an hour and a half shovelling the driveway. For those who have inquired, no, HRH did not get the snow day that most elementary and high schools got. CEGEPs don’t close unless something traumatic has occurred on campus. He’s out there shovelling again now.

This morning I wrestled the boy into his snowpants (“No, no , no Mama, no snowpants”) and coat and hat and mitts and boots and scarf, and myself in tights under jeans and legwarmers over that (a lucky and unexpected find in the winter accessories box) and my old snow coat, and opened the back door for him. Liam was decidedly unimpressed with this deep snow thing. He kept falling over and flailing in a swim-like fashion, then rolling over on his back to look up at me and say, “Help, Mama, I am stuck” in that funny precise way he has of speaking. We fell over in the backyard for half an hour before coming in and shedding piles of snow-covered clothing on the kitchen floor and drinking hot chocolate. Like me, he thinks the hot chocolate is the best part. I am all about the apres-ski.

Friday night I went to a cello quartet concert with someone from orchestra, and it was absolutely phenomenal. It was one of those evenings where I was reminded of why I chose the instrument I did, and also mildly despair-inducing in that it made me feel that it was completely useless to even try because I can never play like they can. (Granted, they all had at least two music degrees each and played in pro symphonies. But still.) I really appreciated the evening, because not only was it the first time I’d attended a live music performance since May, but it was at my orchestral colleague’s invitation to share her double pass. It was great to have a night out with someone I don’t know very well but with whom I have things in common. I thoroughly enjoyed her company.

Late Saturday afternoon we went out to have dinner with Ceri and Scott, and this marked the first official Taking Liam Out To Dinner at a Friends’ House With No Other Kids. We all had a fabulous time. Liam was very well-behaved apart from the not-at-all-subtle exploring of rooms and the joyous chasing of cats, who mostly (meaning any cat who was not Tybalt) didn’t seem to mind and even let him pick them up and carry them around (I don’t know who was the most surprised when he walked in holding Miho). He ate surprisingly well, too, which I hadn’t expected, although it was hard not to enjoy the food as the meal was one of the best I’ve had in a while. (Liam seems to have decided peas in a pod are the current vegetable to be defined as Dalishious, replacing the chopped and frozen parsley he had dubbed Dalishious a few days previous.) I made a chocolate espresso pecan pie for dessert, which immediately made my Make This Again and Often list when we tasted it. We all had so much fun that we didn’t check the time until eight o’clock, at which point HRH and I scooped the child up and fled, expecting disastrous things to ensue with his schedule. Going to bed two hours later than usual didn’t seem to completely mess him up: there were no mid-night wakings, I got him back to sleep when he woke up at 5:15 the next morning with minimal fuss, we all got another two hours of sleep, and the only other effect seems to have been the boy being slightly whiny over the past two days. Not something we want to do on a regular basis, of course, but we’re very impressed at how he handled it. We wish we could have stayed longer, of course.

I spent a lot of the weekend baking, because Sunday was a cookie-exchange day. Bearing ten dozen oatmeal cookies, I spent a lovely afternoon with friends and acquaintances and snuggled with Tallis while chatting with some other mums. Liam cried a lot over the weekend when he’d try to scoop a cookie off the cooling rack and was told he wasn’t allowed because they weren’t ours, but the delight on his face when I unloaded all the new cookies once I’d come home from the party was proof that the cookie-denial was all forgiven. (Besides, he’d already stolen four of mine from the first batch out of the oven. It wasn’t like I didn’t let him have any at all.)

I like to wait as long as possible before breaking out the Christmas albums, but after watching the however many feet of snow fall today I put on Holly Cole’s Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Diana Krall’s Christmas Songs, and Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong while making supper.

I have piles of e-mail to handle, but that will get done tomorrow morning.

It was a very long day. I’m going to turn out the light now.

Concert Recap

This is going to be short one. Why? Because it was a good concert, nothing went horribly wrong, and I walked out feeling fine. No deep observations or life-changing moments; it was just a good concert.

The really noteworthy thing was an audience member standing up as the final applause died, asking us to play the ‘just beautiful’ second movement of the Haydn symphony again. We played it for him. It was a lovely way to end the evening.

I was somewhat concerned about the audience’s potential reception of the Peer Gynt suite, because it’s one of those stereotypical pieces of classical music — everyone’s heard Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King, after all, and has an opinion about it whether they consciously know it or not. In the end what seems to have happened is what I was hoping for: everyone knows these pieces from recordings or as cartoon soundtracks, and so hearing a full orchestra play them is a completely different experience. It’s much more complex and rich. And they got to hear one of my favourite pieces from the suite, Ã…se’s Death, which is beautiful and very moving. There was music committed in that particular bit. (There was music committed all over the place last night, really; Valse Triste, for example.)

The clarinet soloist blew everyone away (no pun intended). He’s fourteen. Yikes.

There was a minor kerfuffle in our cello section after the warm-up, and it’s got me thinking about the interpretation of the word ‘amateur’. In my mind, being an amateur doesn’t mean you get to show any less respect to your fellow musicians, the conductor, or the audience than a professional would or does. Even as an amateur one approaches music and one’s colleagues seriously, with consideration and commitment. Being an amateur is no excuse for laziness. I think there may be more to say on the subject, but it needs to brew in my mind for a while.

The emergency-glued bow frog survived the night, thank the gods. I did the dress rehearsal with the heavy bow, and I hated it. My principal looked at it and told me that the main problem was the weight distribution, so she suggested wrapping an elastic band around the frog and tucking a quarter inside to help redistribute the weight. It helped a bit, but I really do prefer my main bow. I kept the heavy bow with me in case the emergency fix fell apart in concert, though. I’m somewhat afraid to get the frog replaced on my main bow, as I don’t know what it will do to the weight or balance of it.

Other noteworthy things that happened which were not music-related: I got to meet Tallis (who was beautifully behaved), and we received the chocolate mint Girl Guide cookies we’d ordered.

Thank you to Jeff, Paze, Devon, Tallis, Ceri, Scott, Daphne, and HRH for coming out to support us, and to Blade for babysitting. (Poor HRH only arrived halfway through the Peer Gynt suite and two movements before the break, as the boy had had a late nap and thus his bedtime was late too.)

Friday Morning

It feels odd to be sitting down to work at eight-thirty. HRH took the car to work today, dropping the boy off at his grandma’s on the way. Usually I’m not at my desk before ten o’clock. I like it. I may ask that this become a regular thing on Liam’s grandma days.

There’s nice light in here this morning. Although it’s overcast, there are lazy snowflakes drifting in the air, and what light there is is bouncing off the snow on the ground. Yesterday’s freezing rain completely coated the maple tree out front, and every single twig was coated in a glistening sheath. When we went out this morning to put Liam in the car, the breeze brushed the branches and I heard clicks and cracks, a sound that I haven’t heard in months. The poor blue cedar in the corner of the back yard is equally frozen, and already bending towards the snow-covered ground. Every year it happens earlier, and every year we think we’ve lost it to the weight of an ice storm. We’ve tried tying it to the telephone pole behind it, propping it up with wood… we’ll see if the roots actually stay in the ground this year, and if so, for how long.

Liam and I made our first loaf of bread in the new bread machine (or, if one reads the French on the box, the ‘robot baker’), and it’s delicious. The texture is nice and even throughout, not too light, and not too crumbly. The crust is even, too. It’s good to know that I can bake one or two of these a week, that it will be fresh right up until it’s eaten (yesterday’s is half-gone already) and not preservative-ridden. I like knowing exactly what goes into the things I cook. My one regret is that the smell of baking bread doesn’t permeate the house, but if I’m craving that then I can always take the dough out of the machine after the second rise and bake it in the oven instead. I’ll try a whole-wheat version next, and buy some seeds to make a flax-sesame-poppyseed version too.

There was a Liam-related accident with my cello bow yesterday, resulting in a snapped frog. I have another bow but it’s heavier, and as I haven’t practised this set of music with it I’m concerned that it will adversely affect my performance or cramp my hand. Some of the Grieg requires a light touch, for example. HRH is bringing home some Krazy Glue tonight, so we’ll try to fix it that way and I’ll see how it works tonight at the dress rehearsal. If it doesn’t work the frog can always be professionally replaced, but that’s not going to happen by tomorrow night. The temporary solution doesn’t have to hold beyond the end of tomorrow’s concert. I’ll bring both bows, just in case.

Research books for the hearthcraft book are starting to arrive, and there are more second-hand ones to order today. Except I’m currently watching my outgoing cash flow very, very closely at the moment. One of the problems with doing freelance work is that you do the work and get paid at an unspecified time later, on someone else’s schedule. It makes for a nice surprise when the cheque finally lands in the mailbox, but the watching of the mail until that point isn’t as much fun.