Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Blogger Insider

Kate sent me her Blogger Insider questions, and I actually answered them the day I got them. All but the last one, that is, which I’ve been mulling over. In true Autumn fashion, I’ve not directly answered it, but sort of answered beside it. Here you are:

1. What’s the most bizarre instrument you can play (e.g. musical saw, noseflute, etc.)?

Caveat Number One: I’m boring. Caveat Number Two: I rarely have the urge to try something unconventional. Hence, I think the most exotic instrument I play is the harp. And I certainly don’t play it often or well. It’s big, heavy, and hurts my back.

I bought a tambourine recently; that’s a bit odd. Isn’t it?

2. What’s your favorite spot in Canada?

Sigh. Prince Edward Island. It’s so tiny I thought I might be able to get away with saying the whole province, but if I have to be more specific, Cavendish Beach. But it has to be deserted. Just me, sun, red sand, waves, and a good book. Sigh once more.

3. What’s your favorite comic book and why?

Argh. Tell me to pick a favourite child, why don’t you. Currently: Promethea. Overall? Dunno. Depends on my mood.

4. Who’s your favorite fiction author and comic book author?

Why are you making me do this? Fiction. Hmm. Who do I buy instantly in hardcover? Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, Timothy Findley. Dead people who don’t have anything new coming out but I’d buy in hardcover if they were still publishing: Robertson Davies, Charlotte Bronte.

Comic books? A tie between Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore. (According to my shelf of graphic novels.)

5. What’s your favorite song in “Once More With Feeling,” the “Buffy” musical episode?

“R.I.P” stuck in my head the first time I saw it, but upon listening to it over and over, I find Xander and Anya’s song “I’ll Never Tell” is really quite well-written and performed, and is the one that keeps popping up in my brain when I’m distracted.

6. What’s your favorite opera?

Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Followed by a three-way-tie between Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. (The latter for its delicious mezzo-soprano role, and for the act one finale, if nothing else!)

7. If you could move anywhere in the world, where would it be?

The Borderlands, Scotland.

8. Who’s the one character you can’t stand to see when watching a “Star Wars” movie?

Old series or new series?

New series: Threepio is rapidly rising up the list in the new series. Jar-Jar, of course.
Old series: Boba Fett. Honestly. He’s so overrated. Ep2 sort of redeemed him for me, though. His dad was at least cool. (His action figure is certainly the best one. Is it just me or are the SW:Ep2 figures below standard?)

9. What are your top three totally irrational pet peeves?

Firstly, someone who shall remain nameless putting a margarine container, with the barest sheen of margarine along the bottom of it, back into the fridge. (“I didn’t finish it!”) Actually, that nameless someone putting anything back in the fridge or cupboard with only crumbs or drops left in it.

Secondly, not writing something down on the shopping list if you’ve finished it (or, all right, almost finished it). I don’t eat often, but when I do, I like to have all the fixings there. This will drive me directly to Axe-Murderer status, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Thirdly, people standing behind me. In a related vein, people reading over my shoulder. Or, people standing in front of me and conversing with sunglasses on. I hate not being able to see people, and if I can see them, I have to be able to see their eyes.

I have more, if you’d like them. Such as bad editing in a published book. Stupid spelling mistakes. (Especially in my own work, when I’ve proof-read and run a spell-check.) People adopting American short-cut spelling such as lite and donut, and believing that it’s the right way to spell something. Shall I go on?

10. If you could perform any piece of music to a large audience by yourself, what piece would it be?

Ha! Assuming I could perform it with any sort of technical capability and emotional interpretation, pretty much anything by Bach. I remind you all of Caveat Number One (I’m boring), and add the following footnote: as much as I adore performing, I prefer chamber work with a few others. Solo is so… alone. You have nothing to interact with. So actually, my dream would be playing cello in a string quartet program of Beethoven’s String Quartet opus 132 in A minor, followed by Ravel’s String Quartet in F. Rather than performing solo, I enjoy hearing how my line intertwines with a few others. I also enjoy singing quartets or trios more than I enjoy singing alone.

There you have it.

Jean, darling that she is, brought me a whole new bottle of my Secret Weapon from her trip to Plattsburg last weekend. Now I have a bottle for home, and a bottle with a few left to keep at work. No Vanilla Coke, though. She says she’ll try again next trip. Curses! Foiled!

Gnash

I had a truly horrible rehearsal on Wednesday night.

I’d even practiced that morning. I’d gone through the evil Minuet & Trio from Beethoven’s First Symphony and some of the nasty shifts from the first movement too, and I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then I got to rehearsal and we began with the Rossini overture, and the substitute director took it at a really fast clip. I lost it. I ended up just sitting and staring at the music, unable to grab an anchor point to pick up again and be in the same place as everyone else.

It got worse: we then moved to the Bizet. (Remember? The tenor clef? The treble clef?) Any progess I’d made on this piece left me, bags and all. They even slammed the door.

It was around this point that I realised the next concert is only four weeks away.

Then we moved to the Beethoven, which should have been my best performance of the night. I was so rattled by this point, though, that I spent a lot of time feeling rather nauseous, staring at the score again, miserable.

I have absolutely no emotional connection to this music. The Mozart symphony we’re doing is easy for me, because it’s so beautiful, so lyrical. These other pieces are technically challenging and very difficult to make sound easy, which is important. Music should sound effortless. Since I have no emotional connection to them (other than the sinking feeling I get when I look at them, which is probably classified by a large percentage of the population as “negative”!) it’s hard to make them sound pretty, let alone care about getting the notes right.

So, I bought a new set of earphones, and batteries for my Walkman, and I’ll just listen to it all over and over until I can sing it in my sleep. That will help.

I was really down Wednesday night when I went home, and Thursday morning wasn’t much better. On the way to work, though, I heard a terrific recording of the overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Tafelmusik on CBC Radio Two, and suddenly, I was reminded why I play the cello, why I joined the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra, and why music is so important to me. When I got to work, I dashed off a quick e-mail to the show’s host Tom Allen, thanking him for helping me out. He e-mailed me later in the day to say that he was “glad to hear your musical cloud has lifted” and telling me to “keep the faith”.

I’m looking forward to working on my music this summer. It’s a pity that my concert will be over just as my time off begins, so I won’t be able to devote the time I’d like to preparing for it, but I’ll choose a piece to really polish up to feel good about before orchestra starts up again next fall.

Music is such a gloriously emotional thing, and it brings such a variety of people together to perform and experience it. I don’t know who invented it, but I think I’d like to shake their hand.

CURRENTLY READING:
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, which is about a woman returning anonymously to her native village in France to open a restaurant in the house she grew up in. It’s two stories simultaneously: the modern storyline, and the story of when this main character was growing up sixty-odd years ago in German-occupied France. I’m enjoying the war storyline more; the modern story is about her weak nephew and his desperate, food-snobby wife trying to steal her mother’s recipe book to help their own ailing high-class restaurant, which the protagonist has discovered is also a kind of diary in code which her mother kept during the war. I find the modern antagonists pretty lame, although I love the recipe book/journal aspect of it. Harris uses food and wine as a metaphor for everything her characters can’t actually come out and say in all her books; it’s an interesting trope, but it’s becoming predictable.

This is the third Harris novel I’ve read; the first two were Chocolat and Blackberry Wine. So far, Chocolat is still my favourite. Jury’s still out as to where Five Quarters will fall.

Dysthymia

Someone told me there was a name for this last summer. It’s taken me this long to look it up.

Dysthymia (aka Dysthemia (sp)): Chronic low-level (of lesser intensity) depressive episodes.

American Description:

A) Depressed mood for most of the day, for more days than not, as indicated either by subjective account or observation by others, for at least 2 years. Note: In children and adolescents, mood can be irritable and duration must be at least 1 year.

B) Presence, while depressed, of two (or more) of the following: poor appetite or overeating; insomnia or hypersomnia; low energy or fatigue; low self-esteem: poor concentration or difficulty making decisions; feelings of hopelessness.

C) During the 2-year period (1 year for children or adolescents) of the disturbance, the person has never been without the symptoms in Criteria A and B for more than 2 months at a time.

European Description:

A chronic depression of mood which does not currently fulfil the criteria for recurrent depressive disorder, mild or moderate severity, in terms of either severity or duration of individual episodes, although the criteria for mild depressive episode may have been fulfilled in the past, particularly at the onset of the disorder. (Ed. note: Well, gosh, that makes me feel better already!)

The balance between individual phases of mild depression and intervening periods of comparative normality is very variable. Sufferers usually have periods of days or weeks when they describe themselves as well, but most of the time (often for months at a time) they feel tired and depressed; everything is an effort and nothing is enjoyed. They brood and complain, sleep badly and feel inadequate, but are usually able to cope with the basic demands of everyday life. Dysthymia therefore has much in common with the concepts of depressive neurosis and neurotic depression. If required, age of onset may be specified as early (in late teenage or the twenties) or late.

Me again. Now, I’m not the kind to dash off and self-diagnose. My osteopath has already told me that there are plenty of nice people out there who can help me with my mental and emotional balance just like she’s helping me with my back. (Speaking of which, I’m spending most of today lying on the living room floor working on the laptop because sitting at the desktop is too painful. Back pain is not helping general moodliness.) I’ve just been brushed off by my GP so often now that I don’t know where to go next, really. A close friend worked with an excellent therapist a couple of years ago and has her name and contact info, but as usual, their time requires money.

Or maybe I don’t need to go that route at all. Maybe all I need is a month or so off, and see if that lets my mind unkink a bit. Perhaps life’s tossing me about in an effort to get me to stop for a while and re-evaluate things. I need to rediscover what’s important. What I like, what I dislike. What’s fun, what’s not fun. Having no opinion for so long, just doing things because it’s on my list of things to do, means I really have nothing to compare my current life with any more.

Instrument Inventory

So on Saturday morning I e-mailed Ceri and wondered if she’d like to meet me for coffee, since I’d decided at SEVEN A.M. when my husband woke me up to say good-bye (“It’s either that or not say good-bye,” he explained to me; bitter thought in return: On Saturdays, it might be worth it) that I would get outside and enjoy the sun, terrifically windy though it was, and pick myself up a tambourine.

Short tangent: why do I need a tambourine? Because I don’t have one. Tangent over; back to your regular blog experience.

She called me and said yes, not only would coffee be neat, but had I eaten breakfast yet? Of course I hadn’t. (Breakfast is a week-day thing for me.) So I hopped a bus to the metro with my trusty current bus-book (Lathe of Heaven) in tow, and had read half of it by the time I’d hit her place. (Read the rest on the way home. I am now paranoid.) We had breakfast with Scott, and then puttered about music stores all afternoon. After trying out every single noisemaker in the first shop (I work retail, and occasionally have the urge to go dish it out gleefully to other poor wage-slaves) I picked up my tambourine, squinted at the price of the music stands, then watched Ceri sigh over the saxophones. I proposed another music store (heh heh heh) and she got all perky and excited. Scott left us at this point, and off we went to sigh over more saxes. Ceri was feeling so bereft of her rental sax of last year that she even went so far as to have the salesgirl calculate out how much paying off a new Yamaha alto sax within one year would come to by monthly payment.

I freely admit, I did this whole temptation thing intentionally. Why should I be the only one with a pile of instruments I don’t devote enough attention to? “But I have lots of tin whistles! And a bodhran! And I don’t play any of them!” Ceri wailed. So? If you don’t have a sax to ignore, you also don’t have a sax to pick up and play when you’d like to, is my reasoning.

My list of instruments (in order of acquisition):

Voice (ha! You thought I’d not include it?)
Flute
Cello
Viola
Harp
Tambourine (yay!)

The husband has a chanter and a bodhran as well. We have a piano in someone’s basement that will be there until we can afford to get it moved by official trained piano movers. (“Do not try this at home” takes on a whole new meaning when it involves an upright piano and basement stairs.)

Why do I have a household of musical instruments? I had to think long and hard about this the other day. I’ve concluded that it’s due to the potential that rests in all of them. I can sit in a patch of sun in the living room with my harp against my left shoulder (mildly heretical, but I bat left-handed too, maybe that has something to do with it), lean my cheek against the soundbox, and just feel all the music inside it. Call me crazy, but I can do that for an hour, then just touch the strings gently here and there, and then put it away again. It’s not about releasing the music, or liberating it, or whatever you like to call it; it’s about connecting with the instrument, feeling it inside you, releasing something in your own spirit that’s in harmony with it.

(Ed. note: It’s raining! Woo-hoo! I will put on my CD of Vivaldi double concertoes in celebration.)

Sure, accomplishing a terrifically hard run on the cello is satisfying too, but in a completely different way. Producing coherent and recognisable sound is work, which isn’t the same as pleasure for me at all. So why did you join an orchestra, I hear some of you asking in a snarky tone. Well, because when I was playing cello quartets a few years ago, I dicovered that I loved hearing the interaction between the different lines. I adore Bach, for example, four or more careful musical lines all dancing with one another, often produced by only two hands on a keyboard (I also adore Glenn Gould, so there). When I sing in a group, I love hearing the tenors sing against the altos; hearing certain musical lines in unusual juxtaposition thrills me for some reason. Working in orchestra satisfies me in a similar fashion: I can work through all the different lines and hear them come together to hear a richly textured tapestry of sound, and I’m right in the middle. I often wonder how the audience can ever approach the experience I’m having, simply because I’ve been studying these works performed in-depth along with thirty other people. (Not that I’m diminishing the audience’s experience in any way; as a writer and performer I am a firm believer in the audience-co-creates-experience theory.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Ceri and her saxophone. So I say, heck, yes! Own that sax! Hold it; press the keys gently; watch the complex mechanism move; lose yourself in the dance of sunlight on the brass. Blow a couple of notes here and there. Above all else, love it, and love the potential that lies within it, that lies within you. If no one ever hears you, so what? Music is about you and your experience. It’s pure emotion. It’s about raising your spirit. Technical brilliance is never a measure of that. If you enjoy working musical challenges through, hey, great; otherwise, life’s too short to say, “Oh, I’ll never be able to devote the time I should to it.”

Do it.

Babies

I heard a fantastic rendition of a Beethoven cello sonata on the way home last night, and I said to myself, “I could do that” – the operative word being could, of course, not can. It simultaneously thrills me and depresses me to know that if I practiced, I could be really, really good. If I get this teaching job it will free up a lot of time, which I intend to partially fill with regular practice sessions.

I’m still awed about Devon. What will she look like when she’s six? Thirteen? Twenty-one? What will her first word be? What will be her favourite colour? What will her laugh sound like?

Debra called me the other day and said, “Are you having baby pangs?” Heck, yes. Every time I see her four-month old daughter Elspeth, as a matter of fact. I’m fairly certain it will be the same way with Devon. I even dreamed last night that my oldest friend Annika was pregnant, and she looked fantastic. We used to joke that the three of us (Paze, Annika and myself) would all be pregnant at the same time. I think my subconcious is dredging that up and throwing it at me now that Paze is non-pregnant.

Babies – wondrous creatures who require much care and feeding. I know darned well that we can’t afford one right now, time-wise or financially. I’m trying to change careers, and my husband Ron has just started work again, after all. People keep telling me that it’s never a “good” time to have a baby with a preachy, syrupy tone, and it irritates the hell out of me. If you can’t approach a life-changing decision like introducing another member into your family unit who will be completely dependent upon you for several years with responsibility (financial or otherwise), then what business do you have doing it? It drives me up the wall that dogs require licenses, but they’ll let anyone have a baby. Anyway, we don’t touch on the subject very often, because it’s a bit sensitive all around. Our own families both have their opinions on the whole idea, and I think we’re both a bit afraid of what it will do to our own relationship (which has taken a beating over the past year anyway what with all the financial trouble and job-less-ness). We’ve made a tentative date to talk about it again at the end of this year. A lot can happen in a year.

Ever seen a pregnant woman play the cello? Probably not. Go ahead, laugh. Most of the people on the cello chat board I frequent who are mothers have said they had to play “side-saddle” for the last few months of their pregancies. Women at the turn of the century used to play like this. Instead of holding the cello between your legs (so unladylike!) you sit sideways in your chair, knees together and to the left, turning your torso to the right while leaning the instrument against your left shoulder as usual. If that sounds uncomfortable it’s because it is, and it plays havoc with the physics of cello-playing as well. If it’s your only solution, though, heck, I’d take it too!

On Diets, Both Physical And Spiritual

Anyone else ever forget to eat? Or sleep? Sometimes I think so much I forget that I need to fuel the body. I know that thinking uses calories, of course, but not as many as, say, raking lawns or prepping beds for planting.

I just wondered, because yesterday was The Christening of The Elspeth Morrigan (yeah, yeah, tell me about it) and I forgot to eat (a) before we went, and (b) after we got home. I had little nibblies at the reception afterwards, but nothing approaching a meal.

I do this all the time. People make nasty little remarks like, “Oh, so that’s why you’re as tiny as you are.” Well, no, because that has everything to do with my metabolism, not my diet. My diet ranges from prim and proper to grossly indecent: for a week I will crave salads and sandwiches, then the next week I’ll snack on nothing but mini chocolate bars (and that’s all my boss’ fault, for bringing in a five-pound bag of snack-size Oh Henry bars and Caramilk squares and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) with the occasional lasagna. This has nothing to do with bingeing; I don’t pay enough attention to what I eat to binge. Working without a set lunch hour makes eating normally difficult as well. I refuse to eat if I’m not hungry, so when I have the opportunity to eat (i.e., it’s quiet on the floor) I don’t, preferring to get as much work done as possible before the hordes descend, which is usually when my stomach starts growling. By the time things quiet down, I’m not hungry any more. (Lose weight – work retail!)

So I don’t eat regularly, and I don’t eat a lot, and what I do eat is on average something that resembles balanced, I suppose, taken over the week.

The Christening: in a beautiful Catholic church (I was last there singing The Messiah with CAMMAC several years ago), with a wacky priest (who was fine for one afternoon but who would drive me nuts if I had to listen to him weekly), and holy water that didn’t melt or burn any of the Pagan contingent who were there to witness the daughter of an occult store owner be baptized. We giggled a lot, particularly when The Morrigan yowled as the priest exorcised her with chrism on her chest. His comment? “Well, she’s got the makings of a fine preacher!” We enthusiastically replied that we would support her in her growing faith thorough all her trials when we were asked in the ceremony, and rolled our eyes at the tacky little sorority t-shirt all the babies got that said “I’m a Christian!” on them (I kid thee not). I always enjoy looking through prayer books to see how a particular sect worships, so I made sure I took a look at the books ranged in the pews. Know what? The first service in it was Christian Initiation. I wonder how many people actually realise that much of the Christian faith is based on universal rituals found cross-culturally in many religions both living and dead. It just got better P.R. along the way. There is such universality to the concepts expressed in various religions that I truly cannot understand why people try to insist that theirs is the Right Way. Religion is about how you view your relationship to the Divine. What gives anyone the right to impose their Way on someone else?

Anyway, it was a wonderful afternoon, and a terrific experience of one of the Catholic Sacraments. I’ve grown so used to universal, non-denominational services that this was a pleasant change.

On Funerals

I have not felt this drained in a long time. I’ve given up trying to work; I’m pretty useless tonight.

Eric’s memorial service was funny, touching, and in general a celebration of a happy man who lived life to its utmost. By far the most enjoyable funeral-type service I’ve ever experienced, it was a chance to share with others how much one individual can have touched your life, while mourning the fact that you’ll not have the opportunity to share time with him again. My husband said that he wants his service to be much the same – but with much alcohol, and dancing too. I’ve never been a fan of the weepy, heart-wringing kind of funeral – what good does that do? – nor of the startling “repent ye sinners and turn to GOD!” genre, so I must say that I’m right with him on this one. Celebration of life is the key, even while we recognise that our lives will never be the same.

All through the afternoon, I looked at each of my friends, and saw individuals with whom I enjoy spending time, with whom I share interests, in-jokes, hobbies. When I said hello or good-bye, I held them all a little tighter, a little longer. Life’s precious, damn it. Why don’t we see that more often?

What is it that prevents us from understanding that at a deeper level? Or, perhaps more importantly, at a superficial, always-on-my-mind level? Why do we let ourselves become burdened, stressed, concerned with what’s wrong in our lives? What does it – any of it – matter in the end? What it all comes down to is you, your friends, your family; your level of peace, the love you feel: what’s right on your life. This afternoon, someone said that one of Eric’s philosophies was, “You can never be too kind”. It’s true. That means reaching out and telling people that you care. It means hugging those close to you. More, it means accepting the hugs from others, their kind words. It means touching others, and making that connection.

After a tough time in my own life, I’d begun looking at my friends and family again and realising how much they mean to me, every one of them. The loss of Eric just highlights that importance. Death points out to us all that we are still living, as difficult as it may be in the wake of such a blow. Not living life to its fullest is turning your back on the simplest, yet most elegantly profound, message the gods have sent to us.