Monthly Archives: April 2002

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CURRENTLY READING:

A Long Fatal Love Chase, by Louisa May Alcott. I read her novella The Inheritance recently, and I enjoyed it so much that on my way home from HMV (with only a Mozart and a Rossini, under $20, and both for study purposes – I couldn’t find the Bartok at a low enough price) I stopped by the second-hand bookstore across from the metro and picked up two Alcotts, this and another collection of novellas called Behind A Mask (under $10!). If you’ve ever read Little Women, you know the kind of stories Jo writes. Well, Louisa May wrote them as well. These will be perfect bus books – if they last that long…

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.

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Okay – one last thing.

Look what I just found! The photo taken at the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra January concert is now up on the orchestra web page!

That’s me, front row, second from the right, between our esteemed conductor and artistic director Andr�s (far right) and Morris, our inimitable bassoonist. My stand partner Walter is standing just behind and to the right of me.

The IntraWeb

The strangest thing just happened to me. I was double-checking my blog page after fiddling with the template, and the banner at the top caught my eye. I recently uninstalled my ad-blocking software, so these are new to me. Normally they are pesky. This banner was bright yellow and advertised some place called Central Booking, with a catch-phrase of Read Like Crazy. Hmm, I said, listened to the Force murmuring in my inner ear, and clicked on the banner – something which I never do.

I discovered something rather cool. A whole community of people like me who think books are important, and who like to talk about them. Check it out.

Imagine. A banner for reading, popping up on my web log. I love my life.

That earthquake I posted about at ten to seven registered as a 5.5, and was felt from Niagara to Quebec City, from the northern US to the Laurentians. Nice to know I wasn’t just dreaming. (Hmmm – I was awake before six-thirty, and the earth moved. Coincidence? You decide.)

Well, it’s 7:30. I think I’ll go away now. Maybe a nice bath with a book. Then breakfast. Then HMV. Once home again, I will (gasp!) practice. My husband and I have made an agreement: we have a whiteboard divided into two columns by the instruments. Every time one of us practices we’ll log the date and time on the board. At the end of the month, we’ll add them up. This is an overt attempt to shame each other into practicing more. I have an eight-year head start, but I am graciously waiving that in the interests of fair play. (Ye gods – have I actually been playing the cello for just shy of eight years? Goodness.) I’m looking forward to the creative excuses he will come up with to explain his lack of chanter-playing.

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There is something so cool about turning on the radio and hearing a symphony you’ve played in chamber orchestra. This is Beethoven’s 2nd, and I adore it. It was the grand finale to our concert in January, and it has deplaced the 7th as my Official Favourite Beethoven Symphony. We’re working on the 1st now, and it just doesn’t grab me like the 2nd does. I’m loving the Mozart we’re doing though, the 26th. Which I must go downtown to find a recording of this very day – heh heh heh – HMV, here I come, second weekend in a row! I buy very few CDs now; they’re expensive and I haven’t exactly had the disposable income necessary, nor the time to check out music stores. Barring last weekend’s joyous celebration of Baebes, I think I’ve bought all of six CDs this year, most of which were under $10 and study discs for orchestra (gotta love those classical Naxos CDs!). Before that… hmm… I bought the Harry Potter soundtrack in early December. I think that’s pretty much it for last few months of 2001; I don’t even remember what else I might have bought after the summer. I’m looking for a recording of the Mozart and some Bartok, again for orchestra prep purposes. It’s not so hot today, so it will be a nice trip. Maybe I’ll take the 104 again.

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I will explain a simple feature of human cadence.

We’re simple creatures. We like a da-DAH, da-DAH, da-DAH rhythm. Why? Because it’s our heartbeat. Simple. Elegant. A bassline accompaniment to everything we do. People who tell you they have no rhythm are either lying or vampires.

A pair of syllables (like da-DAH) that are unstressed-stressed is called an iamb. Most of English words and phrases fit this pattern; iamb followed by iambs followed by iambs. We stress the first syllable of a good chunk of words making up our language.

So when Lore Fitzgerald Sj�berg (yes, of the Shuttlecocks) remarked upon the eerie coincidence of posting his Twelve Actual AP Headlines Which, When Followed By ‘Doo-Dah, Doo-Dah,’ Can Be Sung To The Tune of ‘Camptown Races’ synchronous with the appearance of this article on writing catchy headlines, I checked the article out. The author seems to think he’s hit on some sort of miraculous discovery. I just shook my head and sighed.

It’s called iambic meter, folks. The best example of this is Shakespeare. Read this without stopping at the end of every line for breath, or without being overly dramatic. (That’s just wrong. Use the punctuation; that’s what it’s there for.)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

(Hamlet, III.i, if you need to know.) See how it’s sort of sing-songy? The human ear likes that cadence; it’s familiar, and we like familiar things. I should actually go a step further and say that it’s the Western ear that likes that cadence, for I cannot state with any sort of authority that Oriental literature follows the same style as Occidental. (Incidentally, it’s the same with music. We like a nice balanced eight-note scale with proper intervals. Asian and Indian music is hard for some people to wrap their ears around because it doesn’t follow the same musical rules; their idea of what is aurally pleasing is completely different.) Anyway, if you remove the last three syllables (that would be a weak-strong-weak syllable sequence) from any of the first four lines I’ve quoted up there and replace it with “doo-dah, doo-dah”, you’d have the same phenomenon that the dork who wrote the news story discovered (the comma is a pause, replacing one of the beats in the musical line). Case in point:

“The SLINGS and ARrows OF outRAGE, DOO-dah, DOO-dah.”

You’re welcome.

You know, one of my friends called me from his copywriting job (not copyrighting; on the contrary, he likes to claim that the term “copyright infringement” was created for him) last week and said that I was his last hope for aid, having gone through other copywriters and English graduates of various levels. It was a question concerning the use of the terms “logistics systems” and “logistical systems”. I talked it through for him and he seemed impressed, saying, “That sounds like an actual rule!” “Rule?” I said. “No one’s ever taught me a rule about this. It just makes sense.” “Wait a minute,” he said, becoming slightly suspicious in an amused sort of way; “You’re using the Force on this one, aren’t you.” Heck, yes! Grammar is all about using the Force! It’s a feeling. It’s being aware of what you’ve seen used elsewhere, and knowing instinctively if it’s correct or not. It’s about scanning. (Not with a machine, to the ear.)

What’s wrong with using the Force anyway? Just because it’s a totally subjective matter that you have to take my word for and can’t quantify doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing…

Autumn: Jedi M.A. in English. Guardian of Peace, Justice, and the English Language within the Galaxy.

Okay, now I’m hungry. I’ve been awake for two and a half hours. It’s beginning to be light outside. This is just wrong.