Monthly Archives: February 2003

First Rehearsal, New Conductor

8,900 visitors! Goodness. We’re about a week away from a year of the Owlyblog. That’s a lot of people. (Can’t fool me, I know that it’s a couple of you at work, checking several times throughout the day in desperation, seeking something, anything to fill the void…)

Last night was our first rehearsal with our new conductor, Douglas Knight. Our principal cellist was away on a business trip, so last night of all nights Walter made me fulfill my promise to him and join him at the first stand. For those of you who don’t know, the principal chair of a section sits (a) closest to the conductor, and (b) closest to the audience. Theoretically it’s because they’re so talented and experienced, and they lead the rest of the section.

So there I was last night, sitting right next to the new conductor. “This will be much better,” Walter told him. “She’s good.”

Now, as much as that boosted the ego and probably had a positive effect on how I played, it didn’t change the fact that I hadn’t been at rehearsal in two weeks, and had played only once at home (shame, shame!). And what I played in my living room had nothing to do with what we’re preparing at orchestra, and everything to do with Bach solo cello suites.

I didn’t embarrass myself, which is good. I proved to myself that I can play musically even with wrong notes. I also proved to myself that two weeks of not looking at Mendelssohn is suicide, especially in that dratted second movement with those wretched sixteenth notes and the celli solo in tenor clef. Grr.

All in all, it was a good night. We’re all feeling each other out, finding new footing, new ways to communicate, learning each other’s style. He really put us through our paces, working most of the Mendelssohn: the minuet and trio movement (which was quite beautiful once we found our rhythm as a unit), the final Allegro Con Fuoco movement (also known as the Movement That Never Ends), then back to the evil second movement. And then, joy of joys, the nice, dramatic, Don Giovanni overture. My fingers were swollen and throbbing when I got home, but that’s what you get when you don’t practice for two weeks, right?

Can’t practice today, though; I’m off to the store, then home this afernoon to work on the newsletter, then back to teach at the store tonight. (Yes, astonishing, I know; the first workshop this year that has enough students to merit not cancelling it!) So, tomorrow I will attack the looming threat of the Stretto section of the final Mendelssohn movement (actually, the entire last page), and rework the second movement yet again.

It’s a good thing that I want to practice, I think. It’s nice to feel positive about my cellistic abilities once again.

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You know, the problem with editing is that it�s someone else�s work.

As an editor, your goal is to make the story or the abstract of the text more accessible to future readers. You have a double responsibility: to the story or abstract itself, and to the author.

Where do you draw the line? When do you cross a word out, or move it elsewhere, or leave it as an example of the author�s style? When do you take the responsibility of taking that away from the author and doing it differently for the good of the story, or the text?

Presumably the author has given this work to you because s/he trusts you to help make it better. (Or you�re being paid to do it, which means that people trust you enough to remunerate you for your skills!) As an editor, you�ve been given a certain authority. Maybe I�m just authority-shy, but with every change I make I have to stop from second-guessing myself. I know I�m making the sentence easier to read, but am I taking away from the author�s personal style?

Trust me, if I wanted to rewrite a text and remove all trace of an author�s style, I could. So I know that I�m holding back; I know that I�m not obliterating the original author�s presence. A good editor shouldn�t be noticeable when you read the finished text. There should be a single voice apparent.

I suppose it�s just a degree of interpreting personal space. You know � how close you stand to someone at a bus stop, or on the metro. I want to give the author their room. It�s their work, after all. If I change a sentence, or the order of a set of words, or substitute another term for something that is unclear � how close can I get before I�m standing on top of them?

Of course, even just being aware of the potential for overstepping my mandate and questioning every edit that I make means that I�ll probably never have to really be concerned about suffocating the author. Which is sort of consoling, in the general overview of things, but not enough when you�re picking up the correction tape to correct your own edit.

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A friend sent me this link to an article by Philip Pullman called Voluntary Service, which examines the age-old argument concerning the effect that art has on society, and what purpose it actually serves. Does it change the world? Is it mere entertainment?

Along the way, though, Pullman numbers a list of responsibilities any writer has, to him/herself, society, his/heraudience, and, ultimately, the story. It’s one of the best articles on writing that I’ve ever had the fortune to read.

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A wonderful interview experience indeed at the CBC this morning! It ended up being more about alternative spirituality rather than Imbolc, but it was good nonetheless. Whenever I do an interview I�m always certain that I�m talking in circles, but both the host and the producer thanked me for expressing myself clearly and intelligently, so I must have done something right. I�ll be interested in hearing the final edit when it airs on Radio 1 Sunday morning between 8.30 and 9.00 AM.

That is, assuming the piece isn�t pre-empted by what we saw on the monitors when we walked out of the recording studio at 9.30 this morning. There�s a skeleton crew working the weekends, and with the producer monitoring my interview with the host, no one was quite sure what to do with the news of the shuttle as it came through and it seemed as if the main national news feed from Toronto hadn�t picked it up yet. I got a first-hand look at what happens in a newsroom when there�s a crisis � quick calls, calm re-evaluation of priority reporting. I also experienced the frustration that most reporters must feel: when there�s a catastrophe, people want information and answers, and there aren�t enough answers to go around. And yet, the people still demand, and the media must provide. We saw the footage of the break-up over and over as we put our coats on; this afternoon when we checked the news again I was glad to see the NASA publicity people giving frank and straight answers, being very open with their information.

It was a tragedy. For once, it was a tragedy that was a sorrow for all of mankind in our desire to explore, to broaden our horizons, rather than an event labelled as violence or aggression. I think that�s what hit me the hardest as I watched the footage for the first time at 9.45 this morning in the newsroom: every single person on this planet lost something this morning. All of us can mourn without pointing a finger, without making someone out to be the bad guy. We cannot direct our anguish, and thus, we unite in sorrow.