I just got a parcel from my parents in the mail. In it was the manual that goes with my printer.
Now that I know what all the buttons mean, I can photocopy. Thank you, gods!
And thank you, Mum, for the January treat!
Update: Aha. If I don’t click on the black & white button, the copier assumes it’s in colour – even if the original is b&w. And I end up with green music to practice with. Well, it’s, um… different.
Yesterday was the first rehearsal for Beethoven’s Ninth. Walked in, sat down, smiled at the bassist, said hello to the cellists I played with last November, and set up. The conductor (who’s a riot) announced that just for kicks, we’d start off with the fourth movement.
Yes. The movement. It’s what the Ninth Symphony is all about, really.
Me: Erk! Gulp!
(You see, the cellos figure prominently in the forth movement. Erk, indeed.)
And then the conductor lifted his head from his score and said, “Is that good for you, Brad? Can you do half a rehearsal here, then half off wherever else you need to be?”
Naturally, not knowing everyone in this symphony orchestra, I turned my head to follow his line of sight. As I did, a voice said, “No, I’m all yours today. It’s good.”
I blinked. I know Brad. Last time I saw him was, oh, seven years ago.
So we played (and what a ride, to sight-read the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth – I mean, really), the cellos got lots of compliments, and eventually we took a break. I put away my cello and got my water bottle, then picked a path through the chaos of instruments and strangers wandering around playing random bits of music to themselves all the way to the back where Brad sat with his trumpet on his lap, talking with someone else who was, oh my gods, the music teacher from my old high school.
I waited politely until they’d finished their topic of conversation, and when Brad turned to me, I said, “Last time I saw you, you were standing in the doorway to my apartment, holding out a bottle of IBC root beer and telling me that you couldn’t stay for my housewarming.”
We exclaimed and laughed a bit and caught up on the past seven years. He’s married, too. He complimented me on having reached a level of ability equivalent to playing with this symphony (and ooh, didn’t my ego need that bit of bolstering, although I admitted I was an emergency fill-in). Then he turned to introduce me to his friend Murray. I smiled and say, “Yes, Murray Rosenhek. You taught music at Mac High while I was there.”
He charmingly admitted that he didn’t remember me, which was highly amusing since, as I quickly assured him, I never took one of his classes. All my friends took music, but as our school didn’t teach strings, I took drama instead. When he asked with whom, and I told him Elaine Evans, he said, “Oh, that was twenty years ago!” as if that explained his memory lapse. Brad got a good laugh out of it.
It was good to share memories with someone who had been instrumental (if you’ll pardon the pun) in getting me into orchestra. It all began rather oddly. Brad, having access to Concordia’s database of students, contacted me via e-mail with compliments after he’d seen me sing in LLO’s production of The Pirates of Penzance. We started messaging, got to know one another, hung out a bit, and then one day he proposed an interesting gig: his wind orchestra was performing a really modern symphony by Johan de Meij called Lord of the Rings, and they had the idea of writing a dramatic narrative to introduce the symphony as a whole, as well as the individual movements. Would I be interested in performing something like that? And did I know someone with a good deep voice who could co-narrate with me?
Heck, yes!
Thus it was that Tal and I were guest performers with the Lakeshore Concert Band in May of 1998. (Okay, so Brad and I haven’t seen one another in six years. Feels like longer.) One of the last times I saw Brad was when he invited me along with some of the concert band to attend a Canada Day chamber orchestra concert in Pointe-Claire village. They all urged me to talk to the conductor and ask about joining. As secure as I was in my dramatic abilities, I was just as insecure about my cellistic talents, and as much as I wanted to play with an ensemble the level of technique displayed in the concert scared the hell out of me.
Has anyone made the connection yet?
Yes. I eventually managed to screw up the courage to call that conductor and inquire about a place for a cellist in the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra. It’s now my third season with them.
And now Brad and I are playing together in Cantabile. Small world, indeed.
Okay, fine. Here. New template.
This ought not to have been as much of a headache as it turned out to be.
They want me back to play Beethoven’s Ninth! Circle the 15th of February on your calendars!
So now that I’ve got this bulletin board, very cool-looking with lots of important story assignments and ongoing projects pinned to it (have I mentioned that I got a postcard from Neil Gaiman?), I am experiencing writing blocks the size of Stonehenge.
No, actually, I’m not. I’m exeriencing computer aversion.
Yes, there’s a difference. Last night I went to bed early, curled up in candlelight with cats, and began to work through a Great Canadian Novel issue that had been dropped by the wayside a while ago. Yes, all two of you out there who’ve read the GCN, I refer to Ben, poor guy. Yeah, he kind of vanished, didn’t he? I’m certain my protagonist would like him to stay vanished, but that just can’t happen.
I have never been a fan of the concept of jacking into some sort of computer system, but ye gods, if there were to be a method created for authors to allow ideas to pour straight from noggin to file, I’d be all for it.
And, of course, when I woke up this morning… gone. This is even worse considering that I’m one of those people who urge others to write down their ideas in order to encourage the creative subconscious with positive reinforcement (which, as t! pointed out to me last week, is simply another term for brainwashing). An evening of work, lost due to being warm and comfortable and sleepy. (And speaking of t!, yay for regular posting!)
As others in my general artistic circle are realising, writing without a regular schedule is just asking for problems.
One of my thoughts last night was about the idea of outlines. I had a rough chapter-by-chapter outline for my 2003 NaNo novel, and it worked. Not only did it work, I added stuff in-between. Now, I also enjoy working in a discovery-type fashion – no outline, no idea, just sit down and whee, where’s my protagonist going today? The GCN is written like that, and in general it works really, really well (the problem of the disappearing Ben aside), because the novel is about the protagonist discovering herself.
I used to write in a very episodic fashion: I’d have an idea for a scene and I’d write it. This meant I’d have a pile of scenes that I could play with like a jigsaw puzzle, or – even better example – a Tarot spread. How do these scenes relate? In what order do they appear? How can I tell a story that connects them all and have it make sense?
I’ve recently revived an old set of scenes written like this about a decade ago. They’re good; I like the characters. I know what order they come in. Now I just have to write the stuff that connects them all, which means – yes – an outline of sorts. And for some reason, I’m really resisting the outline idea right now. Probably because I know it’s Good For Me.
None of which, of course, even remotely connects to the computer aversion issue. Which is, quite simply, the fact that I don’t want to sit at a computer to write. Don’t tell my creative subconscious, but I’m going to outwit it by going back to pen and paper for a while. I might even buy it a new notebook and pen to lull it into complicity.
Shh. We mustn’t spoil the surprise.
As if substandard heaters aren’t enough, the electrical upgrade the landlord did around the time we moved in wasn’t sufficient to handle all the new electrical heaters going at once. Our power blew yesterday, and our heaters were offline for about twelve hours.
More excitingness included a half dozen emergency vehicles blocking off our street yesterday and brown-outs. I know Hydro-Quebec’s system is stressed when the temperature drops like this, but these problems aren’t general, they’re limited to our building, or ours plus the building on each side. The tenants have all decided to make a list of Things To Be Addressed and send it in a registered letter to the landlord. I know the heat is a big issue, but for me, the most annoying day-to-day problem is the front door. It’s a split door — the doorway is wide, and has two doors hung in it. Problem is, they’re each narrower than your average door, and the left one is always locked. When I leave with my cello over my shoulder, I have to struggle to pull the door open, hold it open because the spring closing is aggressively set, wriggle through and immediately run down the five steps while the door slams shut because there’s no landing on the other side. The door isn’t even wide enough to get a laundry basket through without turning sideways.
Sure, fine, you might say; it’s not so bad. Right. Except that locked left-hand door is highly illegal, because any emergency crew trying to get in won’t be able to fit. They’re lovely doors. I’d hate to see them get hacked down. Worse, if there’s a fire inside, it’s not a legally safe exit. We’ve got about fifty people in this building; the thought of all of them trying to jam through that narrow door is just ugly. (Fire escapes? What fire escapes? We discovered last summer that they lead right back into the basement of the building.)
Wow, I didn’t mean to go on a minor rant like that. I like this apartment a lot, I really do. One always discovers good things and bad things throughout a stay somewhere, though.
Good things yesterday involved the beginning of a new game (with lots of sugar! Yay meringues!), and getting long-awaited info to appreciative parties including friends, students, a newsletter co-ordinator, and the US acquisitions editor.
And today… home-baked cookies!
Remember those electric heaters that were installed last summer? The ones we haven’t really tested yet because it hasn’t been cold enough?
Guess what. Yep. They’re next to useless when the temperature goes below minus ten Celsius.
Have I mentioned that it’s numbingly cold here in Montreal recently? As in minus thirty-nine-ish?
I have recently rediscovered the joys of wearing socks to bed. Last night I wore full pyjamas plus a flannel button-up nightgown over them. Over the past five years I have grown used to not feeling cold; my husband, the portable furnace that he is, usually makes up for any lack of warmth in the air. And yet, even he’s finding the apartment cold these days. Even more than my multiple layers of clothing, this fact is proof to me that the heaters are substandard and the landlords were cutting costs.
Let’s see – spring is in, oh, seventy days or so?