Books And Stuff

Was I the only person on the planet who didn’t watch Lathe of Heaven on TV last night? I woke up this morning to half a dozen e-mails in my in-box either ranting or raving about it. Please tell me someone taped it so I can figure out what the fuss was about.

I had a nightmare this morning and woke up in a jolt of freezing terror around five, and lay there shaking till six when my husband got up. Bad dreams are so frustrating; your logical mind says, “Okay, car, knife, bad man, night, these things are highly unlikely to happen, it was just a dream,” but your system is still stuck in that shadow fight-or-flight a nightmare produces. I call it the shadow version because with real fight-and-flight, you can actively shake the tremors and cold sweats and pounding heart. Shadow fight-and-flight is an echo sort of reaction that happens while you’re asleep, and it lingers insidiously until your husband wakes up and rubs your back and brings you cats to scare away the bad stuff with purrs. I had good dreams too, although most had a chorus of invisible monks breaking into a chant of “Esca-flowne” all over the place, a direct result of watching the first Escaflowne DVD last night. Escaflowne is my very first foray into the world of anime, and I can say at the very least the score is having some sort of effect on me, evidently. Nothing like invisible monks chanting the name of a giant robot as a dream soundtrack to really highlight the ludicrous aspect to my quality dream-time.

My parents are back from their annual holiday drive into the States, and they’ve picked up their new four-month-old kitten friend, who is a Maine Coon. His name is Seamus, and he’s following them around a lot. Their established old cat is not amused. So now my mother and I get to exchange kitten stories. And speaking of kittens, they’re getting nice and plump, and Nix is filling out nicely. As of yesterday their milk formula was blended with a spoon of pablum, so it’s now like a very thin gruel, and they’re a bit upset. When you’re five inches long, a week is forever, so when the viscosity of their food alters once weekly, it must come as a real shock to their little kitten brains.

While going through my filing cabinet looking for a label I came across a picture taken at my one and only public cello recital. Ceri’s right; my cello is huge next to me. For everyone who is waiting with bated breath to know what my string decision will be, I’m going to try a Eudoxa A string, since that’s the crucial replacement and the string I always have the most trouble with sound-wise, and if it sounds horrible then I’ll order a set of Aricores. If it doesn’t, then I’ll try a D string too, and so forth.

I went out yesterday and wandered around downtown a bit. I went into Paragraphe, and wondered why on earth I don’t do it more often. It’s just around the corner from Indigo, after all, and it stocks all the books I like, and is nicer, and an independent, too. (Let’s never mind the fact that the owners sold out to become the directors of the distribution company owned in majority by Chapters a few years ago; water under the bridge and all that.) I suddenly thought that I ought to be reading the type of book I’m writing, to get a feel for what was being published. And then, something that an old customer who was an author from the F/SF shop told me once drifted across my mind: this counts as research. Save the receipts.

Hmm. I buy books anyway. If it doesn’t work come tax-time, I haven’t lost anything. Woo-hoo! So I bought Adam Davies’ debut novel The Frog King, which was one of those brilliant debuts last season. It began really well, then descended a bit into maudlin self-abuse. Still better than some of the stuff out there. Just finished it this morning. Lesson learned: does your protagonist really have to hit rock bottom in an unpleasant way for your story to be told? Is your audience going to come away from the novel with an unpleasant taste in their mouths? If so, is it ultimately key to the plot? I didn’t think so in this case, so my lesson note reads: put your protagonist through symbolic hell. Forcing your audience to read every little bit of ick and dredge before your protagonist sees a scrap of blue sky drags your tale down.

I also picked up Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic, which is rather amusing because the cover is pink, and my ex-colleagues know how much I foam at the mouth when I see a pink or purple book. (Pink or purple pages and/or fonts are even worse.) Mind you, that’s in the New Age sort of book, so maybe this slipped past my pink radar because it was in the Literature section.

I made tons of notes on what other books I would buy when I went back, too. It’s been ages since I got excited about books like this. I think it’s because for the first time in eleven years, I don’t work at a bookstore, so I don’t have my surprises spoiled for me by ordering from forthcoming catalogues. It also has to do with the style of book Paragraphe stocks. I don’t have to wade through crap, the way I do at a chain store. It’s all higher quality stuff. Call me elitist, I don’t care. Label me; just let me have good books.

Paragraphe has a web site, so I thought I could start linking the books I talk about. I haven’t before because I refuse to funnel money into a Canadian chain that doesn’t need it (I’m a staunch supporter of independant booksellers, and you should be too), let alone an American company (Bleah! Amazon.com sucks! Okay, they have a decent review system, I check them out for reviews all the time; and they have tempting shipping deals, but they’re American! So is the Amazon.ca site – Canadian shipping address, owned by a Seattle company! Don’t get suckered! Support your own economy – please!) (Okay, rant over.) So I checked the Paragraphe site this morning. Alas, it is counter-intuitive, doesn’t list all their books, doesn’t have a page per title describing it, etcetera. Still, it’s an excellent place in person, which is what you want when you’re looking for a good bookstore anyway. More nifty Montreal bookstores you might not know about: The Double Hook on Greene, which deals exclusively in Canadiana, and Nicholas Hoare, also on Greene (with another location in the basement of Ogilvy’s if you’re feeling particularly swanky someday). Anyone else have a favourite?

Throwing The Audition

For everyone who has been asking, Friday night went rather badly — I choked, I dropped lines, I wobbled. As I expected, I didn’t get the part. Thoughtful condolence gifts of dinner, flowers, expensive chocolates etc are always appreciated.

In fact, only one person out of the truckload of excellently qualified friends who also auditioned for various roles was cast. Which leads me to wonder, who the heck is in this show?

The casting chairman who called me was evidently rather distressed about the state of things, for he chatted with me for a few minutes about how he’d shown the committee clips he’d videotaped the past year of my vocal and stage work, and tried in every way possible to get me to come back. He also told me that the committee had authorised him to offer me an understudy role of the smallest part in the show, which is out of my range. And for a moment, I balanced between rage and laughing; I finally chose to laugh. He asked my reasons why I wasn’t coming back at all, and I told him frankly that I had been extremely frustrated last year by the lack of effort put into the show by the chorus, and that I felt as if I had been pulling more than my fair share of weight (apart from understudying two other roles and learning three different sets of blocking, I mean). The bickering, the attitudes, and the lack of professionalism amongst the chorus members irritated me to a point that it’s not worth going back. (In retrospect, being in the chorus last year was supposed to help me get a role this year, so technically I could count last year as a loss. I’m not going to think about that too hard.) The only two really bitter things about this are (a) that I won’t be working with Rob on-stage again, and (b) that Phoebe was the second of the two G&S roles I’ve ever actively wanted to sing (the first was Iolanthe, and if you’ve known me for over three years you know the nasty story behind that one too).

I was really upset on Friday night. I hate auditions because they suggest that it’s the best I can do, which I (and the casting committee) know damn well is not true. Some people audition better than others, and then (Iolanthe being a case in point) don’t improve through rehearsal. I think the shame and embarrassment I feel about audition failure revolves around the suggestion that I can’t do better, past proof to the contrary. I’m also trying to figure out why my auditions get worse as I get older and gather more experience singing. (I could trace the beginning of the end to being in a relationship with my husband, actually – I haven’t succeeded in an audition since we began courting.) The dialogue part of the audition, however, was fantastic, a fact with which I’m soothing my injured soul. This audition has shown me that it’s time to go back to straight theatre. As much as I love singing, and as good as I am at it, I’m not trained, nor do I have a piano or a teacher to work on my audition pieces with me, as other candidates do; I’m feeling it out and hoping I do it right, doing it by instinct. Time to stop agonising and just do what I’m good at for a while. So, all you theatre people out there — drop me a line and let me know when auditions pop up! I do have fourteen years of varied stage experience, after all (and I’m not counting high school).

The good part: I can re-join my book club (and re-read The Princess Bride by Tuesday — no problem), and have Fridays free for socialising and what-not (with all those friends who also won�t be in the show!). Silver lining.

All About The Cello

Okay, I’m in a educational mood this morning. I’m also going to geek out on you. Hold tight.

Since most of you have never (and likely will never!) hear me mess about alone with the cello, you can hear the individual strings and basic sounds here. (If you’re curious about the physical construction of the cello, and how it all goes together, check out this exploded print of a cello.) The A string is the thinnest, the highest, and the one that breaks the most often because it’s under the most pressure. The C string is the lowest, and it’s a heavy string. To give you an idea of the tension on each string, a medium-gauge A string will place about 35 lbs of pressure on the cello, a D string will press around 32 lbs, a G string will press about 29 lbs, and a C string will press about 28 lbs. Go ahead, add it all up and marvel at the feat of engineering that keeps a curved box of thin wood encasing about six inches of air from exploding into matchwood.

My particular instrument is picky about what A string goes on it. Most brands that I’ve tried sound sharp (as in painfully hitting your ear, leaping out when the other three strings sound nice and warm, not as opposed to flat) and a bit nasal. I chose Pirastro Aricores last time, a perlon core aluminum and silver-wrapped string, and the whole set sounded pretty impressive. They have a nice dark sound that I enjoy a lot. They’ve stood up well, too.

Hmm. More background necessary, methinks. String instruments used to be strung with gut, which produces a very soft warm sound. Obviously with larger concert halls and most recording sessions we can’t do that any more, and gut is horribly unstable in humid climates (like, well, Montreal). So strings diverged, and now can roughly be split into two categories: synthetic cores, which sound warmer and softer, and steel cores, which sound brighter and more brilliant. I have an innate fear of being heard, and besides, I like the warmer tones, so I opt for synthetic cores. Perlon is one such core. People still use gut, of course, it’s just less reliable. In fact, there’s a couple of brands from Pirastro string that uses a real gut core and winds it with aluminum (for the two higher strings) and silver (for the two deeper strings). On top of materials used in composition, there’s the whole problem of what grade to use: light, medium or heavy. (I usually stick with medium; nice, safe, middle of the road.)

I’ve tried Thomastik Dominant strings (icky A strings that are wound with a flat ribbon of chrome that breaks all the time and slithers down the Perlon core), Larsen strings (swanky steel strings that sounded lifeless on my cello), a sleek steel Jargar A string that snapped three times in two weeks, a Thomastik Precision that wasn’t very memorable, and now the Aricores. The staff member at Shar tried to talk me out of synthetic core Pirastro Aricores and into steel core D’Addario Helicores, but mindful of my pocketbook I held out for the Aricores. I was rather smug when he’d strung it, played it and admitted my victory; they sounded terrific.

Now, I could order a set of Aricores from Toronto, but I don’t feel like it. I like Wilder & Davis, and darn it all, I want to support them. They don’t sell Aricores. So…. I embark again upon the Great String Adventure. I’d love to try a wound gut string; I think it would be very interesting. They sell Pirastro Eudoxas, which would set me back around $185. If I want to keep on with a synthetic core, a set of Pirastro Obligatos is $220, but I suppose I could put the less expensive Thomastik Dominants on the G and C (a C string that costs $44 is easier to justify than one that costs $70), and use the Obligatos on the A and D. I really would rather not use Dominants again, though. Or, I can just buy one Eudoxa at a time, starting with the A string. I’d jump at Pirastro Gold, which like the Eudoxa is aluminum or silver-wrapped gut and is less expensive, but Wilder & Davis doesn’t stock it.

Selecting strings is kind of like a puzzle; you can mix and blend brands, according to your instrument’s peculiarities and you pocketbook, or you opt for a set where each string is designed to complement the others. It’s a hit and miss sort of enterprise, though. You can hit on a brilliant combo, or it can fizzle. Price desn’t seem to really indicate quality very well; those three Jargar strings that snapped were quite expensive and enjoy an excellent reputation overall (although other cellists have indicated that they’ve had a similar problem with thse particular A strings). A sentence of description is hard to go by too; anything that uses the words “loud” or “brilliant” usually get crossed off my list right away. I want a mellow, rich, dark sound. From the research I’ve done this morning, it looks like Eudoxas are my pick if I want to support my local luthier of choice (and they have a string sale on right now, so I’d save around $16 off the set which would basically save me the taxes and bring my cost down to about $167). I could always order a new set of Aricores ($99) or a set of Golds ($129) from Toronto (shipping is free, after all, and I wouldn’t pay PST).

Argh. Decisions, decisions.

In My Arms Again

I have my cello back again!

I met Ceri for dinner and sangria, and then we took the metro up to Mont-Royal and walked down St Denis (mistake, mistake, mistake – look, there’s Valet de Coeur, let’s look at miniatures. Look, there’s Excalibor, and the new Fall line is out, ooh, microsuede… no! No! Must pick up cello!)

We got there, and I gave the young man my name and claim sheet (different anxious young man – this one was Anglophone); he brought it in from the back, and I experienced the expected “Yay!” feeling, but something else, too. I saw my cello almost as if it were the first time… and it was, well, beautiful. Aesthetically attractive, I mean. I’ve always slightly regretted the fact that the varnish is orangey, instead of more brown or red. Not that the colour matters, of course; it’s the sound that you’re focused on, after all. When he carried it out, though, I knew it was mine right away (I’ve always been slightly afraid that if someone had a score of cellos, I wouldn’t be able to pick mine out by sight alone). Then, of course, I was swamped by the “Mine! Mine!” feeling, and he gave it to me, and all I wanted to do was hug it.

“It’s so small!” said Ceri.

“Well, that would be because I don’t have the endpin out,” I said. The endpin adds a good foot to the length of the instrument.

“And you’re not sitting down,” Ceri said with a grin, “That makes a big difference too. Usually it looks huge next to you.”

There was a gentleman there with a bike helmet who had been asking about violin rental while we’d waited, and he was still there as I put my cello away in the case. “That’s a cello?” he asked, partly to me, partly to the young man. “My middle son wants to play the cello, but we can’t seem to find a teacher.”

Now, I just so happened to have a slip of paper in my back pocket with the name and number of a cello teacher on it, which I had picked up in another music store a couple of hours earlier. I pulled it out and gave it to him; he needed it more than I did. I don’t remember what I said to him, really, only that if a child of ten is asking for lessons on a string instrument, for God’s sake, give him lessons. Music can only enrich, and the whole process of learning to read and play music trains a different part of the brain than does regular reading. What I didn’t say aloud was that it was refreshing to find a child who wanted music lessons, instead of feeling like s/he’d been forced into it. Cultivate that, says I.

So I got home and opened the case and oooh, the new bridge is twice as thick and arched higher and my strings rest on it beautifully, and it’s shaped, they actually sanded parts away in places for the more delicate strings to resonate better, and the sound is fantastic. If I seem a over-excited, you should have seen my last bridge – it was half this thick, only slightly rounded, and certainly not shaped so attentively or with consideration for the individual instrument. But then, this only confirms my general not-impressed-ness with Jules St-Michel, and increases my admiration for Wilder & Davis.

The luthier made a note on the work report that my A string is beginning to unravel as well, but I knew that already. It needs to be replaced before orchestra begins. Actually, all the strings are two years old (possibly three, goodness) and they saw more playing last year than I usually do, so they technically should all be replaced. My poor husband last night nearly choked when he asked how much an A string would cost, and I told him in the neighbourhood of thirty dollars. Good thing I didn’t tell him that C strings go for about fifty or sixty. A full set will cost between one hundred and one hundred and seventy. Guess I know what I’m doing with my next EI cheque…

Where You Least Expect it

Found in the middle of a page on making bath bombs (fizzy bath salts, guys, not – never mind. It’s a girl thing, okay?):

Ummm.. what else? Don’t store the bombs in metal because the of the corrosive properties of the salt, avoid storing them in plastic zip-loc type bags or cellophane, I have heard reports that the plastic eats the scents, and a few mysterious reports of lavender essential oil going bad when stored in cellophane, and try to store them either sealed or in a dry area. Don’t use them if they look or smell funny, don’t run with scissors, call your mother.