“You seemed a bit lost at rehearsal,” my teacher said at my lesson yesterday, putting it mildly.
“Yes,” I said, not adding, “I felt like a dog chasing its ass in circles,” which is what I had wanted to say at the rehearsal, and only refrained from doing because a couple of young kids about 12 years old (or younger) were also playing, and I decided to say nothing rather than something like, “I feel like a dog chasing it’s bottom,” because that is not how I had felt.
“Anything in particular?” my teacher said. “What about this tricky part here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I couldn’t make any sense of that, as you noticed,” I said. In fact, I might as well have been watching flies dance on a zebra’s carcass. But that’s not something one normally says in polite conversation. Or, at least, it would have come out more awkward than I like to think that sort of thing does in writing, because first I would have had to translate it into German, (es war wie Fliegen beim Tanzen auf einem Zebrakadaver zu beobachten, or something) and it would just lose its spontaneity, and so on.
I had a lot on my mind when I was at the rehearsal, and basically could not concentrate. And I just couldn’t figure out the fingerings on the spot like that, and then I got flustered and gave up.
In my lesson, my teacher was kind enough to discuss some basics of figuring out fingerings, which should help in the long run. One of my problems with cello is impatience. I would probably move faster if I went slower.