A large, WIFI-equipped conference room full of highly-educated, highly-trained diplomats; and one blogger (that I know of, there could of course be more, we’re all over). The distinguished delegate from, from… from a Baltic country, okay? walks by and everyone goes, Hey, strappy size 38 (European) Manolo Blahnik pumps. That was yesterday. She was too distracting so I sat somewhere else today. Apparently she’s into the shoes, she had on these pointy black Batman villainess things today, little bootlets from the front, all straps in the back. Long natural blonde Baltic hair. Pretty in a haughty round-faced Nordic Eicca Toppinen way.

Anyway. All these educated people debating topics vital to international security and the distinguished delegate from Ahem is distracting us so we sit somewhere else today, behind the delegation from the Republic of Supermodels, purely accidentlly, and their distinguished delegate likes to plant herself right in front of me, back to me, and bend over at the waist to discuss policy with her low-seated colleagues.

It’s a hard life.

Had a cello lesson recently, expected my teacher to flay me over my playing at our first concert, instead he got out a Romberg piece for the class recital end of May.

I’d tried it earlier, months ago, to my dismay. It’s a romantic piece, towards the schmaltzy end of the spectrum, and sounds awful without vibrato; also there are plenty of fast bits that threw me back then.

Sounds better now. Am beginning to vibrate, and the fast bits aren’t as fast as the fast bits I am just shy of being able to play in the orchestra, meaning it is feasible that I will be able to master this by the end of May. I mean, of course I will master it.

Orchestra weekend statistics:

• Violins flattened by falling piece of wood propped up against bathroom doorframe because motion detector kept turning on fan the noise of which disturbed the third violins rehearsing in that room: 1

• Exploding double-basses: 1 (A woman knocked her instrument against a chair and the back split off).
• Hours I thought I might be having a heart attack because I mistook my back pain (from tension and sitting and playing cello for hours and hours) for chest pain: approx. 24 I told Beta how much I loved her, just in case.
• Number of doors in my room: 0 (the hostel was under rennovation. I stole two mattresses and used them for doors instead. Less dangerous than big boards.)
• Number of nights I woke up at 3 and couldn’t fall back to sleep because the other guy in my room was snoring: 1. At breakfast I asked him how he had slept and he said he thought okay, and asked if he had snored and I said a little and he said, I must have rolled over onto my back, you should have just gone, TsTsTs and I would’ve woken up and rolled back over onto my side and I said, I’ll remember that next time.
• Number of evenings I sat around with the other adults (there turned out to be about ten or so of us, both teachers and “musicians”) talking, and drinking, more drinking than talking as I waited for something to occur to me to contribute to the conversation, and then someone makes fun of turtles as pets and I go onto a 30 minute monologue about what great pets tortoises make (which monologue is cited with humorous effect during the following night’s conversation): 1
• Number of times I grabbed my wonderful co-cellist and dragged her out to my car and showed, then demonstrated my tin whistle to her (because tin whistles had come up in a chat we were having), while my aura stood beside myself watching and shaking its head: 1
• Number of women who think tin whistles are hot instruments: ?

Beta and I enjoyed the weekend and got a lot out of it, I think. We concluded that musicians are cool. The kids were well-behaved. There was a pub attached to the hostel. I built a bonfire where the girls roasted bread dough on sticks, and the boys wrapped their dough around their sticks, added dough testicles and went hr-hr-hr. The orchestra sounded good in its first public performance/rehearsal/whatever, in a freezing cold church. A musician’s life is a hard one, don’t let anyone tell you different.

If an orchestra is composed of disparate sub-organisms/organs that work together to produce the effect of a larger organism, then the conductor is the eyes, ears and brain (ours impressed me very much). The harp, I think, is the glitter gland, showering the rest of us with wonderfulness. The double basses provided the heartbeat.

I felt like the ass.

The Albinoni piece we placed went well. Mozart (Mitridate) was going well, until I thought to myself, THIS IS GOING WELL! whereupon my mind went blank and I turned into a mime. What’s THAT one doing honey, fighting an invisible wind? Climbing an invisible staircase? No, he’s trapped inside an invisible box. Or wait, he’s playing the cello.

My problem, at times, was the notes were too fast for me. At other times, it was trying to devote 50% of my attention to the conductor, 50% to my sheet music, 50% to my bow direction (to avoid stabbing someone or getting stabbed), 50% to turning sheet music pages at the right time, and 50% to not getting confused by my cello teacher, who sat next to me but played the 3rd violin part on his cello because I gather we had too many cellos and not enough violins.

It is a lot of fun.

• The jellyfish is more graceful in water than on land.

• According to one website, most jellyfish are asexual, but the author goes on to say that means the jellyfish have both male and female sexual organs, so they probably mean hermaprodites, and some hermaphrodites probably get more sex than lots of people, but in fact, some jellyfish actually are asexual, if you know what I mean.
• People often think the jellyfish thinks it’s soooooo smart all the time because they mistake its shyness for haughtiness, but it actually doesn’t think so.
• The idea of going away to an orchestra workshop for a weekend ends up freaking the jellyfish out way more than an orchestra workshop could actually freak anyone out, in reality, despite the prospect of sitting in the string section getting stabbed by the bows of 12-year olds (and stabbing them as well) and the jellyfish knows this, and so despite the freakedoutness it also looks forward to the camp, because nothing could be as bad as it is fearing, so no matter how it turns out it will be better than it currently is in the head of the jellyfish, unless the jellyfish drops dead or something, in which case the jellyfish will be dead, so who cares? Have fun at the orchestra camp, is it’s motto. To the extent that fun with kids is legally possible.
• Assuming the jellyfish can actually find the camp, since all it has are vague directions downloaded from the Internet and a capable but snarky 16-year old navigator.
• The jellyfish remembers, though, that there will be at least two hot adult women at the workshop. Relatively hot, anyway.
• The jellyfish is a rather simple organism.
• The jellyfish’s main opening is its mouth. In fact, eating is the jellyfish’s main source of pleasure, but not in any weird way. It just happens to enjoy it. Other people watch the jellyfish eat, and it makes them hungry too, the depth of the jellyfish’s enjoyment. The jellyfish should be in advertising.
• Some people think the jellyfish is, or started out as, a collection of disparate organisms that somehow came to work together, each specializing in one function – you do the locomotion, you do the eating, you handle the existential questions, I’ll be responsible for reproduction, like that.
• Which is actually quite fascinating and makes you wonder if humans are like that too, and identity is just an illusion. Here, says the brain, I’ll handle the thinking.
• Sometimes the jellyfish thinks there’s nothing more beautiful and varied than rain.

Here is a picture of the house Gamma and I built over Easter. It is in our back yard.
Click on the small image for a much larger one, if you’re interested.

My wife and I also bought a piece of furniture for our bedroom, which holds CDs and has a flat area on top upon which our CD player just barely fits. I was shocked to discover upon unpacking it that it came pre-assembled. Our CD rack, I mean, not the house. The house we had to assemble, believe me. I had the walls 75% up when my wife asked whether I was sure the roof would fit, with the overhang and all, back there by the neighbor’s house. Of course I had not considered that, but it happened to just fit.

How I spent my Easter vacation over at Lost in Transit.