Robin McKinley's Blog, page 66

Cold, cold, cold

 

 

IT IS SO COLD.  It is the 24th of frelling February in southern England and when I got up this morning it was SNOWING.  Snowing and lying.*

It has not been a good week for peace of mind so I determined to get to the monks extra-early for the Saturday night silent-contemplation-before service prayer so I could have a long enough sit (I hoped) to produce some insight.**  In pre-contemplation mode I considered the weather.  And took a BLANKET with me.  The blanket, indeed, in which I wrap myself up in my own sitting room when I do my Zen Christian zazen thing.  There are DRAUGHTS at floor-sitting level, even with an Aga on the other side of the wall, and while I’ve discovered I can sit*** in jeans I’m usually sitting in my dressing-gown, which was not made to keep you warm sitting on the floor with the central heating turned off and the snow falling outdoors.

I was very glad to have a blanket last night.  As well as the two cotton turtlenecks, the two woolly jumpers, the leather jacket, the two pairs of socks and the longjohns under my jeans.  And the fleece-lined leather gloves.  My circulation has always been rubbish—arguably I’m a fidget because I’m trying to stay warm, and not all the hurtling part of the daily hurtles is for the hellcritters’ sakes—and sitting still, I swear the blood all withdraws to my liver and has a party.†  And I’m going to be very glad to have my blanket next Saturday morning when I try yet again to go to Aloysius’ frelling early silent prayer service.  He says the chapel they sit in is COLD.  Where has spring got to?  Drinking Mai Tais in Hawaii?  What?

* * *

* I thought, okay, get thy tail to New Arcadia tower this morn, they will have need of thee.  Like horsefeathers and bulltiddly:  they had ten ringers.  I should have stayed in bed.

** Nothing like upsetting your own apple cart.  I didn’t think I was observing all that challenging a Lent.  Evidently the personal status quo disagrees.

*** That is, cross-legged on a cushion.  I did yoga fairly seriously for a while too and while I could (for example) do the splits with what I fondly believed to be a straight pelvis, I never quite made it to full lotus, not to stay anyway.  I could sit in half-lotus however and it’s a nice stable base when you’re settled, and you can forget about it and concentrate on your breath.  The books I’ve been reading lately insist that you must learn to sit properly—and the accompanying photos are of course of rows and rows of utterly calm and centred-looking people sitting in PERFECT full lotuses with both knees firmly against the ground and their laps perfectly level—and therefore their curved hands are perfectly level too.  Well I decided I ought to be able to get my half-lotus back.  And promptly pushed it too hard MCKINLEY THIS BODY IS SIXTY YEARS OLD CAN YOU TRY AND REMEMBER THAT and have managed to outrage one hamstring so seriously I can barely sit at all.  Arrrrgh.  I told Aloysius this tonight and he tried hard not to laugh, but he also said that at the very serious zendo he sat at before he came to St Margaret’s everyone had a different assortment of pillows on which they sat differently with different props and supports.  Speaking of good enough.

I was planning to pull some of the comments out of the It’s All Performance.  Isn’t It? thread and the Good Enough. Mostly. Sometimes thread . . . but they’re all good, some of them are too complex to cut intelligently^, and it’s also a conversation so if I tried to haul any of it out here I’d have to haul most of it out here.  But let me recommend that anyone interested in performance, in the arts, in human creativity and in being good enough should go read those threads.^^

So just a random thought or two to be going on with.  I’d like to think EMoon’s and my generation^^^ will have been the last to get really mired in the If You’re Not Amazing Don’t Bother mindset, but that’s probably naïve.  But Shalea reminded us of that excellent old adage:  Perfect is the enemy of good.  Yes.  And blondviolinist, who is a professional musician, added that the concept of ‘perfect’ makes her nuts, because it makes it sound as if there is One True Way . . . and there isn’t.  She adds:  I’m blown away by the rich possibilities for creativity as individual people bring their own imagination and heart to their music. (Or visual art, or dancing, or writing, or….)  And someone else somewhere—sorry, I can’t find you right now—quotes Mahalia Jackson:  God don’t mind a bum note.

I do have a slight Well she can say that she’s Mahalia Jackson reaction to this last.  But all of this (and other comments I haven’t mentioned) point to what I wanted to say further about my own need to believe that I’m allowed to engage with—in this case, music, from the making it side as well as the taking in someone else’s making side, live in a concert, live in your sitting room, on the radio or CD, or Met Live at your local cinema.  Performance at any level, I think, changes your relationship to music—broadens it, deepens it, makes you go oh wow in a whole new thrillingly-more-informed way when you listen to your favourite Beverly Sills CDs.  For this alone it’s worth trying to play or sing, however badly, even if you have to send your husband to the pub and leave your critters at the other house while you practise.  Which, because I am very fortunate, I don’t.#

The other thing—the big thing—is that if you can really ENGAGE with the music—if you can inform it, inhabit it—express it—well, God won’t mind the bum notes, and, chances are, neither will your audience.  When Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau died last year, there were millions of words of obituary about what an astonishing singer he was—a lot of people think he is the greatest lieder singer who ever lived—at least since recording equipment got good enough for comparisons to be made.  I knew that.  What I didn’t know is that quite a few people also say that he did not have, by nature, a first rate voice.  He had a very good voice, obviously, a professional-quality voice, but it wasn’t absolute top value:  what he did have was overwhelming commitment and insight, and an unmatched ability (yes I’m a fan) to get inside the music he’s performing, and give it to his audience.  Perfect isn’t only the enemy of good, it’s also the enemy of fabulous.

. . . Okay, I want to get to bed tonight, so I Will Continue This Later. . . .

^ At least at this time of night when intelligence is getting a little thin on the ground anyway

^^ Note that if you want to comment yourself you do have to join the forum, but anyone can read the threads.

^^^ I know there are few more 60-pluses out there but I don’t want to drag anyone out of the shadows who doesn’t want to come.

# Peter continues to insist he likes hearing me sing, and the hellterror has mostly stopped erupting when I try.  Chaos may still leave the hellhound bed to walk over to the piano and stare at me earnestly—especially on evenings when the high B is considering making an appearance—but he doesn’t make an issue of it.

† As I like to say, probably too often, I’m cold all the time, except occasionally when I’m too hot.

KES, 67

 

SIXTY SEVEN

The drive to Cold Valley was splendidly uneventful, comparatively speaking.  There were the cows, which were all clustered by the fence as we drove by and I’m sure the van shied, like a horse objecting to a field of pigs.  And then there was the getting lost, which is a good trick in a countryside that mostly only has one road at a time, but I managed.  The van’s elderly GPS could get you to New Iceland and then had palpitations, as I found out when I tried to program it to take me to Cold Valley, so I had to follow the paper map that had come with my copies of all the stuff from Homeric Homes.  Rental agreements had changed since my days in the East Village, or maybe landlords in the boonies were more concerned about the quality of their tenants when replacements might be harder to find.  My East Village lease basically said ‘pay the rent on time, peasant, or die.’  Homeric Homes’ fine print went on and on and had all kinds of dependent clauses about floods and hurricanes and polar bears and the mysterious appearance of solid-fuel stoves, the rights of Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep to go on playing poker in the cellar and being polite to the deinonychus that lived under the front porch.  Here Be Dragons.  Not really very reassuring.  I might almost prefer the straightforwardness of the East Village model.

Finally I saw the Cold Valley sign on the road—and got close enough to be sure it was the Cold Valley sign and didn’t say Rivendell or Equatorial Kundu.  It wouldn’t be Kundu:  the local geography was all wrong.  Rivendell would be nice.  I was sure Elrond would have a method for dealing with deinonychus.  But the sign clearly said Cold Valley.  My eyes skated over the ‘population’ total again.  Whatever it said, it needed to be revised up by one.  Two if you counted Sid.  Three if you counted a rose-bush in a pot.  I didn’t have time to stop and look around but I stopped anyway.  I felt I needed to take a deep breath before I drove over the town line for the first time as a resident.  And it’s not like I was going to hold up traffic.  I’d seen exactly one other vehicle on the road since I left New Iceland:  another old beat-up pick-up truck, although both smaller and younger than Merry, and blue, so it wasn’t Ron’s.  I hoped that the van’s tinted windshield meant that whoever was in the truck would not recognise me next time, since chances were there would be a next time.  Village life:  where everyone else knew your business before you did.  Back in the city only Joe the doorman knew your business first.

I rolled the window down and leaned out.  Trees.  Grass, or anyway wild grasslike weeds.  Scrub.  Big irregular boulders.  I knew the lake was over that way (okay, I thought I knew the lake was over that way);  I couldn’t decide if I could see a distant glitter of sun on water or not.  The air smelled of green things and . . . I had no idea.  I knew the smell of car exhaust and the local pizza place and the Chinese next door and the bakery over the way and a squashed orange from the fruit stall and dirty steam from the latest burst pipe and unpicked-up dog crap and mystery substances in the gutters.  I had no idea what the smells in the country were.  I could almost count on two hands the weeks I’d spent outside some city or other—Gelasio liked urban holidays—four years of horse camp, two weeks per summer, and some long weekends under whooshing pine trees in the Adirondacks.  That was about it.  And I’d come to Cold Valley, unknown even to the GPS grid, because I’d stuck a pin in a map.

I quailed.  I reminded myself it was too late:  I’d already signed the lease, and Sally had already accepted payment from my bank.  I was doomed to the back of beyond.  This back of beyond.  I looked at Sid.  She looked back at me, enigmatic as a menhir.

I thought about ringing Norah.  She’d drop everything and take the call if I asked her secretary to put me through.  She’d also tease me about it unmercifully after the crisis was over.  Of course I could always remind her of that orange prom dress. . . .

I started the van again a little abruptly and it moaned a protest.  “Sorry,” I said.  I drove over the town line.  I was in Cold Valley.  I was home.  My hands were clamped sweatily on the steering wheel.  Even I failed to get lost the rest of the way to Rose Manor:  I turned down the first street I came to and counted houses, one, two . . . three.  This one was mine.

I pulled into the driveway.  Rose Manor.  It loomed.  It was huge.  If Sid was a menhir, it was Stonehenge with Avebury thrown in.  What was I thinking of?  I couldn’t live here.

“Oh,” I said.  I sounded a little like a van being started too quickly.  “Help.”

 

Whimper

 

I want COMFORT FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.*

I do have some excuse for being a little frantic.**  It’s nine p.m. and I’m finally eating lunch.  It’s been that kind of a day.  A whimper kind of day.***  Fortunately I turned over a new leaf recently and began to take breakfast seriously.  Heretofore—well, menopausal no-metabolism heretofore:  there are photos of me eating breakfast in the garden at the old house† but that was a long time ago in many ways, including metabolic—I have felt that an apple and sixteen cups of tea was adequate.  But advancing age and/or (advancing) ME deem otherwise: protein, they spoke in one voice.  And a very interesting time I’ve had hacking out sufficient calories from the rest of my minimal-ingestion day to permit frelling protein before noon.  However I have to admit that the new system makes the double-hurtle requirement presently in force†† a good deal more likely not to kill me.

The GUARDIAN tweeted this today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/22/breakfast-characters-james-bond?CMP=twt_fd  †††

My characters have tended to the caffeinated beverage and breadlike substance breakfasts—Maggie in SHADOWS drinks too much coffee and adds a little toast for ballast—although the ones who know they’ll be waving swords later may also indulge in protein.  I will have to think about this.  Sylvi will need to keep her strength up in PEG II (and III.  Moan).  At the moment out here in the real world I favour scrambled eggs or cashews—speaking of CALORIES—but when you’ve spent years not eating breakfast, six cashews is luxury.  And the smell of them roasting—I buy raw organic—is so decadent it ought to be fattening.

And now I have to get on with dinner so I’ll have time to sing.  Before I go to bed again.  I have to get up sharpish tomorrow morning both because all hurtling must be done in daylight while this infernal cold spell‡ continues and also because I’m having my horrifying second lesson in playing bridge tomorrow afternoon.  In one of my wilder moments I suggested that I should learn enough baby bridge to be pressganged into playing a fourth when they’re short.  Why Peter’s local daughter couldn’t have two boyfriends so they could play four without me. . . .

* * *

* I think I’ve been hanging around with a hellterror for too long.

** Very like a hellterror, in fact.

*** Although we may have The Wall sorted.  I hope.  I had a letter through the door this morning after I finally staggered downstairs after a bad night even by my standards . . . from my neighbour detailing her bad night after our phone call.  Siiiiiiigh.  One of us needs to be calm and capable and confident.  Um.

† Homemade marmalade on homemade bread.  We bought the butter though.

†† And I mean FORCE.  The troika still only goes out after midnight.  And only when I’m feeling strong.

††† With the I think daft headline ‘the sexiest meal’.  Anyone who pantingly turns to it is going to be disappointed.  But for sheer journalistic idiocy I assume at least some of you know about the absurd and fraudulent hoohah about Hilary Mantel’s essay Royal Bodies?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

I’m a republican all the way when it comes to the royal family, and the paragraph about hurting the queen’s feelings roused in me that most American of reactions, the Bronx cheer.  But the point Mantel is making about royal women being acceptable by being fertile and dutiful—this even into the twenty-first century—I think is only too grotesquely true.  Enter the DAILY MAIL shrieking and waving chains and truncheons and condemning Mantel’s ‘vicious attack’ on the latest pretty, dutiful and pregnant royal wife.  ARRRRRGH.  I’m torn between ‘get a life’ and ‘get either a brain^ or a bottom line sense of frelling ethics’.  If this is what it takes to sell newspapers then I’m ready for newspapers to be over with.  However the GUARDIAN which is usually pretty good about this sort of thing^^ published this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-cambridge-scandal

And, yeah.  I spared myself reading the original MAIL hysteria—I give the DAILY MAIL a wide berth:  I have an OCD friend who is pretty urgent about brushing herself off after she’s been on public transport:  I feel that way about passing too near the DAILY MAIL—but reading the original article I admired Mantel’s courage not least because I knew they’d get around to saying that the only reason she was going on about the Duchess of whatsit is because she’s fat and childless.  She’s fat and childless, just by the way, because she was very badly botched by the medical profession.  Which is another story.  Anyway.  This all produces lying-in-a-darkened-room time for me and it’s nothing to do with me, and I hope Mantel is resting in her own darkened room with a good friend and/or a good book and a bottle of cold champagne.  And that it’s worth it to her.  I can’t believe she didn’t know she was being dangerously provocative, but you can misjudge this kind of thing.  Don’t bother to ask me how I know this.  But I’m not famous enough to get yelled at by anybody but my agent.  There are advantages to obscurity.

^ Can they possibly have genuinely misread what she said?

^^ Even if its willingness to bash homeopathy is deplorable

‡ IT’S THE END OF FEBRUARY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND.  GO AWAY WITH THE SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES AND THE SNOW.  You’re making my little flowering cherry miserable.  And the hellhounds.  And me.^

^ The hellterror says, Cold?  Is it edible?

 

We interrupt . . .

 

. . . the scheduled programme continuing our discussion of life, art, performance and Good Enough* . . .

. . . to moan.

I’ve only—pretty much just this minute—got the copyedited SHADOWS back to my editor’s assistant’s (virtual) desk.  It’s in the contract that your copyeditor will be from another planet and imperfectly drilled in earth mores.**  This one was, in fact, better behaved than most.  I thought I was getting off easily*** until . . .

Part of the problem is that trying to produce anything but the plainest of plain text on a computer makes my brain flurg into bread pudding.  I can’t deal with electronic notes in the margins.†  So my editor’s ever-patient assistant printed out a hard copy and sent me that. ††  It took me a while to realise that those little faded grey streaky things are actually what significant house-style††† changes look like when electronic marginalia is forced onto paper.

My style is not house style.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH. . . .

I took Wolfgang in for his yearly legal-requirement MOT test on Monday.

He failed.  He’s seventeen years old, it takes a little while for the parts to come in.  I got him back today‡ . . . just in time to howl out to Ditherington this evening to return my sheet music from the concert I didn’t sing in with the Muddles, which if the librarian doesn’t return all of he can’t check out the music for the next concert . . . which, yes, I am going to try to sing in.

All of this would pass as fairly standard Life Stuff.  However.  Remember The Wall?

Somewhat against my better judgement—but it’s always easy to be wise in hindsight—I was talked into agreeing to the fellow who started work on Monday.  He’s built dozens of brick-and-flint walls.  Hundreds.  Millions.  He knows EVERYTHING about building brick-and-flint walls.

He poured in a lot of concrete on Monday and covered it up to set or jell or coagulate or whatever cement does.  He was going to start again on Wednesday.  I heard a lot of talking going on Wednesday morning, but then hellcritters and I set out on our double commute to get all of us down to the mews without benefit of Wolfgang.

That evening my neighbour rang me to say THE WALL BUILDER HAD QUIT.  HE’D DONE ONE DAY AND HE’D QUIT.‡‡

My neighbour now wants to go with some other frelling friend of a friend of a colleague’s cousin’s small-appliance repairperson’s mongoose.  I want to hire someone we know something about.  She and I had nearly half an hour on the phone tonight, talking at total cross purposes, because she wants her way and I want mine.  She’s already booked this joker to come talk to us tomorrow.  He’s very nice! she said to me.  You’ll like him!  Whether I like him or not is beside the point.

I am very tired. . . . ‡‡‡

* * *

* I meant ‘good enough’ as a positive thing.  I apply it positively.  I make myself crazy—you may have noticed—I wind myself up, I force myself to fail by setting the bar too high.^  Good enough means I can achieve something and recognise it as achievement and not some flavour of failure.  I personally feel it gives me room to have both good and bad days:  on the good days it’s a springboard and on the bad days it’s a support.

My affection for this approach may partly be my age again.  I remember when the concept of good enough hit the media and the self-help racks.  I was raised to believe that anything less than A-plus, 100%, a gold medal and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star^^ was not good enough and that sackcloth and ashes and a life of social exile and sixth-rate chocolate were the only alternative.  Good enough was not only a HUGE relief but it also meant you could try stuff without ruining your reputation (if any).

And possibly your grade-point average, depending on the school.  This is one of the things that even at the age of seventeen or twenty and going or going back to college, and I was not a subtle thinker at seventeen or twenty, made me kind of nuts.  Here you are attending full-time an Institution of Higher Learning and . . . you only dare take stuff you’re reasonably sure you can get good marks in, because education isn’t really the goal here, having a good-looking transcript is.  This was in one of the eras when a liberal-arts degree was about as useful as a rubber pogo stick^^^ so you didn’t want to smash the poor flimsy thing up any further by taking risky classes.  I’m not sure what quantum physics looked like in the early 1970s but I totally wouldn’t have dared.  I did however weaken my poor sad BA by taking music, which I did not get wonderful grades in.  Fortunately I subsequently found a way to escape my doom of sackcloth and ashes and the sixth-rate chocolate.  . . . Social exile?  Eh.

But Good Enough came along before I had permanently crippled myself by the weight of the chip on my shoulder.

^ Yo, I’m a Shetland pony, not an Irish hunter.

^^ If they can give stars for walking on the moon, I’m not too fussed about how they define ‘entertainment industry’.

^^^ Although I’m not sure even a proper steel and titanium pogo stick can be classified as useful

** It’s either that or the questions that have no connection with reality as you understand it are some kind of plant, seeking to discover if you have dangerous hidden personality traits that might lead you to go suddenly mad with a banana frappe at a crowded shopping mall.

*** Aside from an extreme case of Not Able to Focus on These Words any more

† My editor handles this just fine, and she’s nearly as old as I am.  I tell myself she does a lot more of it than I do.  She’s, you know, an editor.

†† I think I told you about the FedEx man not delivering it when there was no one home despite the fact that it said PAPER and MANUSCRIPT and ZERO VALUE and PLEASE LEAVE and NO SIGNATURE REQUIRED all over it.

††† Ie Chicago Manual of Style or whatever.  Grammar and punctuation and all are somewhat mutable and publishing houses usually have a standard way of doing things, although the choices Teacosy Press makes may be somewhat different from those of Zombie Revolution Books.  Aside from their contrasting approaches to acquisition.

‡ I am VERY GRATEFUL to the weather gods for giving us two non-sequential good days for walking.  Hellhounds and I enjoyed the walk back from and out to Warm Upford very much.  Something went right.^

^ But the question is, will there be four of us shepherding Wolfgang to and from his MOT next February?  SHE’S BEEN HERE FOUR MONTHS.  DON’T YOU THINK WE COULD ALL START TO GET ALONG?

‡‡ He’s decided he can’t do it for what he claimed on his estimate.  Is this spectacular incompetence or a spectacularly crude attempt to jack the price up?

‡‡‡ And I haven’t even told you how copying seven pages of Zerlina’s Vedrai, carino^ took ten minutes because every page jammed.  Some of them several times.  Feeding pages in one at a time didn’t work.  Fanning them between each page didn’t work.  A whole new trayful didn’t work.  I.  HATE.  MY.  PRINTER.

^ If I like it, or anyway Nadia likes me singing it, I’ll buy the book.  I worry about copyright even when the bloke’s been dead hundreds of years.

Of Daydreams and Harps, part 2 Guest post by Bratsche

 

Soon after I brought the rental harp home, I had a lesson with Jane and got some basic pointers, as well as some music recommendations. I must be slightly crazy (or maybe just a musician), since I was very happy when my book of scales and exercises showed up. Yay, it’s scales and chord progressions and finger patterns! I did also get two music books (Bach and Celtic tunes). Playing the harp turned out to be every bit as much fun as I hoped it would be. It is a little bit like playing a vertical piano in terms of setting fingers in a block for chords and reading the music (bass and treble clef), so my year of piano study from college came in handy. Also, much like a piano, you immediately get a nice sound.* Jane’s comment is that playing a harp is instant gratification, much like chocolate. I think that is a pretty good description!

Part way through the first month of renting, I called Dusty Strings to ask some questions about harps in general and their harps in particular. I will always count myself blessed that during that conversation the person I was talking to asked me if I knew about their Memorial Day sale. I was, of course, all ears! Every Memorial Day weekend, Dusty Strings has a sale on their harps (and other instruments) as part of the Seattle Folk Life Festival. You must come to the store to take advantage of it – no phone or web orders. I got off the phone and told my husband that I knew where we would be on that weekend!

The sale started on Friday, but we drove up on Thursday so I could return the rental harp and check on a few other things before the sale. One of the things I did was play a little bit on one of the smaller Ravennas (26 string) to verify that I did indeed really, really want the bigger one (34 strings). Okay, “play” is too strong a word. I plucked the lowest notes on the 26 and instantly confirmed that I wouldn’t be satisfied unless I had the even lower notes of the 34. I had already decided to go for full levers based on Jane’s advice that I will eventually want the flexibility to play more music in more keys as I get better at playing.

Another advantage of going up on Thursday was that we were able to check out the harps ahead of time and plan which one I would hope to get. All of the harps were 15% off, and there were also some seconds that were 20% off. I was happy to find that the 34 string Ravenna second with the lowest price was one that I would be quite happy to take home.

Several of the staff at Dusty Strings had mentioned that in years past there was sometimes a line before the store opened, so I was determined to be there well in advance. We spent Thursday night at a relative’s house and with her enthusiastic help were out the door on Friday morning even earlier than intended. I was, therefore, not surprised to find nobody else there when we showed up an hour and a quarter before the store opened! My husband and daughters explored the area some while I held down the sidewalk in front of the store and greeted many of the Dusty Strings staff as they arrived to get ready for the first day of the sale. My presence was greeted enthusiastically – “Yay, we have a line!” was my favorite of the comments. There eventually was an actual line. Other people started showing up about twenty minutes before the store opened.

I made a bee-line for “my” harp as soon as they opened the doors.

Right side

The base/stool on which the harp is standing was made for me by my talented and generous father-in-law.  Dustry Strings sells something just like it; but Dad was willing to make me one, which was great because it saved me additional expense and I was able to ask for the exact height of legs that suited me best.

Rear view (the 3 holes are what let the sound out and also make great hand-holds for carrying)

It is a second because the finish on the pillar and neck of the harp has darker streaks in it. I can understand why someone who was expecting a “smoother” looking finish might have been disappointed to receive this harp; however, I’ve always liked more interesting grain in wood, so it is fine with me. It also has an insect “scar” on the pillar, which immediately pulls everyone’s eyes and then fingers. My husband and I both ran our fingers over it when we first saw the harp, because it looks like there ought to be a dent in the wood. It is completely smooth, though; and when my woodworker father-in-law saw it, he said it was a spot where the tree had healed itself after an insect had tunneled through.

Insect scar

We loaded my new harp** in the car and headed home.

- – - – - – - – - – -

* This is very much enhanced when the instrument is actually in tune, though! I know someone whose piano goes so long between tunings that some keys now play two notes when you strike one key. Ewwwww!

** MY new harp, all MINE…oh, right, I promised to share with my family…I suppose I can do that.

Good enough. Mostly. Sometimes.

 

I should be carrying on with the copyedits for SHADOWS which are at this point overdue . . . I’ll finish tomorrow, really I will.  But by this stage of a book I can’t frelling focus on those frelling words any more* and I don’t think that right this minute I can stand to handle the pages any more tonight . . . which is my own fault for needing hard copy, but if I were doing it only on screen I’d have pixelated eyes by now as well as an advanced case of Technicolor heebie-jeebies.  As it is the heebie-jeebies are displaying quite a tactful, restrained palette of peach to salmon to rust with occasional highlights of green. . . .

I’m raving.

Part of the problem is that I’d be a perfectionist if I could . . . but I can’t.  My brain won’t hold that sharp an edge, however energetically you hone the soggy thing.  So you have to go for good enough.  What you hope is good enough.  What, some of the time, you believe is good enough.  Is sometimes even . . . plain unmodified good.

But not while you’re dealing with copyedits.

But good enough is something I’ve been thinking about since last night’s blog—since Bratsche’s first harp post and my Monday singing lesson.  I think good enough is sometimes really hard to define.

I’m a good enough dog owner.  My three hellcritters have daily walks—walks plural—a warm place to sleep, the almost constant presence of the hellgoddess (which is supposed to be a good thing in dog pantheon terms) and tasty sustaining food (when they eat it).  They are not trained to a high standard**, especially not the recent addition to the family***, but they have some concept of what training is, and they’re nice to have around (mostly).  I’ll share a sofa with them any time.  They’re all bonkers, of course, but I pretty sure they’d be bonkers anyway, although a more dedicated trainer might have reshaped the bonkersness more than I have done.

When I was still riding, I was a good enough rider for a certain kind of horse;  a horse I suited I could groom and exercise and have (mutual) fun with, and even bring on a little in its training, possibly with the help of a trainer for me.  I’m a good enough cook.†  I’m even—marginally—a good enough bell ringer, since there’s a shortage of any kind of ringer in this area, and bells and the upkeep of bells still exist in exchange for calling Christians to church services.  I’ve rung a lot of services where I as an available pair of hands was absolutely good enough.

But the line about good enough is always blurry, and sometimes it’s so blurry it’s just a smudge.  Would those horses whose training I contributed to have done better with a better rider?  Probably.  I’m a good enough cook if you like brownies and roast chicken—not so much if you want Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska.  And I’m not a good enough ringer to be invited to ring quarter peals any more often than some patient teacher type can bear to organise.

The farther you go over a different line into territory that might be considered art, I think the concept of good enough gets harder and harder to define—or possibly to accept.  As long as you’re tending to a critter’s basic needs—and that includes comfort and contentment, not just food and shelter from the weather—good enough is fairly straightforward.  Brownies and roast chicken hit the spot, even if they’re not glamorous.††  And you don’t have to be able to ring Snorkel Upstage Flugelhorn Major to tell people to get their shoes on and stop dozing over their coffee.

I don’t know what good enough singing or piano-, harp-, violin- or flugelhorn playing is.  I think music does fulfil a basic human need, but I’m not sure how to describe it.  I’m really enjoying the conversation going on in the forum right now, beginning with the response to Bratsche’s first harp post and gaining momentum last night after my Monday-singing-lesson-aroused response to one of Bratsche’s comments.  I hope you’ll keep talking.  Please.†††  I think I’m learning something.

* * *

* Except for those occasional, flaying moments when you realise THIS ENTIRE CHAPTER MAKES NO SENSE/CONTRADICTS WHAT YOU SAID IN CHAPTER TWELVE/UNDERMINES THE ENTIRE PLOT IN A SUBTLE WAY THAT NONE OF YOUR READERS PICKED UP WHEN YOU STILL HAD ENOUGH BRAIN LEFT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT/IS GENERALLY SENSATIONALLY, PRODIGIOUSLY, SUPERABUNDANTLY STUPID . . . etc.  But you’re frelling lunchmeat about this book by now, and you just have to hope none of your other readers will notice either, because any significant change you tried to make now would probably turn out to be like adding chopped liver to the strawberry shortcake.  Unwise.   This is, however, when you start reading the job ads for openings for shelf restockers and file clerks.  I didn’t know they still had file clerks.  Maybe only in small backward Hampshire villages.

** ::falls down laughing::

*** ::injures herself falling down laughing::

† When in doubt, add chocolate.

†† Although I feel this depends on your brownie recipe.  Brownies can be very glamorous.

††† Not only because I can probably get another comment post out of what’s been said so far. . . .

It’s all performance. Isn’t it?

 

Bratsche wrote:

I don’t think that not playing an instrument well should stop anyone from getting one, if they plan to play it. The pleasure of playing at whatever level you can (and it will surely grow with time) is important. I know I’m preaching to the choir (so to speak!); but I think it’s even more important to reinforce that as it continues to become easier to listen to professionally recorded and performed (and possibly edited) music, because music should be also be made enthusiastically by non-professionals.

Siiiiiiiigh.  I struggle with this every ratbagging day.  Well, every ratbagging day I practise some kind of music, which is most days, even if it’s only singing There Is A Tavern in the Town while doing the washing up.*  I sometimes feel as if I’m back in psychotherapy, struggling with self-worth issues.**  It is really quite amazing that you can do something like write stories for a living***—which means that people are spending money to read them—and still feel that you have nothing to offer.  I have professional musician friends who admit to similar struggles, so it’s not just the notorious neurotic weirdness of writers.†  But it is hard to convince yourself you should bother doing something like sing, when you’re not a professional-quality COUGH COUGH COUGH singer . . . when you can just slap Beverly Sills into the CD player.††

I was moaning to one of those professional-musician friends about this and she said that she guessed that I was moving the goal posts on myself:  well, yes, but how can any half-intelligent amateur help it—when you can slap Beverly Sills into the CD player?  Isn’t it the same for just about everything, anything that has a professional division, and what doesn’t?  At least if you play tennis you’re getting lots of nice healthy exercise even if you’re not the third Williams sister, and if you like to arrange flowers your hall table looks nice.  The Muddles aren’t dreadful, but they have trouble selling concert tickets because unless you’re a friend or a relative you’d much rather, and very reasonably, stay home with your CD player than sit on a hard uncomfortable pew and listen to a bunch of variously semi-talented dabblers feel their way through a selection of standard rep.†††

So what is the point?  I personally find this to be a real issue.  I love singing, and I’m not going to stop—and this includes voice lessons with Nadia—just because I can’t see the point.  You’re all saying, if you love it, then why do you need a point?  Well, but isn’t music supposed to be shared?  That’s how I understand it—it’s almost part of the definition of music, that it must be shared.  If a singer/harpist/trombone player falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear, does she make a sound?  No.  It’s like what I’ve always said about being a storyteller—you aren’t one unless someone’s listening.  A storyteller needs an audience.  So does a musician.  A big part of the reason I’ve let my piano-playing mostly lapse and am concentrating on singing is because the piano is such a relentlessly solo instrument.  Even if you’re playing with other people chances are there’s only one piano.

I know I’m getting somewhere with my singing not only because I’m a whole lot louder than I used to be but because of the stuff Nadia gives me to work on, to think about, the stuff I write down in my notebook—and then spend the following week trying to figure out what I mean, what Nadia said that I imperfectly wrote down.  The music I’m singing isn’t, I don’t think, any more ultimately difficult than what I was singing for her eighteen months or whatever ago, but the stuff she wants me to aim at, to remember, to juggle, has changed—even allowing, I think, for the patient teacher’s hammering out the 1,000,000th way to say something again in the resolute hope that the frelling student will get it this time.

But—why?  Toward what end?  Singing in a group is fun, but the group needs a purpose—doesn’t it?  Concerts are the obvious answer to that one—but then you have to convince people to come.

So, Bratsche, or anyone else, why should music be made enthusiastically by non-professionals?  There are other ways of learning to breathe deeply‡ and hang out with your friends.

. . . Ah Beverly, you heart-breaker.  Note that I am going to sing Una voce poco fa before my voice gives out due to extreme old age.‡‡  Meanwhile Nadia sent me home with a book of Mozart arias to try, recommending the easier one of Zerlina’s from Don Giovanni.  I’ll start there, but . . .

* * *

* I can’t remember if I told you that I told Nadia that Tavern was a good song for practising getting in and out of my chest voice and she said excellent, bring it along.  WHAT? I squeaked.  But I brought it in last week and she said, that’s great, now I want you to sing it in lots of different keys so you’re climbing in and out of chest voice in different places in the song.  —This turns out to be rather hilarious.  Also, when it’s just me and the hellcritters, my inner ham, who spends most of her time wondering why I couldn’t have grown up to be Ellen DeGeneres or Whoopi Goldberg so she could have had some fun, emerges to startling effect.

** While Nadia tries not to pinch the bridge of her nose with her fingers till she leaves marks, nor to think loud balloon-over-head thoughts about other ways she could earn a living.

*** I don’t say a great living—remember that JK Rowling is a one-off—but it keeps me in hellcritter food and chocolate.  I do try to buy fewer books.  And less yarn.^

^ I’VE ONLY BEEN KNITTING TWO YEARS.  HOW CAN STASH HAVE ALREADY TAKEN OVER MY LIFE?!?+

+ Stop that laughing.  You know who you are.

† Although Nadia, who is a soprano, assures me that sopranos are the worst.  Oh, that’s nice.  Maybe I should work on my chest voice some more.^

^ And give up my high B and its possible friends?  No frelling frelling FRELLING way.

†† Which I just have.

††† Although I believe the post-concert nosh is excellent.  If you listen to the singing you get snacks.

‡ Zen-style sitting, for example.  Which is difficult in an entirely different way, but does not require an audience.^

^ All right, don’t get me started on the benefits of zazen in company.

‡‡ Hundred Year Old Woman Has First Carnegie Hall Recital.  Film at Eleven.

Of Daydreams and Harps, Part 1: Guest post by Bratsche

 

Stringed instruments have been part of my life for a long time. I started violin at age 6, switched to viola in high school, and have been happily focused on viola ever since. The only other instruments that have ever enticed me to try them are also stringed instruments. I love the sound of guitars and harps. We had guitars in the house when I was a teenager, so I was able to play around with them; but I quickly found that the hand/arm position required for guitar put unacceptable stress on my viola playing arm.* I will always love listening to guitars, but that is the closest our acquaintance will ever be.

Over the years, I found myself starting to daydream about getting a small harp, but it was always a “someday maybe…” kind of thought. In the fall of 2010 I was talking to a violinist friend of mine and mentioned that in passing, and she immediately said, “Oh, yes, you should absolutely go for it!” She told me that a harpist colleague of ours (I’ll call her Jane) would be delighted to give me information and advice. I tucked that idea in with the daydream and left it at that.

The next spring, two things happened in quick succession. I got enough gift money from family to make me pause to think about what to do with it (as opposed to just enough to buy a book or CD or go to a movie), and I ran into Jane at a gig. I told her what I was thinking, and she was absolutely delighted to help. My daydream suddenly vaulted out of the shadows and took off!

I was initially thinking of a lap harp, which is the smallest kind of harp, since I figured smaller would probably equal cheaper (and any harp would require money from our regular budget in addition to my birthday money). Jane pointed out that if I started on a lap harp I would have to learn how to hold it at the same time I was learning how to play; whereas if I got a harp that could stand on the floor, I wouldn’t have to deal with that. She also said I might prefer the bigger range of a floor harp (as opposed to a lap harp). She gave me information about some lap harps (as well as the name of someone who knows more about them than she does) and also gave me the name of a harp store that makes what she considers to be a very good entry level floor harp.

After considering Jane’s advice, I decided to go for a floor harp. I went to a local harp store (where all the harps are way beyond my budget) to plink a few notes just to make sure it still sounded like a good idea once I’d actually had my hands on a harp. The answer was an emphatic yes (which elicited an eye-rolling “of course!” from my husband), so I made plans to drive the three hours to Dusty Strings (Jane’s strongly recommended harp store) to further explore this crazy dream.

A few pieces of basic harp information will help at this point. There are two broad categories of harps – pedal harps and other harps. Pedal harps are the big harps you might have seen in a symphony orchestra. They have 47 strings covering a range of 6.5 octaves (pianos have a range of just over 7 octaves) and use pedals at the base of the harp to play the sharp or flat notes as needed. There are lots of names and styles of harps which I’ve lumped into the second category: lever, lap, folk, and Celtic are some of the common terms. A lever harp uses levers up at the top of the harp to change the pitch by a half-step. It is not as easy to change notes on a lever harp as it is on a pedal harp, although it allows more variety of music to be played than a non-lever harp, which cannot change notes during a piece.

 

All levers down

 

Two levers up (red & blue strings)

I had already ruled out getting a lap harp, so my next decision needed to be about the size of the harp and whether or not it had levers. Dusty Strings has an entry level harp (i.e. cheapest harp I could get from them) called the Ravenna, which has two size options and several lever options. The smaller version has 26 strings (3.5 octaves), and the larger has 34 strings (4.5 octaves). The bigger harp goes an extra octave lower. The lever options include no levers, levers on just a few notes, or full levers (levers on every note). Size of harp and number of levers both affect the price.

As soon as I plucked the lowest note on the 34 string Ravenna, I knew I was in love.** I asked if there were any Ravennas available for rental and was told they did have a Ravenna 34 on hand (a somewhat rare occurrence, since they are very popular). It was fortunate that I had brought my husband and another friend of mine with me, because they were both very emphatic that I should jump on the chance to rent the harp and try it for a month or two. I might have dithered and talked myself out of the expense of renting the harp without their encouragement. Instead, we loaded the harp into the back of our car (having brought our bigger car just in case….) and headed home.

- – - – - – - – - – -

* A guitarist colleague of mine told me that he loved the sound of the viola so much that when he was in college he spent some time learning viola (his main instrument was guitar); but, he had to give it up in the end, because playing viola stressed his guitar arm too much. It was fun to have my assessment confirmed from the other side of the equation!

** The last time I had the same immediate (expensive) reaction was the first time I played the lowest string on my current viola. I give my students some very sound^ advice…do not play any instrument you do not intend to (or cannot afford to) buy. That way you won’t fall in love with something from which you must walk away. It is very good advice, but I’m still glad I ignored it 11 years ago when my viola maker asked me if I wanted to try out his latest viola! I was, however, VERY GOOD at Dusty Strings and didn’t even touch any of their more expensive harps.

^ !! :)

KES, 66

SIXTY SIX

 

I bought a red nylon collar—and a red nylon lead to go with it.  The red leather one could either go back to the lost and found box at Eats or wait for the fancy-dress ball when Sid could wear it with the gold-studded collar while I swanned around in my burgundy velvet.  Red was good on a black dog.  And I bought a lot of dog food and, er, sundries.  She could eat out of a casserole dish but I decided that an unbreakable water dish was a good idea and I might want to use the bottom of my double boiler as a double boiler.  The pile by the front door was fairly scary by the time I’d added one more dog toy.  (Hey, she wasn’t even two years old yet.  She was almost a puppy.  Puppies need toys.)

“Go get your car and park by the door and I’ll help you heave the stuff into the trunk.  Nobody’s going to bother you if you’re loading.”

I hesitated.

Susanna frowned at me.  “You’re not on foot, are you?”

“No,” I said.  “Worse than that.”

Susanna raised her eyebrows.  “Ox cart?”

“Um.  Not exactly.  I mean, no, not an ox cart.  But it’s a rental, okay?” I said.  “It was the only cheap rental I could get at the last minute, planning ahead not being my best skill.”

“Like you planned for a dog, right?” said Susanna.  “Okay.  It’s a rental.  I’ll start stacking the stuff up on the sidewalk.”

Sid and I went off to fetch the van.  I stood a moment, staring at a screaming skull.  I’m not sure, but I think it rolled one of its flaming eyes at me.  “You’re going home tonight,” I said to it.  “You’ll soon be back in the heart of the city with nothing to worry you but junkies and taxi drivers.”  I waited for the disembowelling stab of homesickness to fade a little, sighed, and unlocked the door.  Sid jumped in with barely a hesitation and then turned to look at me as if, What are you waiting for?  Maybe she liked the idea of all that dog food.  Sid.  I had Sid because I’d left the city.  Hold that thought.  Lose a wealthy husband and gain a scrawny stray dog.  Okay, but she wasn’t going to leave me for a floozie.  And we probably wouldn’t disagree about home decoration.  Only partly because I couldn’t afford home decoration.

Susanna was standing by the Alp of dog food when I drove up.  As I climbed down from the driver’s seat she was looking at the van’s nearer side and sucking on her cheeks really hard.  “You’re allowed to laugh,” I said.  “I’m not going to drive to Cavendish for dog food even if you laugh.”

“First thing they teach you at business school is not to laugh at your customers,” Susanna said.

“Business school,” I said.  “I’ll try not to give you any expired credit cards.  I tend to forget to swap them over.”

“I was going to be a banker,” said Susanna, as I hauled the van’s rear doors open.  “And retire a millionaire at thirty.  I hated banking.  So I came back to New Iceland and opened a pet shop.”

“Think how much fitter you are than you would be sitting at a desk all day,” I said, as I scrabbled the dog-food space free of plastic bags.

She tossed a large bag of dog kibble into the gap as if it weighed nothing at all.  “Yeah,” she said.  “I was kind of sorry about the retiring at thirty, though, but as the years pass I’ve got over it.”   She settled one of the flats of tins on the kibble bag while I staggered up behind her and dropped the second one on top of it.  Then we both stacked up all the smaller bags.  My rose-bush was (I hoped) reasonably well protected by the little sofa and a box of books.  “Thanks,” I said.  I hadn’t noticed on my way in, because I was too busy worrying, but there were critters in her front windows:  rabbits were watching us from one window, and assorted birds were ignoring us from the other.

Susanna followed my gaze.  “It varies,” she said.  “But not puppies or kittens unless a friend has a litter they need to get rid of.  Because I want to take them all home.  Don’t ask,” she said, as I opened my mouth.  “Several.  Keep coming here, and you’ll meet them.  All my staff have too many pets too.  It’s so I can pay them in pet food discounts.”  She grinned.

I thought of what I hadn’t paid for my loot and said, “Uh huh.”

“Safe journey,” she said.  “Wherever.  I hope you bring her back to show her off after she’s got through that lot.”

“I will,” I said.  “Thanks.”

 

Gingerbread waffles and puppies

 

My puppy eats chewing gum and teabags.  Which is to say old, spat-out chewing gum and used teabags which she picks up in the street because people are DISGUSTING.  I cannot get my head around anyone having sunk so low in heinous depravity as to spit their gum out IN PUBLIC ON PUBLIC SURFACES*.  The teabags are more arrrgh.  There’s a theory that teabags, or tea leaves, make a good mulch or fertilizer or cat deterrent or all three.  Lots of people put their teabags on their compost heaps, but some don’t bother with the middle stage but slap ’em straight on the ground round their plants.  Not I feel the most attractive option.**  One of the dreadfully bijou little terraced houses on the main street in the old part of New Arcadia, so neat and charming it makes your teeth hurt, nonetheless festoons the climbing whatever at its front door with old dead teabags.  Which Pavlova discovered a few days ago.  ARRRRRRRGH.

I thought I had dodged a bullet with Pav:  for a dog as maniacally food oriented as she is, she hasn’t been all that diabolic about bolting anything she can get her mouth around.  Unfortunately this happy phase appears to be over.  Today she nearly managed to swallow a shotgun casing before I got it away from her.  And while dried-up teabags are relatively trauma-free handling someone’s well masticated chewing gum is GROSS.

And now that you’re in the mood, I promised you a Gingerbread Waffle recipe.

Half a spoonful of instant coffee, more or less.  Your mileage may vary.  What you want is about half the amount of dry coffee as you’d need to make a smallish-average-ish sized mug of (wet) coffee.  You can also substitute (say) 1T of pure unsweetened cocoa powder or even grain coffee, if you have it around.  Dandelion is good because it’s got a pretty strong bitter taste.  This is not rocket science.  If I’m making you nervous, you can leave it out entirely.  What you’re trying to do is create a dark but faint background resonance for the spiciness:  someone biting into one of these waffles shouldn’t say, oh, coffee!  Or oh, chocolate!  Or oh, what?

2T to ¼ c dark brown sugar, depending on how sweet you like it.

¼ to ½ c dark molasses, ditto

2T melted butter

½ c boiling water or maybe a little more

1 egg

1 c flour, maybe about half basic white and the other half as takes your fancy.  Whole wheat/wholemeal is always good.  So is rye.  So is oatmeal ground to flour.  I have a thing for barley flour.  The original recipe called for 1c unbleached white.  My default is ½ c wholemeal,*** ¼ c unbleached white and ¼ c barley.

1 tsp baking power

½ tsp baking soda

Pinch salt

1 tsp (ground) ginger

¼ tsp (ground) cloves

1 tsp (ground) cinnamon

If you’re a nut person, a few chopped walnuts or pecans are good

Pour the boiling water over the drink powder of choice, if any.  Dissolve, then add the butter, sugar and molasses.  Mix the dry ingredients.  Beat egg well while the previous cools off a little, then stir in.  Stir in the dry ingredients pretty quickly, like making muffin batter.  You want a thinnish but still gloopy batter.  If you’ve made waffles before you know what I mean.†  If to achieve thin but gloopy you need to add a little more water, do so.

You have, of course, remembered to turn your waffle iron on while you were putting the batter together, so it’s now all hot and ready for you.  Unless it’s non-stick, don’t forget to oil it.

Serve whatever you usually serve with your waffles.  I personally feel you never go wrong with maple syrup.  You can also raise the amount of sugar by 2T or so, call it dessert, and serve with ice cream.

I’m sure Pavlova would love these.

* * *

* http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/the-cognitive-benefits-of-chewing-gum/

It may just be my monitor, but I had to scroll waaaaaay down to get to the article.  Clearly the scum on legs that expectorates its chewing gum on pedestrian pavements or in the grass in churchyards are past the twenty-minute intelligence boost.

** I, who of course scorn teabags with a disdain Lady Bracknell would admire, did try tea leaves as a cat deterrent at Third House.  My impression is that cats would prefer not to spend their quality time in the immediate vicinity of fresh tea leaves . . . but there’s plenty of room in the rest of the garden and the effect, whatever it is, wears off in a few days.  Even I didn’t drink enough tea to keep the entire garden covered in tea leaves.  I also wondered what regular applications might eventually do to the pH of my soil.  Not collecting and spreading tea leaves then became something I gladly spent no more time on.  Although if it frelling blistered the frelling cats it would have been worth it.

*** Or preferably spelt, which is a variety of ancient wheat that may upset easily upsettable digestions less than modern wheat.  I also think it tastes nicer.  You can increasingly find white spelt as well as wholemeal too.  Yaaay.

† If you haven’t, you need practise, so you’d better get on with it.