Diminished Seventh?

Oh, and my piano exam? Got my results. I need to take a supplement for (get this): ear. The two minute exam on listening. Passed everything else, failed my ear by three marks, so that's all I need to continue with ARCT.

:)

Perspective.

The other day I needed to find a postal code for the SARA Society. They deal with survivors of childhood sexual assualt (SARA stands for Sexual Assault Recovery Anonymous).

See, when I was working with a non-profit group that deals with homelessness, I learnt a lot about other societies and why we need them. There are dozens of crisis lines, for all sorts of reasons, shelters, emergency centres, help lines for families, women, men or children, people with diseases, people that are borderline homeless, people that are homeless, people with mental or physical disabilities... People that need help.

Along with their address and phone number, the SARA Society also had a little blurb about contacting them. If you leave a message with them, you have to say if it's safe for them to leave a message when they call you back.

Not if it's okay, but if it's safe.

And then, if it's not safe, there' s a code.

My mind? Blown.

They have codes. They need codes. There's a need for codes out there! It's one thing to be sneaky planning a surprise party, but to have your safety depend on it? I don't know if I could do that.

I guess it just makes a failed piano exam seem sorta insignificant.

Today I Saw the Sky Fall

with harmless raindrops pelting like bullets and flashing twigs that snapped at the air.

Le Vent Dans Les Ruines is Kicking My Pasty White Ass.

I haven't been practicing enough.

For nearly a year and half I've been learning these songs, these same pieces, and that may sound crazy dull and you may be thinking a year and a half and you still can't play them? but it's not like that.

There are five pieces for my repertoire and two studies, plus ear and technique.

My first piece is a Prelude and Fugue, meaning that although it's considered one, there are two different pieces to learn. My second is a Mozart sonata which contains no less than three movements.

So five pieces becomes eight, plus two more, plus ear and technique.

I know all the repertoire well. I could perform all but one confidently right now. But you can't just perform at an RCM exam, you also have to impress. That's the tough one.

Last year, I did the exact same I've been doing this year and I should have failed. They passed me by quite a bit--I figure they could guess how well I knew the pieces even if I didn't do the best at playing them there--but I don't think I deserved it. So that's why, with my exam six weeks away, I'm sorta beginning to panic.

My last piece, the one I'm definitely not comfortable performing, is five pages of sixteenth notes, played rapidly, by Ibert.

I did the (very loose, approximate) math: it's about eight notes a second. Ibert was a cruel, cruel man.

I was late to start learning it and then procrastinated. I had all sorts of excuses. When I was supposed to be working on it the most, I was on stage every night doing Pirates of Penzance so my practice time went from borderline sufficient to nil.

Now I'm really panicking. It's a difficult piece, there's no time to think as it's ridiculously fast and I'm supposed to have three and a half pages memorized by tomorrow. I'm just shy of three right now and they're the easiest three.

And, to be honest, I should have had it all memorized several weeks ago.

Usually, I practice an hour a day during the summer. In past years, it's always been enjoyable practice because all I would be doing is learning the basics of lots of songs so that I could figure out which ones I like enough to focus on in September. That didn't happen last year, it definitely won't happen this year.

I'm going to practice at least an hour a day from now on. Really it should be two. I'm saying one for now just to make sure I do it.

Tomorrow, I begin house sitting for my old theory teacher, who's probably the gentlest, kindest most compassionate person I know, while they're away (she's doing a concert with her sister, the professional violinist, in Michigan. How cool is that!). That means that for as long as I want every day for the next ten days, I have access to her beautiful, black baby grand.

Oo!

It really is beautiful, and massive which makes it all the better.

So that's it. I wrote this because once it's in print, it'll make things more real and my practicing has to be very, very real.

An hour a day.

Easy.

Right?

The Pen Is Not Only Mightier, It Cuts Deeper Too.

Sometimes, I scare myself.

I'll get this image, and I'll run with it and suddenly, my pen will slip out of my hand and I'll stare at the paper for a while, transfixed.

Did I do that? Did I create that? (Could it happen?)

I wrote a story tonight.

Do I Creep You Out?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk8egz_yXL0


This is the coolest song. Of all time.

Arts at the Darts 2009

Yesterday, I was a fairy for three hours.

Darts Hill is this massive, gorgeous garden that's privately owned. A couple times a year they open it to the public for cool events like last night's Arts at the Darts.

There were paintings, jazz, dancers and (most importantly in my opinion) fairies.

We did our hair all crazy (I put mind in lopsided pigtails hehe) and ugly, drew on our faces and then struggled in Iolanthe costumes.

Iolanthe costumes. Right. Last year, when we struggled out of them ("Thank God I will never wear that bodysuit ever EVER again!"), that was supposed to be the end, but when given the choice between ditzy Disney fairies and earthy, realistic fairies, we totally had to be the ugly ones. I mean, the realistic ones. Waaay more fun to be had.

The Disney fairies, of which there were four, were pretty and friendly and much more relaxed with the public.

Yeah, we weren't.

There were three of us to begin with.

We'd sneak around the paths until we saw someone coming (or more importantly, until they saw us coming), then we'd panic and hide behind a leaf or a twig. Ans hid behind my hair a couple times.

It became a lot of fun, and quite the work out. We scurried and teetered and froze and pranced and scared several people. We were quite shy but posed well for photographers (including one who we thought had a Nikon D80, but no, just a Canon. Pfft.)

Then the kids got a hold of us.

"Hey, a fairy! Get it!"

Oh no. No, no, no, this is not good. Smt sprinted one way, Ans and I hid while the kids followed her, then raced down another path after hearing more kids coming down ours.

There were people everywhere. It's really hard to re-group when you have to keep stopping every twenty seconds and hiding. And you can't just hide, you have to hide then peak then hide again.

We went all over these paths but couldn't find Smt anywhere, so eventually we gave up and headed back to the tent but were ambushed before we could get there by these two girls.

Pink Girl (maybe 8-9 years old?) and Blue Girl (her older sister, maybe 13 or so) decided they were going to follow us and imitate us.

Woah. We are the entertainment here, okay, not the toys.

It was cute at first, I started imitating them imitating us. Then Pink started doing ballet moves which I badly repeated and gave us the first clues of her attitude ("I do ballet too, I'm really good."). It was sorta fun to play with them 'cause we kept frustrating them with our muteness ("I know you can talk. Talk! Pleeeease talk? I just want to hear your voice. No, I've already heard you laugh, that doesn't count! C'mon, just say something. I know you're just a performer, I dance, I'm a performer too but I still talk. ...Talk!)

Once we were surprised by this old guy walking along so we hid behind a bird feeder and heard him say, "I don't believe in fairies, I don't believe in pixies..."

So we stalked him for a bit.

Then later we made our way down towards the art booths where one guy, holding several paintings cried, "Ahh! Don't eat me!"

Dude, we're fairies. We're vegetarians.

Pink Girl and Blue Girl (and now their friends and brother) found us again just as we found Smt and Eml, the third and fourth Iolanthe fairies.

Pink would not leave me alone. She tried to act like a fairy with me, she tried to teach me high fives (mohahaha, I would not do it correctly), she even tried to convince me that I should stop pretending with her. She wiped her finger across my cheek, smearing my make-up, and held it up, "Look, it's just eyeshadow."

Well, duh.

But I couldn't say that, so I became in awe at the sparkles on her finger instead. Oo, shiny.

By the time it was over, I was exhausted. The constant crouching, jumping, running from really energetic kids (where were their parents?!) wasn't what I had expected so Ans, Smt and I were ready to get the hell out of there and specifically out of our body suits.

Walking out of the park was really funny. We still had make-up and hair (I had a very leafy fairy wand in mine too), but normal clothes, and there were still people hanging around the parking lots packing up.

I heard that we, the Iolanthe fairies, were the favourite fairies though, so it made it worthwhile.

Don't Follow In My Footsteps, I Run Into Walls.

I ran into a door once.

It was pretty spectacular. We were playing truth or dare in a really crowded room but most people were just chatting. One of the girls looked at me, with pathetic big eyes, and said she wanted to dare me to do something cool.

What, I asked.

I don't know, she admitted. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she grabbed my hand. Please, please?

So I hopped up and ran into a door.

The entire room went dead silent.

And then there was the girl bursting into laughter, barely able to stay on her seat.

The funny thing was that only her and I knew it was a dare. No one else knew for sure if it was a dare or if I was really that clumsy.

I've also fallen up stairs, and tripped over flat surfaces. But that's not funny, that's just me.

Out damned spot, out I say!

Shakespeare hates your emo poems.

I'm just putting that out there.

When I started writing, I wrote bad poetry. And I mean truly, excruiatingly bad. Everything revolved around whatever words rhymed (they were bad rhymes too, oh man), there was no proper rhyme scheme, and certainly no rhythm.

At least it wasn't emo. Most of my poems were about things around me, like flowers, holidays, my cat etc. Shakespeare probably would have hated them too.

I think this is the big difference between people and writers. Not that writers aren't people, we're just...weird people. We're quiet and morbid and we think too much in general, or at least I do.

I had a point, right?

Right. I know that those poems were bad. I know how to write decent poetry now, I've studied and Google'd it, and I know to avoid the kind of poetry that gives poetry a bad name. I'm certainly no poet, but I get by.

But most people don't ever look back at their bad poetry, so they never learn how to make good poetry.

So that's the difference.

Anyway, Shakespeare rocks. But he could get away with anything. For example:

Guy get's stabbed: 'Oh, I am slain!'

And then he's dead. Seriously. End scene.

Shakespeare wrote that (Hamlet). The plot of Macbeth revolved around a c-section. He ranted about suicide over and over and over again. And how many times did we have to watch a play within a play?

We worship him, and deservedly so, but honestly, if I pulled any of that crap...

PS: ...whenever I take off really heavy stage make-up, I alway quote Lady Macbeth.

Tis now the very witching time of night
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now, could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.