Links and Stories and falderol

Remember my friend Charity? Yeah, she's speaking at TEDmed. That's how cool she is.

I am less cool, but still have an Internet presence- so check this out.

That's it for links, here's the stories:
This weekend I was being project manager extraordinaire for the Continuing Professional Development weekends at GSMD. This was the first of the new school year, so there were a few hiccups, but mostly things went well. Amongst the hiccups was the fact that the entire stash of tea and lunch supplies had gone on walkabouts. I had a little bit of a panic about that because TEA IS VERY IMPORTANT to English people. Fortunately the new bar manager thought it would be just fine to let me loose in the little-used commercial kitchen in the basement of the dormitory. So we used proper plates and tea cups and I got to use the DISHWASHER!

The dishwasher was very exciting, I'm not really sure why- but I got a big kick out of it. I would suppose that it is a fairly standard commercial dishwasher- you put things on trays, slide them into the machine, and then pull the handle down and wait for it to stop steaming before opening it again. But the mugs! They come out warm! And that was enough to keep me happy. Though I will say that is was a bit creepy hanging out in a deserted kitchen by myself with very few lights on. (Fortunately I had the dishwasher to keep me company...)

On Sunday I had a run-in with another electrical appliance- in this case it was an electric lock on a set of doors. I'm not really sure why this door has an electric lock, but in order to get in to the performance space in the basement (which is where the workshop is held) you have to get this tiny little key that will release this intense lock at the top of the doors. What I know NOW is that once you have unlocked the doors, you have to push them in and hold them there for a bit, because if you don't the doors shut and lock themselves again. Since I didn't know that I blithely let them shut behind me while I went to the far side of the room to turn the lights on. When I tried to come back I realized I was stuck, looked around for some sort of lock release inside the room (unfathomably, there isn't one), then grabbed a chair and proceeded to wait until someone showed up. (Who gets locked inside a room??) It was Sunday morning in a student bar, so I wasn't at all sure how long I would have to wait, but I was lucky and only stuck for about 15 minutes. Jose showed up with a bunch of equipment for another project and I slid the key under the door so that he could let me out once he was done laughing.

Falderol:

A month ago or so I was walking home from work via the long, long, long route and ended up at an art gallery near the OXO tour that was having some sort of exhibit about eco-art and recycled materials. There was a small handful of people sitting on the floor on the ornate canvas floor covering doing little handicrafts so I wandered in and when they asked if I'd like to make anything I said "yes!" and learned how to appliqué. This is what I came up with- it is an old green sports T-shirt appliquéd with sari fabric and a yellow fleece blanket. It took me about 2 hours, during which I didn't get any of my work done and my back started hurting from all of that hunching over- but I was so pleased with myself by the end and much calmer than I had been. I love London so hard.

Springtime in Seattle

The weather has been so very obliging since I've been here. Aside from a few random hail storms (what?) and the ubiquitous rain- there has been brilliant sunshine at times and the cherry trees are in full bloom and the moss is growing all over everything and there are banks filled with daffodils. I love spring. Especially in Seattle with all the lilac trees and people out on their bikes taking! advantage! of! the! SUN!

We're getting some good work done: Laine is moved out of her apartment and in LA currently and my folk's basement is starting to look different and like there is real progress being made. I've made four or five trips to Goodwill with my van completely packed. We've done one recycling trip to the dump, a bunch of trips to the storage units, and we have a *system* in place- which makes all of the process geeks in my family happy.

Something about this whole project has made me very spacially unaware though- I've managed to seriously bang up my head multiple times. On Thursday I smacked a piece of wood into my temple, hit my head seven times on my sister's dining room lamp, and then banged the back of my head on the headboard of her bed. On Friday I cut my hand on a picture frame. On Saturday I amassed a bunch of random bruises all over my body, and today cut my ankle on a bookshelf and dropped a typewriter on my foot.

Safety first, Miss Casey. Safety first.

Saturday Performance

We had another run and it went fantastically! Fortunately I was close to the performance space and had the flip video with me; so you get another version! This time with more cheering!

Anna is now in Germany for three months for a contract so we're on hold until January at the earliest, but we're all on board with continuing the collaboration- which is great.

I also took a bunch of pictures of Shunt since the venue is so unique and I think that probably my descriptions haven't done it justice. Those will go up on Flickr this evening and I'll post again to let you know that they are there.

It was so exciting to watch the audience during our show- particularly on Friday and Saturday when we were the last circus style event and the place was packed with people. Some were riveted on the marimba, most were riveted on the rope, everyone gasped in a very satisfying way when Anna dropped down the rope. I'm so pleased that we had this opportunity to start our collaboration in this manner- getting to perform so soon after we started (giving a concrete goal to shoot for) and in such a perfect location. ('perfect' except for the fact that we had to keep sweeping the broken glass away every night so that Anna wouldn't cut her feet up. So 'perfect' within an imperfect world. Pretty darn great. How 'bout we just say that?)

Cornwall: The composition

This trip to Cornwall was our last before the concert which will be at the end of February. Since it was our last real working session, we had to make sure that our pieces were completely written so that next time all we have to do is refresh and rehearse, but not compose anymore.

I was a little nervous about this because I felt like I hadn't done enough work or put enough thought into it on my own time, and also because I haven't written that much music (nor been the leader for many composition projects)- so: nervous.

A few days before the trip I decided that I really ought to listen to the recordings I made before Christmas break to see where we were and what needed doing- lo and behold, it turned out that we had already structured and rehearsed most of the piece and really only needed to write the ending and perhaps one more section. Turns out I was way more on the ball than I thought...

So we rehearsed and reviewed and tried to remember how we had played the piece the last time. We were handicapped in this process as our principal violinist was gone and I only had one pair of headphones for the recording. John came in just before suppertime and said that it sounded a bit disjointed and maybe we wanted to cut out a section or perhaps make it a set of miniatures? So that made me nervous again, but I shouldn't have worried! Because the kids are fabulous and the piece was sound and coherent and really all we needed to do was make the ending I had already planned, rehearse a bunch, and play a few games wherein we wiggled a lot in order to wake up.

I was so proud of them because they really pulled it together and because the principal violinist was gone a lot of them had to take on more leader-y roles than they had in the past and they all TOTALLY stepped up to the plate.

I was particularly impressed with my youngest violinist who was struggling with our melody that opens and closes the piece. Everyone else has it down, and while I knew she still wasn't solid- I wasn't sure how to help her out without making the rest of the group stop and re-learn the melody as well. She, however, was brave and stubborn enough to make it clear that she needed individual help- so the two of us went to the hallway to work on learning it by ear and I left the rest of the group to figure out which kind of entrances for the final cannon they preferred (one whole iteration before the next entrance, or just one bar?). In 3 minutes she had it down pat and the rest of the group had not only decided which entrances they liked better (whole iteration) they had also added a chord to end the piece. How clever are my kids?!

Suffice to say the final piece was awesome, the students all liked it, and it is going to sound totally cool in the atrium of the gallery in St. Ives. I have an mp3 of it on my computer if anyone would like to listen to it- email me and I'll forward it to you.

Also- somewhat unrelated- we each have a composer who is working on pieces that will be played at the end of the year by the CYO that are supposed to be inspired by the pieces that we write with the students. Mine is named Eseld, and she is wonderful. The first time we went to Cornwall she was very pregnant, the second time she was gone, and this time she brought her two month old baby boy with her. He is totally adorable and I held him a bunch because baby time is almost always good.