Barren, Barren Blog

Continuing with alternative ways of letting you know what I've been up to, here are some random extracts from my diary! [Ed. 'Daily Planner,' remember?]

Jan 18
8:15 school
1pm meeting with head of EYFS
2pm Sarah concert/Liverpool St
4pm Mer and Sarah- take over the world
7:30 yoga
9:30 skype Nik

Jan 19
8:15 school
CV to Rob! Tonight!!
7pm pints and planning Fire-Hazard

Jan 20
8:15 school
6:30 Toni
dinner with Linda
Jez meetup!

Jan 29
Take care of Muffy! [Ed. Muffy is Mer's kitten]
10:15 Music Workshop
6pm Marissa's housewarming!

[Ed. An email I received the following Monday regarding the workshop

"Dear all


The composition workshop last Saturday was a success!
Thanks to Casey and the students for their work!

Hereafter the video of the final performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkNUUKeQ3k "]

 
 
Feb 2
8:15 school
9am EYFS meeting
11am lesson observation
Russian lunch! sign up!
7pm Fire-Hazard Pints and planning!
Send CPD participants email! Do I need the djembe?
 
Feb 3
8:15 school
12:20 mtg with Headmistress
Impro Show! Arrive by 8:30! Aieee!
 
Feb 4
6:30 Gwyn- take over the world
 
Feb 5-6
CPD weekend (meet Dutch folks at 9:50)
Harrow! (Call Ruth!)
Nik @ Night
 
 
 
This week we've got another Improv show (Thursday! 9:30! If you're in London you should really come! It's only £5! And we might even be funny!) And this weekend is Heist take 2 at the Old Police Station. (Sold out in 4 hours! Woah...) And school is trucking along (we've planned an open music day AND a performance/recital thing for next term!)

What you don't see listed in my diary is my daily ohmygodwhatamIgoingtodonext*year*???? freakouts. I try not to document those too much...
 
Busy busy busy bee.

Poor Neglected Blog...

This blog is practically an abandoned lot at this point, so bereft of recent entries is it.

Since I seem to be using up more of my writing juice in texts to Nik I thought I would share some of them with you. (Self indulgent and a bit silly? Why yes! Yes it is! But you get a blog entry so hush!) (Also, can we all just heave a collective sigh of relief that I have unlimited texts? Because otherwise I would be in big trouble phone bill wise.)

Sent 7-Feb-2011 15:26:17
Playing with static electricity and an acrylic scarf = fun

Sent 7-Feb-2011 12:59:00
No yoga tonight, my teacher's partner's father just died :(

Sent 7-Feb-2011 12:52:36
I. has just stolen my diary [Ed. That's 'daily planner' for you all not up on BritSpeak] and is complimenting my handwriting and doodling. Now she and her seat partner are colouring on the first page because she was *shocked* (and possibly a little bit offended) that it was blank. How lucky am I/these kids?? Our bus has been driving along Embankment and is now trying to get through Trafalgar square before driving along St. James park and the palace before getting back to school. IN THE SUN! Freaking magic.

Sent 7-Feb-2011 12:40:22
All the other teachers have sat themselves at the front of the bus thereby leaving two classes to fend for themselves so they're all screaming and falling out of their chairs. Do I try to police them or just let it go? I'm defaulting to just playing with the kids...well, that and texting you! The concert was really interesting, seeing how the LSO put the whole thing together. So much sun! It feels like spring! Can we go on a picnic/ramble when the weather gets nice?

Sent 7-Feb-2011 10:33:14
On a bus! Going to the Barbican with a load of Year 1 kids who keep singing the songs for the concert, they know the words really well! These kids were my first nursery tykes and I kind of love them. Plus, the sun is shining and one of them keeps telling me random animal facts, like did you know that the humpback whale has longer fins than even the blue whale? Or that German shepherds are stronger than wolves?Apparently these things are so...I like hanging out with these kids. Already this week is better than last!

Sent 6-Feb-2011 23:32:00
I'm still a good 15 minutes from home...The pub was much fun. One of my favourite people from level two improv has shown up again and he elicits the most fascinating stories from people. He just goes ahead and asks the personal questions and then people(English people even!) actually answer them! It is great fun to be around.

Sent 6-Feb-2011 23:17:04
Poke.

Things To Catch Up On! (Again)

I've been neglecting you! I'm so sorry! Things have been happening!

Here, let me tell you about some of them:

1. *Ages* ago we had our second impro show! And it went really, really, really well! The group that we had this term managed to gel in an excellent sort of way that meant that for our show we were all on it and all managed to elevate everyone's performances.

It was particularly exciting for me because I had my first ever monologue. I got a comment after the show telling me that I had looked completely relaxed while I had been performing by myself. I thought about it and yes, I had been completely relaxed, but also? I've got something like 16 years worth of performance experience. Yeah, sure, it's music performance and not acting- but I don't get nervous or shaky while I'm on stage. (Afterwards? Yes. My whole body collapses and starts quivering as soon as the show is over...I think that's weird.)

Four of us ended up at the end of the show with perfect scores (and everyone else had been trailing us only very slightly- seriously, it was an amazing show) and so as a tie breaker the directors had us do impressions...Yeah. I'm not good at that. (I'm not actually good at acting- I only have one character and she is me.) So I turned to Alistair who was sat next to me and asked if he'd be willing to do an impression with me. Nick was up first with an excellent Gordon Brown, Guy was next with a dead on Tony Blair, and then Alistair and I followed as a pair of rocks...Alistair ended up going up against Nick's Gordon Brown for the championship due to his stronger commitment to the Rock-ness of his rock. Mine was undergoing a "gentle earthquake" due to the fact that I couldn't stop giggling....

Our group was so strong and so good together that we've decided to keep meeting outside of the classes to continue working together over the winter. We had our first meeting last week and it was excellent. Only 5 of us made it in the end, but the space we have to work in is awesome and seriously, I love that group of people.

2. The vegetable box continues to be like Christmas every week. This week we got Jerusalem artichokes which I think may be my new favourite root vegetable. Oooh, but parsnips...it's too tough. Don't make me decide.

3. I found a discarded branch from the bottom of a Christmas tree outside of a pub. I rescued it and now have it hanging on our living room wall complete with red ribbons and one lonely Santa Claus ornament. See? I decorated!

4. Christmas plans are continuing apace- I'll be up in Cumbria with Ella and her family for Christmas and then down/over to Newcastle/Durham with Nik for New Years. 50% of the train tickets have been purchased, which means that I'm *almost* on top of these plans. (So close.)

5. This weekend we have a new version of Heist with Fire-Hazard. Heist was my first Fire-Hazard game, so it's kind of exciting to be on the other side of it this time. Instead of a warehouse, for this run we have found an old Police Station that has been turned into artists studios. The cells are still there however, which should add a fun bit of....realism? Eh, fun obstacles to the whole thing. We've got a whole weekend worth of runs for it, I expect to be exhausted at the end.

Excitement and Adventures!

I'm never really sure what to call my catch up posts- the ones where I realize that tons of things have been happening, but I've forgotten to write about all of them. So here's a list for you anyway of recent exciting things and adventures. (In no particular order)

1. Ella and I are getting an organic vegetable box delivered now. It's like Christmas! And so tasty! And decently priced! We have this *massive* bag of kale, the most delicious (though odd looking) carrots I've ever eaten, huge parsnips that scare me with their massiveness, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, a whole slew of tasty leeks, broccoli, and a loaf of chewy crusty olive bread that I've been slathering in butter and devouring. Mmmmm. The things I'm excited about in next week's box are the cherry tomatoes, butternut squash, and (because they're clearly loading on the deals currently so that we keep ordering from them) a free bottle of milk.

2. On Tuesday my bag almost got stolen. I was sitting with my friend Nik on a bench in St. James's park chatting away and not paying the most attention ever when a middle aged man on the path hollered "Excuse me, is that your bag?" I didn't really understand what was going on, but turned around and saw a man in sunglasses walking off with my stuff. Thief guy said "Sorry, mate" as though he'd just accidentally picked up the wrong satchel, set the bag down on the ground, and then ambled off....It was the weirdest, most chill almost-robbery ever.

I kept the strap looped around my foot after that, and thanked the man on the path as sincerely as I could.

3. I will eventually stop posting about Charity, probably when she stops being fascinating. (Meaning, never.) I'm not sure that that link will work but it should at least get you to CNN.com video and if you look under Health, Charity should currently be one of the first videos listed. (She continues to make me cry.) (In a really good way, just to make that clear.)

4. I went to a game testing event last night! It was super duper fun and it felt good to be back. I can't tell you much about what we did because I signed a non-disclosure agreement. But suffice to say they're on to a fabulous idea and we were given pizza and beer for our "trouble. " (Like any of us felt anything other than absolutely privileged to get to be there.) Also, I love that I'd met about 50% of the group before at other gaming events.

5. Happy Bonfire night! Sarah and Meredith and I are celebrating in the not-at-all-time-honoured fashion of having a girl's night and making minestrone soup. Not sure yet if fireworks will be involved, we wouldn't want to make this too typical...

Future excitement and adventures include some potential new workshopping gigs, my friend Jo's art installation at the Barbican, and my next Maestro improv show on Sunday.

stuff.

It's too hot to get any proper work done. I finished one job application and should hear whether I have an interview by Friday. I'm working on the cover letter for another job application and have made good (if not exactly excellent) progress on that one. I had viol consort this morning, which was a joy and a wonder; improv class last night which was good because I *finally* got a scene to work, got my hair trimmed, and am heading off to yoga class momentarily.

I've also been breaking things: the gut holding the tail piece of my bass just broke so the bridge is sitting on my table right now, I broke my phone and so lost 2 years worth of numbers, I broke the chair in the living room (admittedly it was broken when I found it, but I repaired it with wood glue and now it is MORE broken) and burned my finger with steam while making lunch today.

All in all it's probably a wash in the productivity v. destruction sweepstakes.

BLOGS (and events and gigs, oh my!)

Hey everyone! If you're not already reading my sister's blog you really should because she's hilarious and wonderful and in Mexico.

In the meantime: I need to up my game! No posts in ages and now she's out there being all funny and awesome. I gotta catch up.

1. I went to a panel on Women in Music with my friend Ellie on Monday. It was part of Birds Eye View, a film festival for women film makers. The line up was pretty great and contained an interesting mix of pop musicians and people from the classical world. The audience was almost entirely female and man was that an educated audience. When it was time for the question and answer section pretty much everyone who stood up introduced themselves and their titles and I kept thinking "Yup, heard of your organization."

The topic was ostensibly the status or state of women composers in the UK today. And that would have been a really, really interesting discussion. Unfortunately the woman chairing the whole thing was not a musician and didn't know the right questions to ask. I got bored during the first half hour (and a little bit angry) because somehow the whole conversation started off on the odd (and rather inappropriate) question of whether or not the panellists were angry that there was a public perception that certain pop acts write their own songs when really they don't. This ended up devolving in to a "let's make fun of Cheryl Cole" conversation which didn't sit well with me and also seemed to be a conversation that the panellists wanted to get away from and were uninterested in. (I can tell you that I was certainly uninterested.) It was just such a negative and impersonal way to start off the discussion. Personal stories! Issues that they care about! That's what I wanted to hear.

Fortunately once the questions got rolling? That's totally what happened. And the discussion went on for a good half hour after it was supposed to because people just kept asking questions. We would have kept going too if we'd been allowed to. In retrospect it would have been a fabulous networking opportunity, but I didn't realize that was what it was going to be, so I was unprepared. Next time though, next time I'll be ready.

2. Tim Hecker. Rob's birthday was last week and he is a big, big fan of Tim Hecker so Gwen, Rob and, I went to a show he was doing in Dalston. He does ambient electronica; a genre I know next to nothing about. It was an interesting crowd- mostly 20 something hipsters in a dimly lit cafe and then, when the music started? Everyone closed their eyes. There's nothing to see, it's a guy with a computer.

Rob had positioned us (we were the first ones through the door) in the exact centre of the surround sound speakers which was excellent, because as someone who can only properly hear out of one ear, I need all the help I can get in order to hear the shifting sound.

It was pretty extraordinary. I had graphic pictures floating through my head- at one point there was a vivid disappearing weasel and another time this melting pot of white goo with something pushing it's way out of it.

Did I mention it was trippy? It was totally trippy.

I would definitely go to more events like that. Especially if there were more comfortable chairs that you could curl up into and more properly relax into. There was something really neat about experiencing something that was inherently personal (eyes closed, listening intently) with a roomful of people experiencing something...similar.

3. Gwen has been getting us awesome tickets to the Philharmonia. On Sunday Rob and I went to see the Dvorak cello concerto and Sibelius 2. Rob has been learning to play the cello this year and is adorably into it (And geeking out about it to a hilarious degree: when the orchestra came on he told me what strings each of the cellists were using- he's memorized what colour wrappings each brand of strings has...)

Gwen got us second row centre seats. This meant that we could hear individual players and were smack dab in front of the soloist. It was amazing. Also, because we were *right* in front of the orchestra, that meant that I got the surround sound experience again. The opening of Sibelius 2 tosses the theme around the orchestra, and because we had just been to see Tim Hecker and because we were too close to see much without craning our necks, I decided to close my eyes and just experience the music. It. was. so. cool! (I can't believe I've never done that before. Clearly I need much better computer speakers...)

4. It's been really warm here. The nation is sunburned. Ella and I had a picnic with some of the Fire-Hazard folks in Hyde Park and I kept spilling things. We sat down and I knocked over a glass of wine (fortunately the picnic blanket was mine, so I didn't need to apologise to anyone). Five minutes later I knocked over some olives that had been marinated in chili oil. Then a glass of cider. I also spilled hummus and more chili oil on my dress. Clever. Besides my clumsiness, the picnic was a lot of fun and I even managed to keep from joining the sunburn club.

5. I met Robin Grey on a bus last year. He was carrying a guitar, a banjo, a ukulele, and a small three legged stool. I was carrying my bass. We both had to keep moving because baby buggies kept getting on the bus, so we started chatting and discovered we had friends in common. I've been meaning to go to one of his gigs for ages but for one reason or another it hasn't worked out until last week. Last week he had a gig in a pub in Clapton, so I really had no excuse not to go. I looked up the address, got walking directions, and then found myself in front of what was clearly an abandoned and empty pub.

Turns out it's an artist's collective squat and you had to go through the secret door in the garage down the side of the block. (London has weirdly progressive squatters rights laws, so this is not as unusual as it might sound, though it was my first time in a squat.) The inside was delightfully derelict. The glasses seemed not to have been cleaned any time recently and the couches and chairs were particularly snuggly.

The hour between when I arrived and when the music actually started felt like an awkward cocktail party made up of art students and hippie musicians. I was curled up in an arm chair working on lesson plans. The interesting thing about musicians in London is that all of them teach, so I ended up having a good conversation with a banjo player about our experiences teaching early years music classes.

Then the music started: the whole place was lit by candles and the first act was this Italian guy with a guitar singing traditional songs and telling stories. Oh my goodness. I've never wanted to go to Italy before, but now? Yes. Yes, please. Unfortunately, though I'm fairly sure he was introduced as "Santa Mozzarella," I've had no luck in finding any sort of online presence under that name. Which is really too bad because it was the most magical and downright special experience I've had in a long time. Again, the communal act of seeing fabulous music in a dimly lit room. I like it.

And the I had to go home and get some sleep. So I did that too.

Mini-Update

I can't decide if I'm being clever by taking some time off because I'm clearly a bit sick, or if I'm just being a lazy bum and now I'm *so* bored because all of the excitement and awesome busy-ness of last week is over.

On the one hand, I am now caught up with sleep! Which is a good thing, because I had been working on about four hours a night. On the other hand, I am now a bit cranky and not doing those work things that I ought to.

"Work Things I Ought To Be Doing" includes writing some blogs to catch you up on last week. A quick re-cap: I arrived on Monday, on Tuesday I had work and rehearsals for The Skriker, Wednesday was the tykes, Thursday was 12 straight hours rehearsing and then performing the first night of the play, Friday was the play again, and then Saturday and Sunday were another improvisation weekend followed by a baroque orchestra gig. Whew! On Sunday night I travelled home with Sarahbeth and we ended up chattering away at each other on the train platform for over an hour. At one point an uncontrollable, massive grin spread across my face; "I love my life!" I said, bouncing up and down a little and trying not to drop my bass, which was a bit unsteady on its new wheels that I found in a trash heap.

The gig went well enough that on Monday I got a text asking if I could play again next week. Exciting! Also, I am no longer teaching the Kids on Wednesdays: only Tuesdays now. This is a great relief and I am pleased because 8 hours of tykes followed immediately by an hour of the kids made me stressed out and cranky.

So that's the quick update. There are two more game events coming up soon, which I am very excited about. One I am crewing for (a zombie hunt on Hampstead Heath...) and one that is a small test run of 15 people/picnic. And you can't really go wrong with a picnic.

Such a cool life

I worked all this weekend project managing one of the continuing education weekends that the Professional Development department does. It was nice: I carried a lot of equipment and got to chase people down about actually paying for said weekend, met lots of interesting people, got to go food shopping with someone else's money (my favorite! So many cheeses!), and sketched. Besides the fact that I was underground without windows for two days it was a good way to pass the weekend and get paid for it.

On Saturday night I went to a dance improvisation performance. It was...interesting. If nothing else it reinforced the fact that I have opinions about improvisation. A couple of pieces were extraordinary- one guy tied himself to a chair with his shoe lace and eventually crushed the chair by falling over it so many times. He clearly had a clowning background and was wonderful. Eventually one of the audience members tried to help him with the shoe lace and he kept trying to tie her long, blond hair to the now decimated chair. Here's why it worked: one single, clear idea that was engaging, developed over the course of the time, and had a bit of mystery- "what's going to happen next? The chair is in pieces, is that the end or no, no, he's trying to put it back together....!" There was a clear reason to be watching.

The final piece was a duet that involved both dance and speaking/acting. That was great because they were clearly listening to what was being said and done, they kept bringing back both topics and movements that had happened before, and both the dance and the text was at a high enough level that it was entertaining to watch/listen to on its own as well as reinforcing the other.

Ones that didn't work- a self indulgent, far too long solo wherein the woman blinked a lot (intentionally) and talked about tea- which was clearly because something needed to be said and what else was there to say? It felt like a send up of beat poets but sincere and just bad. Also, if it is going to be billed as a dance performance? Please move. I'd be willing to watch someone stay perfectly still on a stage if they had a good reason for it, but this? I'm sorry- no.

Today, however, I had a SINGING LESSON. Which was awesome. I just love my singing lessons. Particularly because we keep working on things that I am so scared of. I had my gamba with me because we had consort this afternoon (awesome- with a violone player as well. So much fun, such ridiculous clefs, I love reading off of manuscript notation: "Is that a smudge, a quaver rest, or a note?") and Jilly had me not only sing and play at the same time (Super Scary but also so. awesome. I kept holding on to notes and just rolling around in the interval. Delicious.) but also do chords and sing at the same time, identify where in the key I was, and sing on scale numbers. It's all stuff that I feel like I should be able to do and should already know down pat because of all of my music school training- but I feel like I don't so it is scary and I lose confidence quickly. We did some singing in harmony and then started on a jazz tune- "Day Dream" I think it was called. It's got a bunch of crazy chord progressions but I learned it and sang it in tune within about 5 minutes. Woo! I'm going to keep working on it this month and figure out how to play the bass line on the gamba at the same time.

It was a gorgeous, sunny, spring-like day today. Beautiful. So I took the opportunity to take a nice walk from Highbury and Islington down to Angel in order to get to consort. Such interesting shops along that road too.

After consort I met up with a friend of mine from the acting improvisation class that I took last month. He is starting up a theatre company and is looking for collaborators for the music. We'd talked really briefly about it at the weekend but talked much more fully about it over "coffee" (hot chocolate with marshmallows) today. I'm going to a rehearsal on Friday to meet the rest of the troupe and see what they've come up with so far. Our initial discussions make it seem like we're very much on the same page, so hopefully that will turn out to actually be the case!

I went to a contact jam this evening because my choreographer/dancer friend Ellie has been telling me to come and it was cool to watch and I played a bit, but mostly I didn't really feel like improvising for a whole group of people that weren't listening and communicating with the music at all. There was a guitarist there and I jammed with him for a bit which was great, but ultimately I just felt really out of place. Which is too bad.

Anyhow, all things considered? A brilliant day.

Things I've been doing.

I've had a social week so I thought I would share some of that with you.

First of all- my new flatmates are settling in nicely. The only issue so far is that Jenny used to work for Cutco and so has a large collection of very sharp knives. This is hardly a problem since having nice knives is a very good thing indeed. However- her collection of nice knives combined with my (much smaller collection) of nice knives means that our cutlery drawer is now a: overstuffed and b: dangerous to put your hand in to... It 's also been interesting figuring out what I've told them about how the flat works and what I haven't. For instance- the power went off for a while on Sunday because I hadn't remembered to point out that someone ought to put more money on the little key thing that is how we pay for electricity. Oops. Also- those weak pathetic showers that they've been taking in the morning? Yeah, there is a water pump that makes those all nice and cozy, but the switch for it is in the living room. (where all power switches relating to the bathroom should go, don't you think? So handy and sensical.) Jenny and I have been having some good bonding moments (talking till 3am one night, oops.) but John Henry is still quiet, we'll see how that continues on. He is a philosopher after all.

I saw a show last week- one of the technical theatre students at GSMD had noticed that the theatre was free for two days at the beginning of term so he finagled his way in to getting to use it. (Impressive.) The show he ended up producing is called "The Last 5 Years" and is one of my favorite musicals. The instrumental parts are all soloistic and there are themes that come back in just altered enough forms for it to be tremendously exciting musically as well as having excellent lyrics. The show is about a couple (only 2 actors in the whole thing) singing about the last 5 years of their relationship- but the man is singing forwards in time and the woman is singing backwards- so they never actually sing together. The whole show is one solo after another- it's a tough show to pull off. Anyhow the whole thing was student led and performed (though they did get the main director for the acting department to direct the show- again, impressive.) and it was FABULOUS. I've never seen a show where the band and the actors were more integrated. And authentically, organically integrated too. It was a joy to watch and I feel privileged that I got to see it. (Seriously, it was impressive.)

The dinner club folks have apparently given up on cooking and so this time we got together at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane along with another American couple that Dave met on his plane ride to London: Anna and Trevor. They are wonderful and the six of us spent most of the evening chattering away and having three threads of conversation run at once. It was fun and had the added benefit of being relatively easy to get home from for everyone. (That has been a standing problem with the dinner club group- whose house to have supper at! No one really wants to be the person who is always traveling.)

On Saturday I went with Rob and Gwen to go see a friend of theirs play a gig in South London. Tom Norris- who is a violinist with the LSO but has taken a year off to try getting his rock band off the ground (check him out on iTunes, guys!) it was an interesting gig because he was just one of four bands and man was his stuff different from everyone else. The band has only been playing together for a short while but they were tight and it was fun to watch them. Also, it isn't often that you see an instrumentalist warming up on Paganini before a rock show....

Consort is tonight- we have a concert on Friday for the Early Music Open Day at school. There are only two legitimate students in the group, but that won't stop us! I've also got my art-opening-gamba-solo-background-music gig on Tuesday so wish me luck on that one!

Oh, and my mother will be pleased to know that I have been applying for more work. Only two jobs so far, but progress! That still counts as progress

I wrote a little list

Things I have been meaning to tell you about:
1. I eat like a five year old. Lunch? Tuna sandwich and carrot sticks (and cucumber!). Dinner? Bowl of cereal, a hand full of olives, and some chocolate pudding.

2. I have new flatmates! Ella is settling in to Dublin for her study abroad 5 months and so Jenny and John Henry have moved in to her room. Jenny is a technical theatre student at school and is, surprisingly, from Tacoma. John Henry is a philosophy student and from Sweden. They are very nice and we managed to get the keys all worked out in spite of the fact that my initial attempt to make them keys resulted in four inner door keys and no outer door keys. Oops. They are still moving in so I do not yet have any concrete things to tell you about them. More will come, I am sure.

3. Something is wrong with my keyboard that is preventing me from using my apostrophe hence the lack of any contractions in this particular post. I do not actually talk like this when I am speaking.

4. One Wednesday of last week I DID in fact work. In spite of arriving in London around midnight on Tuesday-Wednesday. (I apparently also cannot do slashes either. What is up with my keyboard?) I managed to get through that full day of teaching very well indeed. Yay! Mostly what I remember is that during garden time we had to keep telling the tykes "Do not kick over anyone elses snowmen!" and then at the French school I *almost* did not have any students. And then one showed up... but I manfully came up with a lesson plan for my one, mute, four year old. Fortunately a couple of the other teachers came and hung out with me and the four year old (excuse me. FIVE year old. He had a birthday.) so that was nice and I got to use my new music books including one that matches up works of art from the Metropolitan museum with movements from various pieces. I got A. (the FIVE year old) to listen to "The Elephant" and draw an Elephant on the board. Success!

5. Consort has six members! We're going to be playing for the Early Music open day next week so we have to pretend like we actually practice instead of just sight reading music together. Good thing we're so good. (And suddenly my apostrophe/slash works! Fantastic! (Do you like how this is a real time analysis of what is going on with my computer? I just want to keep ya'll precisely up to date.))

6. I love my yoga class. There were only three of us today which meant we all got bunches of personal attention which is just SO good and MAN do I miss yoga when I don't have it. That being said I'm still in my yoga togs and now I'm a little bit chilly. What solution should I go with? Put on another sweater? Go get a blanket? Turn up the heat? Stop eating cereal for dinner?

7. I'm listening to Sons of the Never Wrong and if you don't know who they are- you should check them out. Fun fun band from Chicago. They make me happy.

8. In one week I'm playing solo gamba for an art reception. Wish me luck, I'm nervous about it. I'll just be background music (this is a good thing) and I'll be improvising "light and gentle music" so that should be good.

9. I'm still working on my lesson plans for this term which *technically* were due on Monday but considering that last term I finished them half an hour before we left for our end of term Christmas Lunch I'm really doing quite well: I have the next two weeks planned. (Two weeks if you include tomorrow...) But I'm all excited about it right now!

We're working on keeping a pulse (being able to hear where the beat is); the difference between staccato and legato (so far we've only done staccato- frog jumps! Legato is going to be snakes); and we're going to start beginning composition tomorrow by linking the topic that they're learning about (nursery: hibernating animals; reception: traditional stories) and using those words to create rhythms (i.e., hedgehog hedgehog bear door mouse OR Cinderella Jack Goldilocks Jack) I have pictures of all these things so they can arrange the pictures themselves and write the songs/rhythms that way. Clever, right? Like I said *I'm* excited about it.

10. I finally had a solid feeling session with my Tuesday kids. The Tuesday kids are...a challenge. Over break I read a bunch of early education books and met with a very experienced elementary music teacher which was really helpful in terms of coming up with strategies for dealing with that group of kids. Things that really helped today:
*writing up the lesson plan on the board before they entered the room- I don't know if it helped them so much, but I felt much more secure being able to look up and SEE what we were going to do next. To know that I had a really clear plan for what the class was going to look like.
*writing their names on the board and putting up smiley faces when they were being good/paying attention/listen ting and X's when they were interrupting/calling me names in French (thanks, Kid.)/screaming/rolling around on the floor. Oh. that makes them sound much worse than they are, though truthfully they do do all of those things. But not by the end of class! By the end of class I honestly and sincerely thanked them for being so good and paying such good attention. So lets keep that up, yes?

Woo Hoo! (Update)

I'm no longer sick! Which is *fabulous* I have a bit of a cough still (it's a weird one, originating in my chest rather than the throat tickly coughs that I am more used to) but other than that I am good to go! Which is good, because I am going.

This weekend I was the project manager for Guildhall's Continuing Professional Development (CPD) weekend which means that I was running around getting equipment, preparing the tea stuff, collecting feedback forms, and (my favorite) purchasing lunch.

Here's the thing- I really like food shopping. Aisles of produce make me happy (particularly when the fruits and vegetables are piled up all abundant and colorful like) and this was shopping with other people's money! Brilliant! So I had a lot of fun with that.

Mical signed me up for an Artist's Journal class to take with her (online!) just before she left to go back to Seattle, so I've been working on that as well. I have a little set of watercolors that I bought way back last September during my "I don't have to be a musician to be creative" defensive phase after I found out I failed my first year assessment. It's a super cute little set of watercolors and I've been carrying it around in my backpack for ages. The difference now is that I am *also* carrying around watercolor paper in the form of my new Artist's Journal that I made.

So during the CPD weekend I started sketching and painting and it was really lovely. I'm particularly proud of the watercolor I did today of Adam who was recording the weekend. He wasn't paying attention to the group and was instead reading things on the Internet which useful for me since that meant that mostly he stayed in one place. Yay! Adam thinks his arm muscles should be bigger and his legs longer, but whatever.

On Friday the Leadership department was having a scratch session which is an evening where people show work that is in progress. Nell invited the alumni to present something as well so I was *Brave* and I asked if I could show the video of the last night of the Aerial/Marimba gig. We had a little bit of technical difficulties with the projector but in the end we got it all hooked up so that the video was projected on the wall and the sound came through the speakers in the room (the better to hear all the crowd noise!) What I showed was very different from what everyone else was doing, but it went over well and I had a great time explaining how we had made it and what the goals on the piece were and what we were going to start exploring next. So that was really nice. It was also great to meet the new first years and see the current second years again and hear what they've been working on. There is a really comfortable and energetic vibe to the department these days and I'm really happy for them.

Busy Busy

This weeks has already been a whirlwind roller coaster and it is only Wednesday. Oi.

1. Julia Stephenson came to visit! She's living in Italy right now and as part of her visa had to leave and come back into the country- so she took the opportunity to come to London. I put her up in our living room/guest room and we had a great time chatting the night away and crafting things.

2. The Salomon Orchestra concert was on Tuesday night! We've had bunches of rehearsals (including a six hour long slog on Sunday) and I've been moaning about carrying the bass on public transport constantly. We played in St. John Smith Square which is this concert hall converted from a Church in Westminster. Very pretty. We played an as yet unperformed suite from a ballet by John McCabe and also an hour long version of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. I was standing as I don't have a stool any longer and about halfway through the Prokofiev realized just how out of shape my shoulders are. Good thing it is such a fun piece to play otherwise I might have toppled over.

I met a woman named Jill during one of the tea breaks during one of the rehearsals and we ended up having a great chat about how sometimes you don't end up playing your instrument. She started out as a violist and was thinking of quiting because she was getting so bored with the viola parts when people started asking her if she played the violin because they desperately needed a violinist. This is totally against the conventional wisdom- usually you would expect people to desperately need violists...so she switched and she's having so much more fun now and refuses to play the viola any longer. Usually she won't play the second violin parts either because that is too much like the viola parts... Anyhow- she was a hoot and I enjoyed talking to her very much. After the concert she slipped me her email address and said that if I could bear to play the bass one more time she needed a bassist for another concert. We'll see about that one.

In other news- (in spite of the irony) I'm thinking maybe flute?

3. Aerial/Marimba- We've got our first night of our gig today! Super exciting. We're playing in Shunt- which is an arts fartsy night club in London Bridge. We're part of a whole series of seemingly circus related events. I'm not sure exactly how it is going to work but I gather there are a number of acts placed throughout the venue (which is a series of vaults and tunnels underneath the station. Kind of creepy- really cool) which will have spotlights on them while they do their bit. Like "drink some at the bar...oh hey! look over there! Drink some more at the bar... oh hey! look over there!" etc. I'll let you know more after the show actually starts happening. We are on through Saturday.

The piece has come together very quickly- and I think we're getting to the point where we finally know what the story is. That is something to remember for the next time that I work with these two- know the story! I have been struggling with the intent of the piece and what it is trying to say. We definitely have the potential to do some very good work together and I'm excited about what we're showing already- but it is also still very much a work in progress. A polished first draft.

4. Teaching- The tykes are on mid term break this week, but the kids are still around. I had eight of them yesterday and it was...a challenge. I need to learn how to do classroom management. I'm more than happy to have the kids go a little nuts- but it is getting to the point where I'm losing even the kids that *are* paying attention because the nutso ones are being so disruptive. Anyone have any advice for reigning in crazy six year olds? I don't really have much to threaten them with- and sitting in the corner hasn't really worked because they end up sliding all over the place. Fortunately I *do* have two weeks of their half term break to figure out how to come in strong for the next half term.

5. Game night! Jo found out about this giant social games event down at the Battersea Arts Centre (a mission to get to- it took about an hour and a half, but it was totally worth it.) Julia was here so I dragged her along and Oh! it was so much fun. I love giant games involving lots of people being very silly and giving me the opportunity for much subterfuge. I'm not sure how often the organization does one of these (it might only be once a year!) but I'm on the mailing list now and I will *so* be at the next one.

At Buck Creek when we used to go there for summer camp they would have these MASSIVE games. Like full camp capture the flag where we would play in the woods and the flag was inevitable up at the top of a tree. I don't think they were really paying that much attention to camper safety...We also played some game called Diamond Smugglers that also worked it's way into the camp dance and involved (Again) tromping through the woods and eating frozen pudding. I loved diamond smugglers because I had just shot my finger with an arrow in archery class (I'm beginning to think I've never paid that much attention to safety...) and had a big bandage on my finger that I was able to slip the diamonds into the base of. It was a very clever hiding spot. I'm still proud of myself 15 years later...

Anyhow- fun/busy times. I have to go teach now and at some point write up my bass ballet paper before tomorrow...

Other Things

*I don't know my scores yet for the performance and the viva. I assume I've passed since what feedback I've had has been good, and I will of course keep you posted as soon as I know anything.

*I just had my first round of acupuncture today. I've been having some intestinal issues and the doctor at school suggested that I try acupuncture. It was fine but I was extremely startled to open my eyes at one point and see an older, lank haired man smiling down at me. It is a teaching hospital and he was the supervisor. I hadn't heard him came in and, like I said, was startled. This seems to be my biggest impression of the first session.

*RASA, a wonderful restaurant on Stoke Newington Church Street had their 15th anniversary party yesterday and so Ella and I went. Lots of delicious free food, huge coconuts being cut open and straws stuck in, TONS of tourist information on Kerala (anyone want to go on a South Indian cooking vacation? Because I have some suggestions), and really lovely people all around. There were cultural events like a dance performance, some music, cooking demonstrations, and they'd even set up a little village with a tea shop and toddy shop over in the corner. It was held at William Patten school which was also fun to wander around in; it looks like a wonderful and vibrant school. Plus they have a great little side garden.

*We're moving next month and now are in the midst of figuring out how this is all going to work. Cross your fingers for me will you? I want a double room that has a lot of charm, is near fun grocery shopping options (I've been so spoiled with Fresh and Fruity), and has good transport links around the city. Know of anything? You know? On the off chance that you've got a friend in London with a room like that that they're looking for someone to fill?

Ankle update

My ankle is healing. I get confused about how much I can actually do on it or not and have been displaying a tendency to overuse it. Like when I did my usual walk through Hyde park to my bus stop after school. It normally takes about 20 minutes. Yesterday it took an hour with frequent stops to remind myself that it was okay to slow down. I didn't need to keep trying to do my normal pace with my crutch.

*The purple is now turning yellow. Weirdly I'm developing pinpoint bruises at the base of my toes.
*Pointing and flexing my foot is more or less comfortable, while side to side is something that I am trying to avoid.
*Keeping my ankle elevated means that I am starting to hurt my knee from overextending it. *People on buses always get up if you've got a crutch. (I even had an old man stand up for me once and another time an elderly woman purposefully gripped my arm in order to give me a hand on to the bus. She didn't say anything, just firmly took my elbow.)
*People on tubes do not even look up. I was unwilling to be pushy about it on the tube, so I just stood for 4 stops until a seat finally opened up.
*Seriously. Don't run for buses in flip flops.

Coming Soon!

This blog is getting behind, for which I apologise. However, I need to be getting some sleep so that I can teach the tykes well tomorrow (we're singing songs about caterpillars and we're going to wiggle and spin and munch. I'm using a lesson plan from a book and trying to un-twee it a bit.)

Here are some mini entries so that A: you know what is coming and B: I make a commitment to actually write about them...

Cornwall: The End- amazing, so much fun! Beautiful weather! I miss the kids already.

Bubblegum: The Conference- a very silly piece written by my flatmate- I chewed bubblegum in concert for it.

Taming of the Shrew- RSC performance with one of my favorite actresses. Wow, that was difficult to watch. Remind me that I HATE the taming of the shrew and I really ought not to see it, even if I love the people in it. Also, is Shakespeare evil? More to come!