27 IV 2002 - 17:59 - quotidianus14

there are only a few things worth describing which happened to me today.

well, not entirely today. several days ago, the conductor of my school's orchestra told us that musicians who don't bring pencils to rehearsal tell the conductor, "i'm too good to make mistakes." i'm the person who brings about eight pencils to orchestra rehearsal, some to hand out to other people. before, i thought i was just carrying little penis metaphors around; now, i'm quite curious about what i'm actually saying. is it that i make enough mistakes for everyone? is it that i'm all about the mistakes? enquiring minds (not mine) want to know.

my mother went to china and got me a shirt with naxi pictograms on it. she forgot to get a translation, so we think it means "world peace." i should emphasize just how shaky this answer is. but it's most certainly an interesting shirt. i wonder how borges would have written about the naxi language. if he ever might have. if he would have found it interesting.

also we talked to s. because he hasn't called f. since her father died. al and i asked to talk to him and he got up and put himself in a corner and let us talk at him for a bit. he said things like "i wasn't really sure if she'd want to talk to me." well. al says i said the right things. i'm not so sure. i told him that, no, it wasn't all right, frannie was hurting; that personally, i didn't give a damn what he did, and i could even see how it might be difficult - but i didn't want frannie hurt. capsule summary. i've never really had to do anything like this before, so we'll see if it does anything. he seemed to believe himself when he said he'd call and visit.

anna kept calling me a "flaming intellectual" today. which i don't quite agree with. then she said that i was turning into a nagging mother, which i suppose is fair. since i did tell her to make sure she washed her hands after eating. but, you know, one reminder does not a mother make. (no, it's the constant attempts i made to break up the punching contests between b. and eugene, each starting with, "boys! boys!" that really did it for her.) we're planning on getting second stand together next year. we're hoping no one particularly good comes into the section so we can fulfill this dream. (and play lots of games of hangman during rests. i mean, no! i'd never do such a disrespectful thing to dear edwin.)

today our violinist wasn't there for chamber music, so se. and i went to the library to check out some cello sonatas. we were rather unrealistic: this will mean nothing to most people, but we checked out barber and britten, which was just ridiculous, and also a compilation of mendelssohn's cello-piano works. the highlight of it all, however, was the franck sonata. allow me to explain before i leave.

the franck sonata is one written for violin and cello, but it has been transcribed for viola and cello and is part of the established repertoire for both of those instruments as well. it's a beautiful piece but is a stretch to sightread, especially for the pianist. well, we fixed that.

you see, the conservatory library doesn't have the cello transcription. it does, however, have the violin and viola editions, which was brought home to me when se. popped out of the stacks holding the viola franck set in triumph. "you can read alto clef, right?" he said, with a questioning look on his face. like a fool, i said yes. ha.

i haven't read alto clef since i played viola parts at our school's winter concert in december. as a result, i'm rather rusty. trying to read alto clef and transpose down an octave at the same time proved to be just a little too much. which meant that i had to play it at pitch if i wanted to get the right notes. so, ouch. i'm a good pitch-player, i'm a good sight-reader, and i can make almost any fingering work -- but what killed me were the sudden jumps from treble clef (one with which i am quite familiar) to alto clef (one with which i'm not, and which often required about an octave leap, which my brain didn't quite get.) i'm not sure that there's really any point to this little anecdote, except for that i'm never going to sightread a solo-type viola piece again and that sane people read the clefs meant for, well, sane people: treble, tenor, bass.

oh! and i made it onto roy's list of "intellectually stimulating diaries"! share in my joy! but not my depression, because not all my entries can be gloomy. that'd, you know, violate some natural law or something. mmm. i defy those who demand specifics.