26 X 2002 - 21:32 - brevis58

And this is how you know you really need to learn when not to say anything:

Today in orchestra rehearsal, the principal came in playing a fifth above everyone else. Amusingly enough, this happened while everyone was supposed to be in tenor clef. If you're not a cellist, let's just say that the most common mistake is to play tenor clef in bass clef, which means that you're playing a fifth lower than you should be.

Said she, "There must be a clef for that."

To which I replied, "Yeah... it's mezzo-soprano clef."

Silence.

"But I suppose it's a moot point."

To which everyone chorused: "Yes, it probably is."

On the plus side, the music critic for the Chronicle agreed with my review of the War Requiem. So I suppose everything balances out...

Al, let me know how tonight's performance is.

I find I sort of wish I had something memorable, something constructed, to say. But as it stands, I don't, and I should probably get back to work on Latin... flood, I'm working on something to give you for the sonnet; it's from Horace's Odes and is mentioned in The Invention of Love...

Strange things. A friend of mine went the ROTC route and will be in the Navy after he graduates from Northwestern (of all the places to join the Navy, I do declare...) He's also learning Chinese, the better to make himself useful in Asia. For some reason, I can't picture his tongue threading itself around the sounds of Chinese -- I suppose because it is a very real trespassing on my territory, even if that's an unreasonable and really rather nonsensical way to consider it. But, there you go. We can't all be creatures of reason.

I worry. There was a time when I wanted to dance the dance of pairs with him, but I think I'm over that now. It doesn't mean I've absolved myself of care; it doesn't mean that I don't regard him highly as a friend, even if I don't talk to him that much, and it doesn't mean I've stopped worrying.

This, the seeming defining trait of my life: worry for the people I care about. One of these days I fear it shall give me an ulcer, but until then I'm resolved to make the best of it.