27 XI 2002 - 20:17 - plus scribendumst

This will be a summary of my day in guise of a response to [jianadaren]'s guestbook signature, so if such things do not please you, skip this one. And the past forty before that. (Or don't -- occasionally I touch on some other things.) I was going to write a Buzz entry but then decided that it's sort of sad to do 67 things that would be nice for Christmas when I haven't done the other ones like what I would put in a time capsule or what my strangest dream has been. I fear I am becoming nothing more than a materialistic prat and the thing is when I accuse myself of something like that there is very, very little interest in offering a counterargument, mostly because I suspect I am trying to make myself feel bad. Why I should make myself feel bad -- that's a different question and one I don't feel qualified to answer. Next!

I am rather tired -- ridiculously so, in fact, for having had only a half-day of school today. And I didn't even have a half-day, since I have only one class. Which ordinarily would have been torture (must...live...through...history...) but was today not that bad at all because I am a competent cellist.

A bit of explanation: there are about 412 people in my school. We have a 'chamber orchestra' which was recently renamed and now goes by 'sinfonietta.' I was in this ensemble last year. It was sort of bad, and caused me much more stress than it was worth, especially as the other cellist would ask me how to play his instrument and then ignore me. This was not at all what I needed and so I got out.

However, this year we have a 'better' ensemble (with all of fifteen people! be still, my heart!). The only section in which we did not experience growth was that of the actually quite broad category of bass instruments. The only person who is left is the cellist from last year. Which would be fine except for that he drives the conductor up the wall. Also, the conductor is thinking of taking a piece to the Junior Bach competition out here and recognizes that if your continuo is struggling to read tenor clef, that doesn't improve your prospects.

So I've been talking to him (and he to me) about possibly substituting for the other cellist in this piece. On Monday I talked to him and he said, 'By the way, I've talked to your history teacher, and instead of having long-block history on Wednesday, you'll rehearse the Bach with me, and as long as I have you, I might as well put you on the Debussy we're doing as well.' I have issues with how ambitious he is in program planning, but aside from that, I sort of like the man. And how can I not like someone who just got me out of history hell?

So today, rehearsal, which was a hell of its own as I tried to deal with misplaced accidentals and an inability to watch (not mine) but an entirely different sort as I could amuse myself by trying to derive harmonies from my part (history class does not lend itself well to such diversions). Then I went up to the library and got my book renewed and confused c. and went through a long argument with n. about paying overdue fines on books I'd returned a month ago (I thought I should, she thought I shouldn't -- she won) and then left for home. Yes. I saw some familiar faces -- even talked to a few -- from last year and also had the dubious pleasure of the jazz teacher who seems to take an obscene delight in saying "Well, I know bass players who are ten hundred thousand times more paranoid about their instrument's safety than you are and they have NO PROBLEM doing [x] that you just objected to," and in today's question that [x] was rolling my cello in its case down the sidewalk. Yes, I know it's relatively safe, but look! huge cracks in the concrete! better safe than sorry.

Then I went to the Opera Plaza theater to see Naqoyqatsi and was late because I'm sort of stupid about time and expecting MUNI buses to come on time. Ha! I walked to West Portal and waited ten minutes for the bus to arrive and then it got me downtown faster than any bus has ever gotten me downtown, possibly because the driver knew he was behind schedule given the ratio of outbound to inbound cars. Oh wait, a computer controls the car once it's in the tunnel. Never mind. Still I had time to sneak furtive glances at the men who boarded at the Castro stop, and wow saying that makes me feel sleazy somehow... never mind, no harm in looking as long as I don't leer. I think.

I got out at Civic Center and ran through the farmer's market and past the library and through the square and past City Hall and by now all the homeless people were staring at me because I look really funny when I run, plus because the tread on my boots is wearing from the way I walk I almost slipped and broke something as I ran out of the MUNI station. I think I was justified in running as it was 12:13 and I was trying to get to a 12:15 showing and I still had something like seven or eight blocks to cover. When I got to the theater I was gross (I sweat sort of easily) and the theater's clock said 12:20 but the nice man with bushy sideburns went ahead and let me in anyway since they were just in previews (of which there were about five more after I ran in) and, hey, he was taking my money anyway. Matinees are nice. So I went in and listened mostly to the Philip Glass score and paid attention to the timbre of Yo-Yo Ma's solos and, yes, the images weren't bad either (the Qatsi trilogy has no dialogue, really). I was amused by the fact that as my eyes adjusted to the darkness (very small screens, maybe 30 people at the most?) I saw only one other person in the audience. It's been a while since I've had a room that nearly to myself...

As an aside: thick facial hair confuses me, as does chest hair -- qualities for which the Chinese are not particularly known, as far as stereotype goes. I find myself wondering what it would feel like under my fingertips, what texture it carries and what it lends to the skin. Some men don't look complete to me without it (like my eighth grade science teacher, who was incompetent, and my current physics teacher, who is very far from incompetent). Had I written that Buzz about the strangest dream I ever had (as I think I may under the new Buzz rules), one I had recently in which someone was in my lap and I was just petting his chest hair repetitively probably wins the prize, although I don't know how much there is to say about a dream like that. (but what does it mean? --) As an article I was reading at the doctor's office recently mentioned, disgust usually carries with it a great deal of fascination... which I think here is this Otherness made tangible. I take my foreignness where I can.

I browsed through A Clean Well-Lighted Place For Books to a lute rendition of Bach's Fifth Suite for Unaccompanied Cello in c minor -- except of course that there exists a lute suite (transposed, I think g minor) from which it is suspected that Bach derived the cello suite, and hence the scordatura tuning. I didn't find anything although a Christmas list begins to make itself clearer...

I got home and then slept just a little before a cello lesson that finally lasted for two and a half hours and left me drained. By the time I got to the fifth piece in Schumann's Five Pieces In Folk Style my mind was snapping and I didn't want to be there and I felt terrible for not wanting to be there when he'd been to busy to give me a lesson in two weeks and I should be making the most of this. Things are shaping up for a concert in January, I think...

Which takes me to now. I just remembered what my homework for my class in counterpoint is, so I should probably do that (three-voice second-species counterpoint with additional compositions for cello and viola in second-species -- why the combination? my teacher is a violist), and my teachers have of course kindly assigned lots of homework in case I get bored over the break. Such danger of that...

I don't know why sexuality feels so dangerous to me. Perhaps it's because I exert very little rational control over it. There are days when I despair of ever being able to do so and there are days when I simply see no need even to try. I'm not sure when I feel the best. Let me tell you this: it is not when I am being told that to consider any desire of mine genuine, to believe anything of myself, is rash and the mistake of a fool.

Which would of course lead to the question: wherefore then all this self-doubt? Do I really enjoy to wallow all that much?