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The second group lesson is easier they told me. They were correct. I was pleasantly surprised as my body did not decide to turn into knee knocking pudding based entity. I sang at an acceptable level relative to my skill. I think I could have used more practice as my Italian text was misplaced at times, as well as my finding a tricky interval from C to G#, but overall I had good experience during my time in front of my peers.
The sour cream of the crop?
What was also nice was that we had time to sing Bridge over Troubled water to the group as well. We snuck it in after Intransigentia’s fine performance in the spotlight. Most of the students by the end were singing with us, it was such a great feeling, almost makes me forget that my voice melted on one of the high G#’s near the end of the piece. Such is life, everyone seemed to have a good time and that was the important part.
Next up, a choral retreat in the misty land of British Columbia. I cannot wait. :)
I am sorta-kinda looking forward to the third group lesson, whenever that may be. I guess I’m starting to take to this whole singing thing.
When I first started Blogging I was all about the hits and stats and ooooh, who is reading me now? About a year into this blogventure I still like looking at the stats and what not, but I wonder why I continue to put my thoughts and analysis out on the Internet for others to partake in?
What do I offer than cannot be found elsewhere (and more finely polished I might add)? What is the function of this blog vis a vis my actual life? Both to a certain extent are unrelated, necessarily so as I am employed in a profession in which one must mind their p’s and q’s when it come to making public statements about topics. The relative anonymity I enjoy here at DWR allows me to express my opinion on a myriad of topics without having to filter for the normative influences and expectations of my career.
It is interesting to take a step back everyone once and awhile and examine the meta-data that surround the assumptions we make and why we do things.
The Arbourist.
My chosen ordeal by instrument.
I did it. I went to my first piano recital and played not one, not two, but three pieces I have been slaving over for the last couple of months.
You know what? I completely massacred two of the three. What I did not do was stop playing, my left hand encountered landmine after landmine in the bass clef, but I just kept on going. I think the wine had a lot to do with my confidence as I unskillfully added my musical renditions from J.S Bach’s Anna Magdalena’s Notebook: Musette BWV Anh 116, Minuet in G major 114, and the Minuet in G minor, BWV Anh. 115. It worked though, I kept a rough tempo and ended things with as much as a musical flourish as I am capable of. Hence, the piano musical WIN!
The performance was another major milestone for me, along with the gruelling group singing lesson that I participated in with my vocal instructor. You see, I also sing with Intransigentia, she has a beautiful soprano voice that she also happens to be honing with the same vocal instructor. We sing a haunting duet of Ave Maria that Intransigentia arranged for us.
We sang the duet at the group lesson once through, then our teacher asked Intransigentia to sit down. I was about 
to follow her, but was quickly waved back up to the music stand. The next, oh million years (20 minutes), was spent meticulously going over the fine points of my part, especially the really high parts (my vocal folds were in full revolt by the seventh time the high G# came around). This was the first time I had sung this song in a small group learning situation; my knees were jelly and my stomach was fluttering about trying to do its bit for chaos theory.
But I survived. I sang in front of strangers and was corrected (repeatedly) while doing so. I bent, but I did not break. The confidence I gained allowed me to perform the next Sunday at a church much better than I could have without this Ogre of a lesson.
Confidence is a massive part of performing music, and it seems that I am gaining some small modicum of it. It only gets harder from here, but I’m all over that. :)
Hey, if it worked in 1955 why shouldn’t it apply now…?
*headdesk*
I write this post out of a shared personal experience with a religiously addled graduate from university. Let’s call him, to be charitable, douche-nozzle or DN for short. As with most of the risibly sanctimonious religious turds out there DN believes he has a relevant, informed opinion on a myriad of topics. It must be nice to be able to answer the hard questions of life with the unctuous “goddidit” and not be laughed out of the room by your peers. DN seems to think that he can bloviate on about Especially Easy to understand topics ones Feminism and Post Modernism. Now DN, with his above average score in verbal rectaltude decided to strike up a conversation with my partner based on the All-Star thesis that “feminists have “gone too far” and really need to take a hard look at the direction of their movement.
Feminism has gone too far… Oh ya right! Magically, since DN was warming up to mansplain exactly how frakking peachy the womenz have it now. DN, despite a few inconvenient facts such as that the patriarchy, rape culture, rape, the pro-kyriarchy biased social, economic and political systems, not to mention ingrained cultural misogyny and….et cetera are still all going on full stream, began to explain how right the world was and how feminism had gone wrong. It was as if all the institutions that enslave, depreciate and and destroy women somehow disappeared, seemingly overnight and more importantly, are inconsequential because he is white and male and he frakking says so.
DN, even jebus knows you fail.
DN carries his privilege well. He is middle class and literally has both sides of the family falling over him to ensure a soft landing in what we like to call reality. One of his more egregious assumptions is that Intransigentia is just a mere girl and therefore does not have much going on in the grey matter. Not many things can be further from the truth. She possesses a quick wit and near encyclopedic memory of facts and argumentation which she often calls upon to dissect and dismember fuckwittery of a much greater calibre than DN could ever hope to offer.
DN got lucky though, as my parter was bereft of sleep and had a magnitude 8 headache. Even with her size 8 brain packed into a size five skull she put an end DN’s douchery. Simply by asking which feminist authors he was referring to and to back up his claim with some sort of reasonable example. It was amazing to watch how fast the conversation shifted.
“Uh-oh this one uses her lady-brain for more than just house cleaning, praising jebus, and bearing children to brainwash in order to propagate the frakking bloody car-wreak that is christianity.” – I’m sure this didn’t cross DN’s mind, but I’d like to give his withered rationality at least the benefit of the doubt.
I look forward to the day when the Feminist movement is no longer necessary. I work toward furthering the rights of women and educating people about the assumptions they take for granted, that necessarily hurt women but remain unexamined. There is a long way to go, I just hope we can take another step by firmly slapping down the mealy mouthed privileged mendacity that regularly spews forth from mouths of people like DN.
Concordance on how anecdata is no substitute for real data.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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