4/14/99

Two options for this beautiful afternoon: 1. sitting in my windowless office, preparing for my oral exams, 2. wasting away the daylight in a windowless theater, with horrid sugary things nearby.

Come on, what do you think? I saw Life is Beautiful. Beautiful like the sunlight and warm breezes that I opted against. Hell, those things didn't even make the shortlist.

I always feel like a big jerk walking out of a movie, wiping away tears, (yes. I cried, sue me,) and into the dazzling sun. God. Can't even see a depressing movie at night--I go when I'm going to have to walk out sniveling and face the rest of the afternoon.

I led a euphonium sectional today on the the pieces we're playing on the concert this Sunday. I commiserated with Tony after--he's the tuba section leader--it seems we have similar troubles when we're in charge. My section didn't even want to show up today.

(euphonium player #1) "We don't need a sectional, do we? We know our parts...."

(me, thinking) "Oh, you do?"

(me, speaking) "Ahh, well, there are a few things we could run through together...."

So I brought in some quartets and we read them. Not for fun, you jagoffs, this is for intonation. We blasted through these renaissance pieces, seemingly without a care for playing in tune. How do I motivate these people when they are so much like me?

(#2) "We don't need to rehearse the band pieces. We all know our parts...."

(me, thinking) "Why do we get ragged on in full rehearsals every day? Why do I hear people playing in the rests? Why can't I hear anyone playing, besides myself?"

(me, speaking) "We should play through a few things and check intonation...."

Funny, I said the word 'intonation' enough times and suddenly we started to play in tune. Can't tell me that was a coincidence.

And I took the blame for things I wasn't doing. If we played a passage that should have been crisp and very secco, and someone was just not playing secco enough, we'd stop, look around....

(#3) "Cool! Let's go on...."

(me, thinking) "What?!"

(me, speaking) "Mmm...Let's try that again, for me. Maybe shorter notes would make this sound more crisp."

I did the same when someone clearly was not hanging in there for rhythmic patterns. I felt a little silly, like I was hedging (as usual) to avoid criticizing someone else. They probably think I'm a bumbling jerk who can't play any of the parts. Hey, whatever, it worked. And Tony told me he was doing the same thing. Jonesian pedagogy...maybe we have something here.

After the movie I came home and dusted the cat for fleas. She's happier about the dusting process when she can roll around on the cement step outside, so I rolled around with her and managed to get powder on most of her body. The dust made her fur a little tacky, so when she stood up she was covered with flyaway fur that wouldn't fly, as well as tiny bits of gravel. Oh, well, at least she's not covered with fleas.

Dreamt about the journal again last night. This is getting weird. I was at marching band camp back in high school (oh, horrors!) and I skipped a marching session to write in my (paper) journal. I thought of a kickass new name for the Journal of a Cynic, it had something to do with suncatchers. People kept interrupting me and I knew that if I could just sit down and read this Shakespearean quote about suncatchers I would have the perfect name for my journal. The people wouldn't leave me alone and I eventually got into the shower, or something, and when I woke up that bit of creative perfection was nowhere to be found.