back among the living

6/15/99

Took a little break there. I did write entries on Sunday and Monday, but Sunday’s was deleted while I was uploading and I couldn’t face typing it again. Monday I was too drunk to spell and I got ticked off. I feel only slightly guilty for entering all that depressive shit and then disappearing.

I really needed a couple of days’ worth of transitions, anyway. I was up all night—for real—Saturday night, and I heard my neighbor’s car being vandalized. Yep, I heard the smashing and driving-off sounds around 5 am, so I went up and discovered the shattered bottle of ketchup all over the carport, and the hate-note on the windshield. After calling the police and talking to the neighbors, I wasn’t about to sleep, so I drove. Took off for the lake.

Where I went swimming at 9:30 in the morning. Doesn’t sound so bad, but Lake Michigan is one hell of a cold lake. Doesn’t really warm up much until the end of June or July. I felt cleansed. And cold.

I’d planned on sleeping on the beach, but it was overcast and chilly, so I drove right back home again. At that point I decided it was best not to sleep until sleep-time, and my inner clock would finally catch up and I wouldn’t sleep into the afternoons any more. Good plan? I’ve been getting up at a decent hour. Though I could also credit that to not having spent much time updating my journal in the evening.

I have all these scribbled little bits in my paper journal from the past couple of days. Here’s a tasty bit, written while I was waiting for the police to show up:

Now I’m on the couch, it’s 6:20 am and I haven’t slept yet. And the fan is blowing a cool, ketchupy breeze into my living room.

Just caught this wild animals program on early-Sunday TV. Some meercat action, couple of lions, and a hippo fight, Wow! Brutal teeth and stuff. And the territory-marking, I’ve never seen anything like this!

The male hippo has a backward-pointing penis, and, as one would imagine, it’s quite large. Points backward! So he marks by peeing a big stream out the back. But that’s not all. He also, at the same time, does a big old number two. Not through yet! While he’s peeing and pooping, he twirls his tail rapidly, spraying both numbers one and two all over the place. Amazing. All I ever did was leave my bra in the middle of the floor.

Watching that hippo had to be the greatest part of my weekend. I wrote this bit later, after having been awake for about 24 hours:

When I’m coming out of the water I like to re-enact evolution. I swim in until my knees hit sand, then I fake-stumble a little and grow taller until I’m the spitting image of prehistoric man.

0 The Symposium is like this: about a dozen band conductors in the area sign up for this two-week course and improve their conducting skills. The course is taught by Professor Whitwell, and the conductors need an ensemble to play around with, which is where I come in. MSU employs a bunch of high school kids, mainly because they don’t have the money to pay college students. There are a few of us playing anyway, mostly because we’re MSU Band Dept. employees.

I’ve gotten really good at critiqueing conductors. God knows, I’ve watched enough of them. I don’t say too much in the sessions, but I assimilate everything. I may be a shitty conductor in practice, but in theory I could teach a course.

One of the coolest things Mr. Whitwell has done so far was to have the entire ensemble stand up and send energy colors shooting around the room. He asked us to think of a basketball-sized stream of bright orange, and aim it right at the exit sign. Then we radiated a pale blue haze. Great fun. The purpose? Let me see if I can explain. He had us exuding this pale blueness: shimmer shimmer shimmer, and then we sat down while shimmering. Then we stood again, and sat down without exuding anything. Plop. Imagine the same idea translated into playing music.

One of my euphonium students is playing for this thing. Today she played the solo in Holst’s Second Suite and scored compliments from Whitwell and some of the conducting students. Yay.