12 February 2009

Ooogey boogey

Not happy. No, no, no. I just came from a meeting I organized to TRY and get as many piano players in one spot as possible and organize a schedule of sorts (only for the willing--I wasn't going to suck someone in and/or staple their feet to the floor) for, at the moment, the churches in the community who are lacking for steady players. Namely, the ones that call me repeatedly and a few others, who are also repetitively called (bombarbed, lambasted, guilted... okay, okay, not really.)

It wasn't going to be to sucker anyone in. I SWEAR. When I vocalize my idea, it sounds a lot better. It sounds more casual than it looks. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone sitting behind the keyboard in existing accompanist arrangements. It wasn't to conjole, bribe, pull, or remove anyone hesitant about trying. Or anything in between. At all. JUST bulk. It was only about getting a bunch of people together to rotate services. Hell, anyone. Anyone at all interested in playing piano. I'd teach you piano just to have people in a group who play piano. (Wait, let's not go that far.)

All right. I'm defensive. Because there was no one at the meeting. No one. No one showed, no one came. It was just me and the maintenance lady out in the hall, listening to me bang my head numerous times on the piano in bitter annoyance and defeat in the bandroom down front over the top of her vacuum like a ragdoll bobble clown.

I am also not without understanding **SIGH** as it IS (was) a school night, a weeknight, busy with activities around the community in which people are involved, and scheduled against Dinner Theatre (WHICH I did not know.)

11 February 2009

MySpace Import: Nov '08

Friday, November 28, 2008

Bass flute

Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping

I can't help it, but here we go again with the music scene thing. I'm leaving rehearsal tonight when I notice that *C* left her cello bow on the pew to be buried under all the choir folders. Folders that should not have been allowed to go there, I mean, I'm just sayin'...

I pick it up, being the gracious observer that I am, and give a shout out to its owner in the back of the church, who positively identifies her possession. My sole and solitary purpose is to unearth the delicate bow from under the folders where it lay, place it on top of the piano in the church, right there, one step away from where I am standing, and remove it from harm's way.

Now, let me side track by saying that in this moment, I recall a story from the recesses of a high school band concert where I was allowed the play the bass flute for a winter piece we played. After our concert, we all had to take our chairs and stands off the stage in the auditorium and put them back in the band room, which was through the door at the back of backstage. In wanting to be efficient, I set both my flute and the bass flute down. On the floor. Of the bandroom. Where people (60-piece band, namely) are walking back and forth. With stands. On tiered floors. Jumping, flying, wrestling, scuffling, scurrying, and all other various sorts of banging around, trying to clang and clunk their way into reassembling the band room.

Without warning and coming through that upper band room door with a stand and chair in each of my hands, the first chair flute player (we'll call her KG), starts reaming me out from down in front, in the presence of all, about having the bass flute on the floor. She is unglued and her tirade comes out in peals of maniacal outbursts that mention expense, irresponsibility, et al.; and with anger that 'might' have made someone wonder, at that moment or even now, what her investment was. Embarrassed for being dumb and pissed as hell for the censure, I move the flute ipso facto and put it in its case. Then I go home.

I was so pissed at her absolute lack of tact and ability to deal with it in a way that we could both keep our dignity, but in the end she was right. I left a multi-hundred (maybe thousand?) -dollar instrument on the floor in a moment of poor judgment to get stepped on, crushed, maybe bent. And who would have had to pay for it? It was completely reckless. But I learned my lesson.

Fast forward to the current story. This bass flute story flashes through my mind in a fleeting milisecond as I turn around with the bow in my hand. The husband of said bow owner is there, just there, in a moment, in between me and the piano. Just as momentarily, I am stopped in my tracks of realization, realizing I have his wife's bow in my hand and knowing it is an expensive piece that I really have no basis in holding.

I offer a piddling, half-instantly-intimidated explanation. I am just about ready to get worked up in my mind about this. This is the same Super Talent of the north, who is known "far and wide" for the music he has written, the instruments he has played (namely, the piano), and overall ability to wow the crowds with his alleged greatness; and who, in the matter of one and a half years, I've been able to work with alongside (and in spite of) and learn a great deal from.

I also really enjoy the change and challenge of working with him when I have the opportunity to as I always push myself more than I would on my own when I know he's right there and several steps (and years) ahead of me; but this element is lost when the territorial superiority comes creeping in and I am "reminded" that I am just an insecure peon in the life and wake of the who's who in the musical community. In other words, I let it get to me at ALL and read far much into things that no one else does and just figure that everyone else buys into his diplomatic b.s.

Yes I know.

But as I offer explanation to the husband (*Y*), I also regain (remember) my confidence, set the bow on the piano, and get a less-than-there "ok" from him. Actually it sounds more like a half-laugh at a less-than-pathetic joke.

And then I notice everyone is quiet!

Super quiet. Like if everyone is watching me; and then suddenly I'm aware that they may or may not be waiting for me. So I book it. But I'm just as instantly aware that I was half-lingering, just gathering up papers and books that other people had left laying around, and making sure I had all my own stuff; and it makes me self-consious and feeling loser-ish. I have just executed a move that I have laughed at other people for, dwelling after practice because they have nowhere to go or want to get invited to stay or whatever or however it works.

So it adds up in my head faster than a locomotive gaining speed and the half-laugh "ok" combined with people waiting for me to go, people who have been in this group, a group I fleetingly expressed an interest for once upon a time, people I've associated with, people I've mingled and associated with musically and socially who, although reasonably wait for me to leave, somehow make me feel not good enough. Ousted. And even though I wouldn't have time to be in that specific group nor would I be so unreasonable as to think I could join them so close to the concert or be of accompanying assistance when they have *Y* there, I can't help but feel inadequate or unnecessary just the same.

That being said, it's over. Situation done, gone, and past. Life goes on. I just can't help feeling unappreciated or pushed aside because this is not the first time this has happened. It makes me doubt my ability and gives me justification to be angsty, which I don't like and is cause for me to eat crow when I go back into these kinds of groups, made of up of the same people, in a small town, where there is rarely any deviation from the status quo, and where deviation is met with the same kind of reaction a bitter cashew might have; and where none of that kind of negativity has any place in who I am right now or ever. This rant has far more to do with reaction (of others) than it does my sense of self and ability. But maybe it has to do with how I read into things, too. I just know I sense things others do not, even though it gets me into trouble when I take it too far.

End of rant.

*** I'd like to comment here that it's crazy what the mind will do to itself. Especially mine. I think it's even crazier to illustrate it on paper (or virtual space, as it were) because writing in a style or a way that will help people understand makes my craziness all that more concrete, but it still doesn't generally make sense to the general whole and it's still left out there not making sense to the average person; but my point is that the main point THEN was about being in this ridiculous, absolutely heedless position of having this bow in my hand because I was trying to take care of something the other gal should have been taking care of. It was ludicrous. And as my friend, Celia, pointed out, it should have never been left there to begin with as any competent string player knows damn better than to leave their bow unattended and at risk.

BORING. Boring, boring, boring.

It's hard to blog in a small town. If even one person knows you blog and has the slightest amount of interest in passing the link on, your news is spilled out and all over the table like sputtering coffee beans and the 6 o'clock news. You have to find a balance. The balance of giving a shit and not giving a shit. Alas, my people-flitting skills and enormous pride fit me in the Give Too Much Of A Shit category. Besides that and the fact that I'm a mother of two, very perceptive, not-so-little girls whose lives suffer the ramifications of the tentative, theoretical antics of "that woman" should I decide not to exercise discretion. That sucks.

There have been so many things I've wanted to specifically (and might I add humourously) (look at that--Canadian spelling) spill the beans over, rant, vent, label, whatever and I'm finding that I just can't. I feel very limited as to what I can post and regret being too candid or liberal when the whiplash comes from me not thinking beforehand. And why would I just not think beforehand? Because I'm just tired at the end of the day and what fun is sensible reading of sensible minds?

I guess this would contradict this earlier post somewhat, at least in my mind, the point of starting this TO have a place to freely digest in the form of spewage. I.e. online rantfest, diatribe dolings, epistle-like ponderings, and the like. But I just can't bring myself to spit it out, no matter how much I want to, because even when I say I don't care, I still do.

Okay. I will try again tomorrow. I'll try to blog about work or stupid people. Or both.

08 February 2009

Some of my favorite, or favored, posts

Since I can't retro-date posts on here, I am uploading random oldies from my MySpace.

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Thursday, October 09, 2008

Bagging each other's nuts

Category: Pets and Animals

If the 2.5 of you who read these blogs have ever noticed, I usually enter a category for most of my entries. Please note this one.

Upon completion of my last entry just minutes ago, I was comparing verbal notes of interest with my husband, when he lept into a diatribe of the stupid things kids do at school. It had become a point of staffroom discussion, of which I have been howling this entire entry.

Apparently, some of the junior high boys have taken to punching each other in the "lower extremities" for sport. Kyle has witnessed this in the halls and shared the concern, albeit unsympathetically, with his colleagues.

WHAT?

They DO this for FUN?

I guess they just haul off and go for the gold, laughing like maniacs in the process. Sometimes as hard as they can--punching, that is. I've seen pre-teen boys do stupid stuff, but this takes the cake. At the same time I was shocked and abhorred, I was wildly amused.

So, does this mean that not only is this younger generation lazy and apathetic, but they are taking themselves out, too? Right on! Darwin right at work. Confusious say "man who break ball..."

Are these the pubescent nightmares that will (I hope?) grow up to be leaders and gainfully employed in a world that my poor, unsuspecting daughters will also have to be a part of? At least my daughters will have the grace, the fortitude, and the sense of self to snort at them and walk away.

What in Sam hell does this mean? Are these dumbass boys going to be in the world I live in? What if they survive long enough TO be a part of the real world? What if I survive long enough to see them? Yikes.

The sheer irony of my last entry and this news in its momentary turn is far from lost on me.