Octoberings

The leaves have turned and they are falling. No frost yet but the heat finally had to be turned on. This weekend was full of concerts and joy. Caught the end of Blue Heron after my rehearsal on Friday, went out for dinner on Saturday before seeing Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI at Harvard. Met up with a gamba buddy I haven't seen in ages who drove down from VT for the concert and we drank beer and played gamba together well into the night. I cooked pancakes Sunday morning and had a lazy day before the Cambridge Concentus concert, followed by good food and going to bed early. What I was struck by this weekend is how many wonderful people there are out there whom I really enjoy and how little time I actually devote to seeing them. I've been holed up most of the semester spending a lot of time by myself here at home (and not as productively as I'd like) as well as a lot of time with K. I don't regret this because schlepping around to lots of parties and events is too much excitement for me but I have decided that I'm going to try to get out more. I'm not going to go to extremes but maybe I'll try to do one adventuresome thing a week. One thing I might otherwise not do out of fear, obligation, laziness, anxiety, etc. We'll see how it works out.

In other news, I am scrapping all of my bad left-hand habits and rebuilding my technique from scratch. It's about time and I knew it had to happen but the intonation on the cello recital was just not acceptable and is holding my playing back. I hate the patient and diligent work it takes to change something very fundamental about my playing but there is a masochistic part of me that enjoys how tedious it is, how frustrating. Because it's so obvious when you start to get it right and you can see the results of your work so easily.

But that work will happen tomorrow. Now for an early bedtime before a long (and hopefully productive) day.

Decisions

Decisions, those pesky mental tasks we put off as long as possible, letting them accumulate dust and cat hair like the piles of unread books sitting around my room. But lo, I have made some. I am going to stay in Boston a third year. I am going to apply to the musicology program at BU so I can do the combined major that J has been doing. I'm going to spread the extra courses out over two semesters so that I can also take German. I will come up with a brilliant and interesting thesis/lecture-recital topic, write the best Fulbright application ever, and continue playing with my wonderful musical colleagues. I am relieved to be done with the pondering over this. Whether or not it turns out to have been the right decision (although I think it will), now that I've made it, I can get to work on its implementation, a concrete thing that I find much easier than the endless contemplating.

There is something so invigorating about fall weather, the crispness of the mornings, the lazy warmth of the afternoons. I've been sleeping with the windows open and a big comforter wrapped all around me. I love the juxtaposition of the warmth and the cold air on my face.

My recital is four weeks from tomorrow. I'm not ready, but hopefully I will be when the time comes. There are a lot of notes in my program and a lot of expressive things I need to figure out, get control of, learn to execute well. It's funny feeling like a cellist again after years of identifying more as a gamba player who also plays Baroque cello. I do love the cello, in a different and perhaps not equal way to the way I love the viol but still, there's a deep affection for it. Cello has all the memories of my past from before I began gamba.

There is leftover sweet potato bread and rice and curry from my cooking efforts last night, I think they will make a lovely lunch after I finish my tea.

The Joys (and Pains) of Consumerism

My roommate, J, and I decided to take yesterday afternoon off from life. After our oft-frustrating Monday class, we went on an MBTA adventure, making our way out to the Chestnut Hill Mall. After determining that the mall was way too upscale and expensive for our tastes, we climbed down a rocky slope (off-roading!) and made our way over to a Macy's where we found lots of things on sale. As usual, we spent most of our time perusing racks of dresses on sale, evaluating the cello-playing possibilities of them all.

Finding things to wear for performances as a cellist is difficult. I envy violinists and singers, the former having only to worry about collars getting in the way and the later entirely free to do anything as long as they look fabulous. The obvious problem with playing the cello is that it requires one's knees to be approximately 2 miles apart from each other. Thus are we ever on the lookout for very full skirts (we can be spotted in dressing rooms as the ones who find a chair to sit in to see if the skirt is wide enough). Additionally, as a Baroque cellist, the lack of endpin means I must be comfortable holding up the instrument with my legs. This is not as difficult as it appears (one gets used to it quickly) but particularly smooth and slippery fabrics make the cello less secure and often distract from the performance. Of course, beads and buttons and other ornaments are problematic because they could scratch the cello or rattle or buzz whilst I'm playing. As if this weren't enough, we must be very careful about straps as the movement of our bow-arm can lead them to fall off our shoulders. This happens to me a lot and at times I've had to resort to taping straps to the back of my shoulder to prevent this (most laughably, I did this with gaff tape at the Kennedy Center to prevent calamity during a performance available by live feed on the internet).

I haven't mentioned shoes yet! The height of them affects how high the cello sits (and thus your intonation) so they must be carefully chosen as well. I also like to test them for "tip-ability," whether they allow me to sit comfortably with my feet tipped at an angle (as I do when I play). Surprisingly, this varies a lot between heels and is impossible to predict. Some thin heels balance very well at an angle while some chunky ones do not.

Despite all these restrictions, I managed to find a lovely black dress that you can see if you come to my performance Wednesday or Thursday night. I'll only wear it one of the nights, so leave a comment to vote which night you want to see it!