Today I got up early to go to campus, but I felt sniffly and also remembered I am working on campus on Friday, so I worked from home. That loss of sleep this morning was for naught. One of my big tasks today was something I had done in the test environment several times, so I felt ready... but of course it was totally different in the real system. Worse, a step I'd had to take in the test environment was totally unnecessary in the real system, so I wasted a lot of time and effort doing that for nothing. This system really is the gift that keeps on giving.
In the evening I went to a Moldy Jam jam at the music club, and I felt very on point tonight. The first time through a song I'd be so lost, but then I'd figure out a few key notes, and by the third time through I was playing it like I'd known it all my life. At one point someone started playing a song, and someone else asked if it was in G, but I blurted out, "It's in A," just because I could hear it was in A. Toward the end I was getting tired and started cheating by sight-reading the songs on a nearby iPad, and on the last song I gave up and played chords. My request tonight was "Rakes of Mallow," which I haven't played in like forty years, and I remember it being in C, but they play it in G in this group. I said. "I'm a mandolin player - our motto is, 'If it's in G, we can play it,'" and afterwards people said they liked some flourish I put into it. Also, there was a wonderful sequence where every time we finished a slip jig in E Dorian, someone else would start another slip jig in E Dorian. I imagine that's what Heaven is like. I sat by some fiddlers, and I confessed how I'm out of practice on the fiddle because of devoting my time to the mandolin. They said, "But you sound so good on it!" One guitarist said, "That mandolin looks like it has been around!" and I thought maybe the guy who played it yesterday was right when he said, "I would never play out with this!" but I mean, isn't that what an instrument is for?
Here is a paraphrase of an email I sent to Tiffy this morning:The Elder Stateswoman: a Taurus who has taken the course before, she is the voice of reassurance and the bringer of delicious treats.
The Can-Do Chick: a Scorpio who looks like she would survive for at least three years in the wilderness with no help, her motivations for learning percussion remain mysterious.
The Hot Young Thing: a Virgo who is very young, very beautiful, and very Latina, she dances to samba wearing more on her head than her body (much to Travalon's delight), and now she wants to learn to play the drums she always dances to.
The Nutjob: a Capricorn who always wears the club jersey like some kind of brown noser but really it’s because she secretly thinks the colors look fabulous on her, she is studying percussion in hopes of learning to play a ukulele-like Brazilian instrument, like that makes any sense.
At the Irish slow session right after that I sat next to my Irish teacher, who is also named Famous but goes by Famie. She plays the concertina (little accordion), and the leader introduced us to a new person as “the Famie Section.” Sigh. She did note that the Famie Section speaks Irish, which is not something you can say about every Famie section for sure. In case you are wondering, the other half of the Famie section is a Scorpio."
No comments:
Post a Comment