Sports injuries

Okay. Not sports injuries in the traditional sense. But choir is an athletic endeavor in its own right, especially after five runs of Bach’s B minor in six days. Seriously. Stop laughing.

• Throat — this is the most obvious choir injury, scratchy, irritated, eliciting a constant litany of rather unmusical hacking. Welcome to the land of tea.
• Lower back — standing for long periods of time on rickety risers holding a 240 page score erect does one’s back no favors. And speaking of hoisting that massive score…
• Upper arms/upper back — kids, that shit is heavy, and if you ladies want to be a good little chorister and watch the conductor whilst singing a complicated five-voice fugue, you have to lift that score high enough to at least clear your rack. Oof.
• Hands/wrists — again with the fucking score, fingers splayed out and wrists engaged to help support the weight. Clarinetists with carpal tunnel need not apply…unless inexplicably required to by their fucking master’s program.
• Feet — Standing, for two hours, on a riser. I rest my case.
• Jaw???? — This one is new for me. My jaw is a mess. Trying to chew today’s sandwich was torture. Seriously, singers? What the fuck??

I need a massage and a drink. Well, at least I can indulge in the latter…while doing my homework. Cheers!

Ignorance is bliss

My throat: sore. My voice: raspy. My back: achy. My brain: fuzzy.

People, I am not a singer. The first step, after all, is to admit you have a PROBLEM.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a good musician…the fact is, I’m a good enough musician to know that I have absolutely no business trying to sing the Bach B minor Mass. Singing is like playing any other instrument: it requires training, practice, and experience. I have none of these things, and it shows, or rather, sounds. It’s like handing the Copland Clarinet Concerto to a marginally talented clarinetist who has played for a year and never had a lesson. T’won’t be pretty, I promise you.

I know full well that I’m not pulling my weight. Forget volume, I am struggling to simply sing approximately correct pitches and do nothing so blatant as to make my section sound ridiculous. By the end of the first half of the piece, I am EXHAUSTED. By the end of the piece, I have absolutely NOTHING.

Ugh. I dread this next week.

Lies and Laziness

Even as I perch behind a behemothian black desk labeled REFERENCE in bold black letters, people often ask me: “you’re a librarian, right?” Confession: I always say yes, even though, until the degree is in my hot little hands, I am merely library staff, stuck in that purgatorial stasis between student worker and librarian. (Unrelated confession number two: Behemothian? Not a real word. I know. The web I weave. Liar, liar, pants on fire.)

But since I’ve been working in one or another repository of human knowledge (*swoon!*) for nearly ten years now, I feel justified in my appropriation of the title. This feeling is augmented, unfortunately so, by the lackluster effort put forth by some of those who’ve officially earned their librarian badge. I shan’t name any names, of course, but I must admit that I occasionally feel the urge to approach a select few, get up in their grills as it were, and ask them: “WHY ARE YOU HERE?!” These are the librarians who, in the handful of oh-so-annoying hours per week they must spend helping the unwashed masses, seemingly do all that’s within their power to NOT answer questions. In other words, if the question does not pertain to their specific area of expertise, they curtly shrug and offhandedly refer it elsewhere. It may be a question easily answered by a quick web search or phone call, or it may be that the patron simply needs some instruction as to how to best construct a search query or select a database; regardless, if the question does not pique the personal interest of said librarian, said patron can, well, go to hell. They are, one after another, summarily dismissed with ill-disguised disdain.

Perhaps I’m being unfair (as a self-described bitch, this is often the case), but to be honest, this practice ranks right up there with musicians who show up to rehearsals unprepared/apathetic on my list of ARGH-inducing pet peeves. I get plenty of questions which do not interest me (I’m looking at you, business), and I get plenty of questions that I feel hardly prepared to answer (I’m still looking at you, business), but I feel quite acutely that it is part of my professional duty to give a well-considered effort in spite of any personal misgivings I may harbor. That’s not to say I won’t refer the student elsewhere if the results I’m retrieving ill-suit their actual needs. But, my job, the only reason I sit behind that desk and get paid for the pleasure, is to help, and even if I am unable to find the ultimate answer to their question, I still hope to serve some helpful purpose, to point them in a potentially profitable direction, to provide them with at least a base amount of useful information. If that’s not what you’re in librarianship to do, FOR EVERYONE, regardless of their question, I’m sure there’s a nice federal bureaucracy out there somewhere that can use your pass-the-buck skills to further alienate the public.

Rant over. My apologies for the overly serious post. To atone for it, I offer you this:

Fitzwilliam and I are so gangsta.

VICTORY…in the bloody field of CAR!

I am the victorious hero, returned from war, flushed with unprecedented success.

I fixed my car. All by myself.

Sure, I didn’t have to rebuild the engine or anything, but for a petite, weak little thing with no particular knowledge of internal combustion, I am IMPRESSED. With MYSELF. YOU HEARD ME.

The scoop: Last Sunday, I noticed Corey (the Corolla) was a bit slow on the uptake. I turn the key and hear: rewr….rewr.

Monday: Rewr………….rewr.

Tuesday: Rewr………………………….rewr.

And finally, Thursday: click click click click click click. Me: FUCKS. MULTIPLE.

I turn to the trusty internet. Oh Google. Tell me, what the fuck should I do?

Google: Well, it could be your starter, specifically the solenoid. Or it could be your alternator. But it’s probably your battery.

Me: I love you, Google. Call me.

Saturday, new battery in hand (or on the ground, as it were…those shits are HEAVY, yo), I crack open the hood and dig in! Machine-tightened bolts are no match for the highly-tuned machines that are my GUNS. ON MY ARMS.

Out with the old (negative off first, positive off next, then the brace), in with the new (brace, positive, negative, tighten her up). Covered in grease and grime. And for fuck’s sake, don’t blow yourself up.

Into the driver’s seat, sweating, sore, exhausted. Key, ignition…and Corey roars to life, stutter-free! I have WON! I have created LIFE! With my SKILLZ! And my GUNZ!

But if I need an oil change, I’m hitting Jiffy-Lube. This car is murder for my manicure.

Sleep Can Suck It: Part 5 of a 21-Part Series

This race to vacation is, shockingly, more than half-way run, and while I can’t quite see the finish line, while my legs have gone numb and my lungs still burn, I can almost catch a whiff of that fresh, rain-soaked Pacific Northwest breeze that awaits me at the end of the road.

Much to do before that time comes, however. Two out of three classes will, unfortunately, continue to needle me with frustratingly short, undergraduate-esque assignments week after week, one page here, four pages there, inane recitations of someone else’s ideas, dull summations and platitudes. If someone out there could please remind me of my loathing for such ridiculous did-you-do-the-reading-and-or-listening busywork the next time I look at such a syllabus and think, “hey, this will be easy,” that would be much appreciated.

But ah, class number three. A paper, a presentation, a topic of my choosing. Suddenly I find myself in grad school again, and it’s good to be back! However, it’s here that I face my true academic weakness: over-reaching. I have, more than once, presented a topic proposal only to meet an askance professorial gaze: “It’s a good idea, but it’s a dissertation, not a 15 page paper.” Alas, to be hampered yet again by such low expectations!

Okay, no, I do not want to write a dissertation in a month (though, unfortunately, I have tried). So, I must be reasonable, rational, restrained, distilling my unwieldy ideas down to their essence. And I must do so now, as this paper/presentation proposal is due tomorrow, and I’m still at a loss. Yet again, sleep is for the weak and the well-organized.

Sleep Can Suck It: Part 4 of…of…ACHOO!!…*sniff*

Graduate school is a test of how fast you can run, in circles, for how long, before you, or your body, says, “Fuck it, I need a breather!”

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. I am very very tired. It’s 11 pm, on a Wednesday night. Paper due Friday. Another paper due Monday. In addition to the regular weekly assignments and readings. In addition to a full work/class/rehearsal schedule.

AND I’VE CAUGHT A GODDAMN COLD.

F. U. C. K.

Secrets from the inside

How to induce panic in an academic library:

1) Kill the internet

2) Duck

Sleep Can Suck It: Part 3 of a 21-Part Series

My term of the term:

coffee bucket, n.

1. a large, cavernous receptacle designed to accommodate a copious amount of hot, strong, undiluted coffee;

2. LIFE.  In liquid form.

Sleep Can Suck It: Part 2 of a 21-Part Series

I am a singer…which may come as quite the surprise, especially to those of you who have experienced, first-hand, my subtle vocal stylings. I think, in particular, of Tess and Soh-Ra, who, back when we were wide-eyed, innocent Obies, often attempted to include me in a Celine Dion/Barbra Streisand sing-a-long. I usually ended up trying to find the lowest line of harmony and succeeding only in producing a pseudo-pitched grunt. Yes. Attractive.

However, since the geniuses who run the Jacobs School insist on roping academic music majors into ensemble slavery, I am forced to join choir. Last year, quite appropriately, I was placed in what is essentially the kiddie choir; but suddenly, this year, I find myself in the quite professionally-competent early(ish) music chamber choir, and while it is challenging and invigorating and all-together wonderful, I am all-to-effing-gether out-of-my-effing-element.

Because, you see, I don’t know how to sing. I mean, I can sing in my shower, I can sing in my car, I can sing cheeseball karaoke. But to sing with singers? I feel like an impostor. An impostor with a 15-year old, breathy, tiny little voice better suited for a Britney Spears impersonation contest than for singing the great works of the Baroque/Renaissance oevre.

And we’re singing Bach B minor Mass, of all things. An unbelievably gorgeous work. If you, by some cruel twist of fate, don’t know the piece, get thee to iTunes, drop some bucks, and, first, listen to the Cum Sancto Spiritu. It is in this movement that Bach eyes the choir and says, “Hey. Choir. FUCK YOU.”

Thus sometimes, instead of homework, I open up my piano iPhone app and practice choral music late into the evening. My neighbors are SO over me.

Sleep Can Suck It: Part 1 of a 21-Part Series

The four page paper. It is a walk in the park, a swim in the stream, and, when you have prompting questions at your disposal to helpfully serve as a means of shape and definition, the academic equivalent of a power-nap. That is, until you’re nearing 30, your brain has atrophied due to clarinet-induced oxygen deprivation, and you have not done much, okay, any concise and/or precise academic writing in several eons. In that case, it’s like running that first mile after years spent lounging and engorging yourself on the couch…you are slow, you sweat profusely, and your side is KILLING YOU.