years go by, will I still be waiting...

This end-of-the-year moving house saga was a real side tracker. As I've been packing, it occurred to me that there were things I managed to accomplish this year:

de-stash the yarn collection: I've done two things to de-stash the yarn - I've knit from my stash, obviously: socks, blankets, scarves, shawls, sweaters (I need to photograph a bunch of this stuff and put up the specs on Ravelry). I also culled my stash and took a HUGE bag of yarn to a yarn swap to give away. I also donated some yarn to Knitting Behind Bars, which the founder of my knitting group started.

And then I bought more yarn at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the beginning of May. However, I knew I would be doing that and had a plan for what I was looking for, which resulted in a reasonable and not overboard haul. (I believe the correct term is "stash enhancement adventure.")

re-commit to the morning writing, reading, exercise, and cello practice routine: I did really well with the morning pages until I went to Paris in late May. I kept a travel journal while I was there, but when I came back, I struggled to pick up my morning writing pattern again. At least in the handwritten form. I've done quite a bit of journal writing on the laptop since May.

As for reading, I've gotten through a fair number of books this year, both physical and electronic. I particularly like Daily Lit online. I've gotten through quite a few classics this year using that service - the latest being Villette by Charlotte Bronte. I've just started The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I'm still wandering through the tome that is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, and I'm still enjoying the atmosphere of it; really is a savory read. I also just finished the latest Anne Rice novel, which I got through in an afternoon - I'll do a book review of that later.

I went for near daily afternoon walks until the weather got yucky hot. All that exercise served me well as I continually got lost in Paris. Speaking of lost, my weight is down, also thanks to exercise and getting back to a real foods diet.

Morning cello practice was hit or miss. I was too conscious of my neighbors being able to hear me, even with a mute on the bridge. I seemed to be less worried about it with evening practices. I think this will be less of a problem in the new house - no downstairs neighbors, and my practice room doesn't share any common walls with the new neighbors.

post a blog entry once a week: Including this entry, I have 44 posts for the year, so that's not quite one a week. I think that posting more about my cello lessons and practice, in addition to what I typically write about, will up the numbers next year.

finish short story/novella/novel: I completed a draft of a new novel, and then realized how utterly boring the story was, so I set about revising it, which involved introducing a new character. The second draft is better, but meanders too much. Way too much. So I'm into the third draft now, plus I've outlined several other stories. I also investigated publishing e-books, and my first novel will be available as an ebook early in the new year - I got image use permission for the cover art, and I'm getting help with formatting and uploading. I'm hoping to get the current writing project wrapped up and e-pubbed next year as well.

make a cello commitment: I bought a cello in July, after a year of lessons with a rented instrument. Having my own cello has been a great investment and a nice upgrade from the rental. I've signed up for another round of lessons with Ben. I finished two etude books, and Ben is starting to talk "ensembles" and "quartets" and "trios" and "duets with a pianist." I think he's crazy.

So besides the above, I went to Paris for my 35th birthday in May. I really like Europe, and I plan to go back. I've surprised myself with the international travel in the past couple of years, in that provided I'm armed with a guidebook, a map, a metro/tube/bus pass, comfortable shoes, an umbrella, a water bottle, some snacks, a towel, and a backpack to put it all in, wandering around an unknown place doesn't faze me a bit. It's nice to know I have an adventurous streak.

And as you've heard ad nauseum, I decided toward the end of the year that 11 years in my condo was enough. With the help of a fabulous realtor, in the span of about 30 days, I found a townhouse, put an offer on it, which was accepted, submitted paperwork right and left, put my condo on the market after getting new carpet, got an offer on it, submitted more paperwork up and down, and had the air ducts cleaned. I'm moving in mid-January. I'm calling it the Treehouse from now on - "townhouse-in-the-trees" is too much have to type. It's not technically in the trees, but it's pretty damn close.

movie review: The King's Speech

I went to settlement on my new townhouse this morning. Although it was nerve-wracking to sign all those papers and hand over a huge chunk of money, it went as smoothly as anyone could hope for. The sellers are nice people, and they were easy to deal with. I'm well aware how lucky I am for how everything has worked out with this home transition. I will spend the last days of this year packing, so I'll be ready to move later in January. Seems like a fitting end to the year actually.

I had the rest of the day off, and I needed a distraction after all that important paper-signing and money-handing-overing, so I went to the movies. I'd been keeping an eye on local showings and finally, The King's Speech was showing nearby, after a long period of limited release.

This movie is about King George VI's ascension to the throne, after his brother Edward abdicates so he could marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, and just before the start of World War II. More importantly, it's about George VI's quite noticeable stammer, which I'm sure made speech-giving an agony, especially in a position such as his, and with radio broadcasts of important events becoming more popular.

Colin Firth has come a long way from Mr Darcy to George VI. If you're looking for him to be a romantic hero, this film isn't for you. He's a hero in it, certainly, but a bashful, self-doubting, uptight one. It's painful to watch him literally stammer through speeches and conversations, even with his daughters - the scene in which he tells them a bedtime story will make you sigh and wince at the same time. I don't know how or with whom Colin Firth prepared for the role, but he was stunning. The gulping, the hesitations, the furtive nervous looks. The man did his homework, that's for sure.

Helena Bonham Carter played Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, George's wife. She gave an incredibly balanced performance - sympathy with George's problems but not sinking into pity, an authoritative royal manner but not dictatorial or annoying, and just enough wit and humor to make her fun. I suspect a great debt is owed to the queen mum for supporting George throughout his reign.

Geoffrey Rush is the king's speech therapist, Lionel Logue. He's portrayed as also something of a psychotherapist, as there is some emphasis on the emotional and mental things that can make a stammer worse or better. An interesting aspect of this relationship is how the therapist takes the king out of himself, tries to get him to relax, insists on calling him "Bertie" (the king's full name was Albert Frederick Arthur George, and he chose "George" as his name on becoming king, supposedly in a move to provide continuity from his father, who was George V). Lionel is a bit eccentric, but sympathetic with those who have trouble speaking, and he's good at his job. You learn some interesting things about him during the preparation for George VI's coronation. There are a few scenes that focus on Lionel's acting ability - I'm not sure what the point of them was, I have to admit.

Most of the funny scenes occur between Lionel and George, especially when Lionel points out that when George gets angry and starts swearing, the stammer disappears. I think it's this scene that got the film its R rating. The St Edward's chair scene is the tipping point between them, and really, the whole point of the story - everyone has a voice; if someone takes it away from you, or suppresses it, or mangles it, take it back, even if it means getting help to do so. There was great rapport between these actors to make the relationship appear believable.

Timothy Spall makes a great Winston Churchill, without going overboard into parody. Derek Jacobi is the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he probably has the worst line in the film (after Colin Firth finally makes a successful speech, he responds by saying, "I'm speechless!"). Jennifer Ehle is Lionel's wife (coincidentally, she was Lizzie Bennett to Colin Firth's Darcy in Pride and Prejudice). They only have one little scene together. I liked the parallel of her support of her husband and Elizabeth B-L's support of her own.  Subtle, but well done.

The climax of the film is George VI's speech to the nation in which he announces that England was now at war with Germany. He starts out hesitating and halting, but Lionel is right there with him, coaching him through it in a small, claustrophobic-looking room. The background music for this scene is the second movement from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. A great piece, and one I'm putting on my list to learn for cello someday. Perhaps the way she does it.

One of the captions at the end of the film states that Lionel was with George for all of his speeches and that they were friends for the rest of their lives. George even inducted Lionel into the Royal Victorian Order, which is only given out of gratitude to people who perform a personal service for a monarch.

I'm saving the gushing for the very end - thank me as you will. I really wanted to see this movie when I first heard about it - partly because I thought the premise was intriguing and partly because I wanted to see if Colin Firth could pull it off. I was not disappointed on either front. I loved this movie. I can't remember the last movie I saw that I could say that about. I've heard Oscar rumors about Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. It would be well deserved for both.

a sneak peek

A glimpse of something coming to an e-reader near you in early 2011:

Photo by Gary Cowles

upgrading

I'm not an early adopter of anything. I tend to observe for a bit and see how a thing develops and what people think of it and what they do with it, before deciding if it's worth my time, effort, and money.

Take smartphones, for example. My biggest beef with them is that I don't necessarily want to be "connected" and "available" at all times. I find that idea rather scary, to be honest. And I don't use my cell phone much at all anyway - so rarely in fact, that the phone company called me to ask if I wanted a lower-cost package since I always had plenty of minutes left over every month (I took them up on that offer).

iPods are the exception. I was a fairly early adopter of the iPod, largely out of practicality. At my last job, I traveled somewhat regularly. I can't read in any kind of moving vehicle because I get an instant nauseating migraine. Before mp3-style audiobooks were available, I would lug at least two books' worth of CDs and a CD player in my carry-on luggage to have something to listen to while tooling around in the aforementioned moving vehicle. With the up-and-coming (at the time) audible.com, I felt fully justified in buying an iPod for both efficiency and sanity while traveling.

However, I have not, until recently, upgraded from my little iPod Shuffle. It's traveled all over the world with me and was even treated to a UK/Europe plug adapter for charging AND a handknit case to hold the headphones, pod, and charger.

One thing that had got me leaning toward some sort of upgrade recently was ebooks. I love the concept - portable ereaders are great if you're waiting in line or for an appointment or a meeting or want something to read while eating lunch or lounging in a coffee shop and don't want to tote around a book in your briefcase or purse. (I have been known to have a book in both.)

So it was a nice surprise to get a 32 GB iPod Touch from my mom and stepdad for Christmas. I've already loaded audible onto it with a handful of my favorite audiobooks (seriously, if you get stuck somewhere, you want Stephen Fry narrating a book to you - really, you do; I know of what I speak; your blood pressure will thank you). I dived into the ebooks as well - some Wodehouse, some Gaiman, all the Jane Austen novels, and the complete works of Oscar Wilde: my physical copies of each set of the latter two are doorstopper-worthy, so I'm tickled by the idea that I can access them in their entirety on this credit-card-sized device. I wonder what the Lady Author and the greatest aesthetic writer who ever lived would think of that?

And just for kicks and giggles, I added a stash of Crowded House, Keane, Zoe Keating, Apocalyptica, Kate Bush, Pomplamoose, and Florence and the Machine songs. I'm toying with the idea of loading the Bach cello suites onto it as well, but which version do I want? And then Mom and Steve also sent me the complete works of Chopin...

And Ben and Emily told me about the cello tuner and metronome apps...

And Autumn and Erin told me about to-do list and grocery list apps...

Oh dear, I've adopted, haven't I?

Anyone know where I can donate my iPod Shuffle?

dusty

Look closely at that thing.

Does this mean my dreams are dusty?

It wouldn't surprise me actually - years of insomnia and panic aren't really good for dreaming.

However, the i and p aren't as bad as they used to be, so maybe my dreams were just sitting around waiting to get through, and when they finally did, the catcher filtered out the dust for me.

I've had a few good dreams recently.

In one, I'm looking up at a huge dark wicker chair with back and sides flaring out like wings. The chair is floating next to my mom's closet in some house I don't recognize. All her best clothes were hanging from the bottom of the chair, like they do.

And flying dreams, I have lots of those. No planes or gliders or kites or anything, just me with arms outstretched zooming around and dive bombing just for kicks and giggles, and getting that buzzing funny dizzy feeling in my stomach that I also get when I drive down a hill or a long stretch of road too fast.

The writing dream is my favorite - sitting at a table wrapped in a fuzzy sweater, writing by hand by candlelight, and there's a man with dark hair standing behind me, leaning down to read over my shoulder. He  rests his cheek against my head and his hand on my shoulder - my right shoulder, which is good, since I'm left-handed, so when the words come out of my head down my neck and through my arm and hand onto the page, I don't want my left shoulder weighted down with anything or there might be a back-up of words, and I get moody when that happens. I don't know who he is when I'm awake, but I seem to know who he is in my dream, and he likes what I write even if my handwriting is bad and the story is plodding along and there's too much passive voice. He knows I'll fix it eventually, and he just tells me to keep writing because he wants to read more of the story

My sister bought this dreamcatcher for me at a shop near the beach years ago. I'm about to move it for the first time in 11 years. I hope there aren't any straggler dreams that haven't come through yet because my time in this condo is running out.

long tones

We spent part of my last lesson on long tones to focus on bow control (for non-cellists, long tones, are, um, well, exactly what they sound like - drawing the bow across a string for a certain period of time).

We started with 15 seconds per bow draw on open strings, trying to go for even volume and pace from frog to tip, with no scratching or skips. It's amazing how this exercise amplifies how wobbly one's bowing really is (not to mention how long 15 seconds really is).

Ideally, I'm to work up to 30 seconds per bow draw; however, given how yucky it sounds at 15 seconds, it will be awhile before I get there.

We then tried out varying the volume to counts of four - dividing the bow in quarters to gradually increase volume, and also counting 1, 2, 3 to get to the middle of the bow, then a quick middle-to-tip on 4 for the loudest tone, and then doing it all in reverse for kicks and giggles. It's still a long tone practice, but with an added layer of volume.

I'm also working on #88 in Book 2 of Dotzauer Grant - Ben calls it a "one-and-a-half position" exercise (third finger where fourth would be in first position). So far, position shifts aren't too much of a bear for me - I tend to get in the right vicinity and back again without much or any pausing to figure out where to go (although I've noticed that if I overthink position shifts, I overshoot them. Funny that). 'S more a matter of honing more and more precisely - a comes-with-practice thing.

slur where you want to

The only good slur is a musical one.

Do you think that will catch on as a quote?

Likely not.

Oh well.

I have officially graduated to Book Two of Dotzauer Grant's Fundamentals of Cello Technique. This series is my primary source of etudes.

I love etudes. (The "why" of that is a whole post in itself, but not the point of this one.) I even love etudes that annoy me.

The last one I worked on from Book One was annoying, which somehow is a fitting end to the book. It shows that I'm not just mindlessly playing them to be able to play the notes and leave it at that. I get into them enough now to have an opinion on individual ones.

This etude (#80) is almost entirely sixteenth notes. There are a few shifts and extensions, and then there are the slurs all over the place. (For non-cellists, playing a slur means playing two or more notes with the bow going in only one direction, as opposed to changing the direction of the bow every time you change the note. It's a neat trick.)

I am used to slurs occurring at the beginning or end of a note grouping or covering an entire note grouping. This was my first mistake. Note groupings help readability, but otherwise, one shouldn't think of them solely as groups and play them as such, even though they (maddeningly) look like groups. Anyway, this etude puts the slurs in the middle of a grouping and across groupings. The immediate problem I had when I first tried this piece was that I either wanted to play separate bows throughout or rearrange the slurs to occur at the beginning and end as I was used to. My bow hand was so adamant about this that it would go in the direction it wanted to go, regardless of what was on the page.

Of course, Ben-the-cello-teacher wasn't going to let me, or my bow hand, do that. Do you remember Ben? Here he is.

Whenever I get stuck or stubborn like this with a bow hand technique, Ben says, "let's work it out on a scale first." Since I always warm up with a scale or two before a practice session, my left hand movements are pretty automatic, so I can focus more on the right hand. It's how I learned slurs in the first place. Ben's idea again.

Funnily enough, this etude runs very like a G scale in notes involved, so that's the one I used. It took slowing the movements down to molasses pace before my right hand caught on to the pattern, and then there was the inevitable, "oh, I get it now!" So in practice sessions, I played the scale a few times at faster and faster speeds, and then without pausing, launched into the etude - getting a running start with the scale and then sliding right into the piece, in other words. The etude was suddenly much more manageable and much less annoying.

Clever fellow, that Ben.