in other news, go check the blog i just added on the right. owned by one holly, one of the more talented people i've met in my life. friend of anible's. (possibly pg-13, consider yourself warned.)

in other other news, walking around an unfamiliar campus in the dark wearing 70's-vintage knee-high wool-lined suede boots [that almost came out bottos] is a little creepy. and the stars are beautiful here.

parents sent me an article explaining why evangelical christians should not support mel gibson's new film, the passion of the christ (which, incidentally, just opened today). now, many of you may know, there are a few (ok, many) things that have the ability to get me very steamed very quickly. this is one of them. i'd include the rather impassioned (pun only sort of intended) email i fired off in response, but it's a little long. and repetitive. and on the incoherent side. so i'll let it stay in emailhood. suffice to say, i have very little tolerance for iconoclasts, people who think american protestantism is the true christianity, and people who have no use for bathing babies if the proverbial bathwater is begrimed. *ahem* (i have no use for babies in general, but that's beside the point.)

speaking of passion, i'm having a grand old time at anible's. *cough*

we went into Keene today, because anible wanted to buy a skirt. (for me, not him. sicko.) came back with two shirts and three skirts. (you'll love them, mom, i promise.) i tell you, the time to buy winter clothing is right when stores start displaying the spring/summer merchandise. hoorah for clearance. at any rate, we managed to find very nice stuff at tjmaxx, one of my personal favorites. another hoorah for "slight imperfections"--i can never find them. anible was his wonderful self the entire time, putting up with my discriminating taste (a.k.a. anal-retentive pickiness) even better than me mum.

the trip into Keene was actually quite the accomplishment, considering the state of my personal transport ability since friday night. i think i need to never try to visit anible again, unless i'm not driving. bad things happen. last time, there was a windstorm and i was stuck with a group of complete strangers (freshmen, no less) for a few hours. this time, as i was going up a fairly steep hill at thirty miles an hour, the clutch cable on my parents' (%&**&%& ^&*& %&&*%$$# &!) wonderful volvo wagon heard the Lord calling it home, and the clutch pedal subsequently dematerialized from under my foot as i downshifted. or rather, didn't downshift. fortunately, thank you god, there was a parking lot on my right, and i was able to use what little momentum i had to slide most of the way into it. i then spent about ten minutes looking for the hazard light switch, and then another ten minutes going back and forth between the store owner and daddy dearest (latter on the cell phone, thanks muchly, mom) about how to get the car all the way into the parking lot. it was a little chaotic until dad told the store owner, in no uncertain term, to shut up and go away. poor guy threw up his hands and went muttering back to his store, and dad showed me how to do this neat trick and got the car into the parking lot. Very exciting.

AAA took over from there: towed the car 95 miles to a volvo dealership outside Keene. poor guy driving was sick as a dog and hadn't slept in 38 hours, but he needed the cash for his seven-year-old daughter--single father, wife left him for his best friend. anyway. after they got the car to the dealership, and i almost lost the key (twice--it was dark and two in the morning, leave me alone), they dropped me at a state trooper bunker. anible picked me up about ten minutes later--see, i had directed him to the police station, not realizing that the actual police station was about ten miles away. mr. wonderful drove around for half an hour before i called him and told him where i was. but regardless, it was all downhill from there (in a good way), and many thanks to god for keeping me safe and sane.

the volvo dealership finished with the car on monday. i went to pick it up on wednesday, with the el crapola key my parents had given me. i can still hear them now, after an episode in which i spent ten minutes trying to get the useless thing to turn, telling me. "you just have to wiggle it a little bit. just a little. be patient." grrrrrr hang patience! keys are supposed to fit in locks without wiggling! they're supposed to just work! stick it in and turn! that's it! *cough* so this key. stuck in the the front driver-side lock, wiggled, turned. key broke off. in the lock. sure sure, probably my fault for not being patience personified. it never was my strength. regardless, i was standing there with a key amputee in my hand. anible couldn't believe it. AAA yet again to the rescue: the locksmith pulled in an hour later, and copied another key for me. and, wonder of wonders, this key works. when i stick it in the lock and turn, it actually turns! it's such a novelty! a real key!

so that's why going to Keene to buy a skirt today was a precious, precious thing. even if the volvo still stalls while in motion for no apparent reason, and coughs incessantly. it mostly runs, and i have a key for it!

this is key-carrying passion girl, signing off...

adj. overly sentimental, gushy, mushy, microwavable. e.g., puella sappa te amavit.

ah, valentine's day. honestly, this year didn't come close to last year¹, but i did get to talk to anible for a lovely four hours. or maybe it was five. ah, was so nice, even if it was over the phone. he's so unbelievably wonderful--i've gotten to the point where i can't let myself think about it during the day, because i'll turn into sappissima. *happy sigh*

technically, it wasn't a real valentine's day, anyway, since he said i could move it to next saturday when i go visit him.

in other news, i watched five movies this weekend...or was it six? some cable channel was doing an "X Days of Oscar!" promo, so they just had really good movies on, one after the other. top that off with the usual tmc fare, and it was good weekend, theatrically speaking. in particular, let me recommend chocolat (johnny depp, what can i say?) and father goose (i could have sworn that was called mother goose). also saw dirty dozen and girl, interrupted. among others. it is fun taking seven credits of applied music, yo...

i actually did have something of substance to say, but cannot for the life of me remember what it was. oops.


1. last year for valentine's, i went home for the weekend. he took me out to dinner at the lost dog cafe, which serves really good sandwiches. it's a cool place, decorated like those really cool basements you see pictures of sometimes, with lots of colors and graffiti. then we went back to his house, where his parents had fixed us up a candle-lit dessert. i remember strawberries. bowls of strawberries. ahh was wonderful...*dreams*

there's a petition up to get george lucas to put the original theatrical releases, instead of just the special edition, on the classic trilogy DVD coming out this September. yeah, yeah, internet petition, i know, go sign it anyway.

1. b major is a "perfectly normal" key on the piano. it is not a "perfectly normal" key on the violin. you have a graduate music degree, you should know this.
2. the classical genre is not the only valid musical style, and musicianship is not limited to classical musicians.
get off your high horse and start teaching the class.

well then.

i've had so much fun on my instrument so far this week. it's been great. (thank you, god!) i actually feel like i'm improving, like i'm accomplishing something. such a great sensation. we read through E.T.: Adventures on Earth in orchestra this afternoon, and i actually managed to play for most of it. still can't read big runs, but olga was flubbing them too, so i didn't feel so bad. ;p

must to bed. nighty night, ladies and gentlemen.

so said my fellow violinist to me as we pulled out of our new teacher's driveway, after our lessons. ahhhh, it was wonderful...

mrs. teacher handed me the dvorak violin concerto, a dvorak slavonic dance, legende by wienawski, the second movement of bruch's baal shem, rode caprice #4, the last movement of mozart's 39th symphony, and the first movement of brahms' second symphony. plus a cd of josh bell and isaac stern playing the slavonic dance, the legende, and baal shem. (not simultaneously.) so i'm a little excited, savez? add an extra hour of practice time baby, o yeah...*giggles* i'm really excited. i haven't been this excited about violin since...i don't know when.

[rant]
also found out today that my old teacher kept me on the mendelssohn e minor concerto for TWO AND A HALF YEARS (in case you're not a classical musician and you don't see the significance, that is unconscionable) INTENTIONALLY. i always thought it had just sorta turned out that way (which i still wasn't too thrilled about). he told michelle (one of his few remaining students, though not for much longer), when he was trying to instill in her the importance of good vibrato technique, that he couldn't move me on until i changed my vibrato. mind you, he said nothing along those lines to me. gave me absolutely no indication of how important it was to him. to me, he said, "what do you think of wrist vibrato?" and i said, "i think it sounds weak and runny. there's no depth, it's all surface level." and he said, "well, give it a try, and see what you think after a week or so. you already have a great vibrato, i'm just trying to focus it a little bit." it was not until last semester that he clued me in that my vibrato was too big, and i started incorporating his technique into my own. (so now i have rather an interesting mix--i maintain that pure wrist vibrato, heifetz-style, lacks depth and strength, but the wrist is a lot easier to control than the elbow, and it's easier to change the color. which is why i prefer joshua bell to heifetz.) so this man kept me from building my repertoire for two years because he wanted me to change my vibrato, but didn't actually manage to tell me that.

i'm still flabbergasted. you don't do that, folks. let's imagine it, shall we? a freshman violinist walks into your studio. she's not bad--the hartt school offered her a $15,000 scholarship, but she didn't like the buildings, which is why she's with you. she started a little late, so she's a bit behind in repertoire. she's played the first two movements the mendelssohn concerto, performing one with her high school orchestra. she'd also sat concertmaster in that orchestra for two years. and she auditioned on a rode (pronounced roe-day) etude--an audition that won her second place in the competition for the highest music scholarship your school offers. (lost to a very impressive guitarist.) so what do you do with her? let me tell you what you don't do, ladies and gentlemen. you do not keep her on the mendelssohn concerto for another two and a half years. you do not move her back to kreutzer, at least not for long. you do not get intimidated because she's as tall as you and able to ask questions in lessons. GRRR!! i won't do the "can you imagine where i'd be if i'd gone to hartt?" beacuse i'll only make myself furious. i would have been less than nothing at hartt, and lessons would have been wholesale butchering. i would have absolutely loved it.
[/rant]

god wanted me here. go figure, but he did. and actually, alyssa (who switched teachers last semester) had an interesting idea. now that we've both have good teacher, we're on fire. we're exciting about playing and improving, even more so than we were as freshman--she's a music ed major, who now wants to get a graduate degree in performance because she loves to play. i was having fun in my lesson. i was playing well and i was enjoying it. i'm going to practice tomorrow, even though the music building is closed, because i don't want to wait until monday. so because alyssa and i had bad teaching for two years, we are all the more enthusiastic with good teaching that we would have been. that's a blessing.





imagine where i'd be if i'd gone to hartt...