i can has beehive?

[devi]

When I was a kid I did lots of music exams, not really by choice. For the violin ones you had a piano accompanist playing along with you. At the School of Music, the day before the exam, I would sit on a bench in a line of other young violinists, all green-faced and twitchy and painfully aware we hadn't practiced enough, queueing to go into the room with the piano in it and rehearse with the accompanist. A topic of conversation that came up again and again was creative ways we could maim our own hands so as not to have to go through with the exam. Sledgehammers were suggested, but the damage would be too lasting. You didn't want something irrevocable, just enough damage to get you off the hook. The best way, we decided, would be to stick your hand in a beehive.

I spent a lot of today feeling a bit like that.

Alex has just taken a metric ton of weight off my mind by arranging for me to borrow a data projector from his work. It's amazing how much better I feel. (Now all I have to worry about is the words, and the pictures, and how the words work with the pictures, and erk.) If that hadn't worked out, I was facing having to put the slide show on a DVD, because the projector I had access to only talks to DVD players. That would have involved getting to grips with iDVD, which kept trying to make me use a theme called "My Wedding Bronze". I'd also have had to put set timings between each of the slides, which really would have catapulted me back to that full, nostalgic keeping-pace-with-the-accompanist sensation. Though probably with less dropping my bow and muttering 'sorry, I'll start that again'.

Crikey, I had a flash of myself there in a loud, baggy shirt (over a polo neck), a big cloth scrunchie (neon green), and equally loud leggings. I can smell the rosin and the fear. I seem to have sent an important part of my brain back to 1992.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Fear the rosin! Mm, I can identify with that. And our accompanist was a right miserable sort, too. Put me off making music for years.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Did you do violin then? All our accompanists were lovely, daffy old people in quirky cardigans. It was the examiners who looked like they'd all been sucking lemons.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

A bit like you, I was guilted into the violin by my mum, who thought it a necessary accomplishment. I resented spending time practising, so every lesson was a torment, exams multiply so. I scraped (literally) my way up as far as grade 5 and by then was big enough to refuse to do it any more.

It was quite a few years later, when I first picked up a guitar and started playing around with it, that I discovered that (a) I wasn't hopeless at music, and (b) it could be lots of fun if you were doing it in respose to your own interest rather than someone else's whim. I dare say I might even enjoy playing the violin now, as long as I didn't feel I had to.

The sad thing is that my mum genuinely felt that she was doing a good thing for me. But not making music herself, she got completely the wrong idea about how to inculcate it.

[millionreasons.livejournal.com]

I'm actually gonna be in Oxford on Sat, but unfortunately at a wedding between 9.15 and 9.45 p.m. But good luck! I'm sure it will all go swimmingly, technology and all.

bess is a swizz

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

You know, I once actually did have a bee sting me, on the finger, two hours before a flute recital.

Two hours later, I did the flute recital, with a bee-sting on my finger.

Re: bess is a swizz

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Rock'n'roll!

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Which bit was not really your choice? The exams, the violin or the whole learning music?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Well, I was asked if I wanted to learn violin when I was maybe ten - though on reflection it was more mum saying "I've bought a violin and an accordion, which do you want to learn?". After that initial yes it all sort of happened to me, exam by exam, and when I freaked out and said I wanted to give up, mum would embark on a rant about how much money she'd already spent on music lessons and I'd go "oh, okay then, I'll keep going".

I could have enjoyed it, and sometimes did, but it all got caught up with expectations and worry at lack of practice and exam terror and evil teachers and Young Musician of the Year competitions in which I'd drop my bow and say sorry a lot. Then again, if I'd had complete freedom and it had been up to me to play or not as the fancy took me, the violin might well have just gathered dust in the corner for years.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Oh man, you would have made a darling accordionist! Wasn't it Einstein who said "The invention of the violin has changed everything except our way of thinking; if only I had known, I should have become an accordionist"?

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

It's a good thing I didn't. Then there'd be nothing to distinguish me on Google from the other person with my name who's an accordionist in a folk band in Birmingham!

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

You would simply have to become The Oxford Deirdre Ruane. Just as Suede had to become The London Suede in America, and Volta had to become The Mars Volta when they arrived on planet Earth.

[andyluke.livejournal.com]

Has the rest of the day free, but will be in London tomorrow to see crazycrone and halloween_jill Will be back in time for the gig tho give mer a phone if I can gopher/helper any time over the rest of today.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly. As it turns out I am ignoring the programme and not giving away free comics at the gig, so I won't need to go to Brookes print shop after all. They're getting a slide show, and they can buy comics, damnit.

See you there :)

oy

[andyluke.livejournal.com]

I've seen your viewing figures.

You will be fine love.

[a-llusive.livejournal.com]

I'll bwe cheering you on anyway.

Re: You will be fine love.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Awww, thanks for that.