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there lived a lady by the north sea shore.
I am tired of being terrible at titling my posts, and so have decided to go the pretentious route: moderately appropriate song lyrics with no capital letters. \o/ I see no way in which this can fail me.
The reason this line applies is because on Friday, I had my first meeting of Music in Live Performance, a one-credit class I'm taking because AT asked me to and I am a doormat. :D It's not really much of a class: we go to the space where one of the five concerts we'll be attending is being held, and talk to the performer(s) for half an hour, and then stay for the concert. And at the end, we have to turn in some kind of journal thing, so that they can actually have something to grade.
Anyway, Friday's concert was performed by this man, who is pretty fabulous. The people in the course came early, and we ended up climbing up onto the stage and singing a piece of shape-note music with him, which was lovely. I cannot read music, but fortunately we went through it a few times, and that's generally all I need to be able to sing something reasonably well. (If we operationalize "well" as a measure of right notes hit, not quality of voice, that is.) He tended to favor a style of music that I rather like, although my favorites were the more up-tempo ones.
The reasoning behind the title is that one of the songs he sang during the concert was a version of the same story that is told in the song "The Cruel Sister", of which the title is the first line. His version was a bit abbreviated, in addition to differing in the details: the minstrel made a fiddle out of the dead sister's bones and hair, not a harp, and when he played it, it would only make the sound of wind and rain; the song ended without the minstrel going back to the family's house and playing the instrument at the cruel sister's wedding, and so the crime was never revealed. He also sang a version of another song that I know best because the Old Blind Dogs sang it, this one being "Edward", except in this one, the brother was killed, not the father, and, again, it ended early - the narrator settled for exiling himself, and didn't go into how he was going to let his castle fall into disrepair, leave his family to beg for a living, and curse his mother to Hell.
... Oh, traditional music. How so bloodthirsty?
I also got reintroduced to my own subconscious Eurocentrism; I experienced a brief and damning moment of surprise when AT revealed that she was not acquainted with Ichabod Crane or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, despite being well aware that AT's cultural background is Viet, and she would have no reason to know either. Which reminds me of yet another time B has nearly made me blow my stack. A few days ago, AT came to us to ask for our help with a personal problem - a very serious one, enough so that she was crying after a minute or two trying to explain it. This problem prompted her to complain about the racism in her hometown, and also, to me, painted a rather poignant picture of how difficult it is for her parents - whose English is not all that good - to address issues of injustice done towards them.
B clearly got an entirely different impression from the conversation, because almost as soon as AT was gone, she turned to me and told me how she thought AT had really been reaching, trying to drag racism into it.
There was, I don't know, a logjam of rage, with the number of things I wanted to say in response, and I ended up just kind of sitting there, staring at her. I probably should have taken the week it would need, and guided her through Racefail one post at a time; but the logjam didn't break in the right direction for that. I told her that it was important to remember that for a lot of people, skin color was not incidental to life - that racism did not usually need to be dragged into things, because a lot of the time, it was already there. I'm ... not sure it sank in; I barely have my own pants on half the time, I doubt I'm clueful enough to help anybody else pull theirs up. Argh.
Still, it was not nearly as bad as the flag conversation. I will be the first to admit that I don't know anywhere near as much about the history of Vietnam as I ought. However, given the little I do know - and given that AT told both of us that her parents had fled Vietnam after being put through a "re-education camp" - I, at the very least, am aware that it was just abysmal to respond to AT's declaration that she would not be attending any event featuring the current Vietnamese flag by saying that it was (this is a DIRECT QUOTE) "being too picky". Talk about a logjam of rage; I was half expecting my own head to explode, never mind AT's.
... it's only until May, it's only until May, it's only until May ...
In less infuriating news, I had two Harry Potter dreams that I only vaguely remember, and a third about spiders that was truly awful (one of them was huge and black and shiny and under my bed, and the other was smaller and kind of like a daddy longlegs but then it grew and grew and its body was all fat and squishy when I kicked it out the door except then I was trapped inside with the big black one-), all on the same night. I must have been sleeping pretty badly, to wake up three times, but fortunately I could nap the day after.
Also, despite having to study for a Hearing exam that was moved up, and slogging dutifully away through my thesis, I've still managed to get to the fourth chapter of the second book of the HP AU. Which may be due to the fact that I spent all of my classes on Tuesday writing in my fic notebook, and managed to get down a very pleasing ~2,000 words. I am such a terrible student. /o\ I also watched the first Narnia movie today, because it came through my Netflix, and, man, if you're looking for it at all, the Peter/Edmund just leaps off the screen and slaps you in the face. (Then again, I may be biased; most of what I remember about the second one consists of Peter and Caspian smoldering at each other and Susan's battle eyeliner.)
That was ... maybe a smaller wall o' text than usual? I'm trying to cut down a little. :D
The reason this line applies is because on Friday, I had my first meeting of Music in Live Performance, a one-credit class I'm taking because AT asked me to and I am a doormat. :D It's not really much of a class: we go to the space where one of the five concerts we'll be attending is being held, and talk to the performer(s) for half an hour, and then stay for the concert. And at the end, we have to turn in some kind of journal thing, so that they can actually have something to grade.
Anyway, Friday's concert was performed by this man, who is pretty fabulous. The people in the course came early, and we ended up climbing up onto the stage and singing a piece of shape-note music with him, which was lovely. I cannot read music, but fortunately we went through it a few times, and that's generally all I need to be able to sing something reasonably well. (If we operationalize "well" as a measure of right notes hit, not quality of voice, that is.) He tended to favor a style of music that I rather like, although my favorites were the more up-tempo ones.
The reasoning behind the title is that one of the songs he sang during the concert was a version of the same story that is told in the song "The Cruel Sister", of which the title is the first line. His version was a bit abbreviated, in addition to differing in the details: the minstrel made a fiddle out of the dead sister's bones and hair, not a harp, and when he played it, it would only make the sound of wind and rain; the song ended without the minstrel going back to the family's house and playing the instrument at the cruel sister's wedding, and so the crime was never revealed. He also sang a version of another song that I know best because the Old Blind Dogs sang it, this one being "Edward", except in this one, the brother was killed, not the father, and, again, it ended early - the narrator settled for exiling himself, and didn't go into how he was going to let his castle fall into disrepair, leave his family to beg for a living, and curse his mother to Hell.
... Oh, traditional music. How so bloodthirsty?
I also got reintroduced to my own subconscious Eurocentrism; I experienced a brief and damning moment of surprise when AT revealed that she was not acquainted with Ichabod Crane or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, despite being well aware that AT's cultural background is Viet, and she would have no reason to know either. Which reminds me of yet another time B has nearly made me blow my stack. A few days ago, AT came to us to ask for our help with a personal problem - a very serious one, enough so that she was crying after a minute or two trying to explain it. This problem prompted her to complain about the racism in her hometown, and also, to me, painted a rather poignant picture of how difficult it is for her parents - whose English is not all that good - to address issues of injustice done towards them.
B clearly got an entirely different impression from the conversation, because almost as soon as AT was gone, she turned to me and told me how she thought AT had really been reaching, trying to drag racism into it.
There was, I don't know, a logjam of rage, with the number of things I wanted to say in response, and I ended up just kind of sitting there, staring at her. I probably should have taken the week it would need, and guided her through Racefail one post at a time; but the logjam didn't break in the right direction for that. I told her that it was important to remember that for a lot of people, skin color was not incidental to life - that racism did not usually need to be dragged into things, because a lot of the time, it was already there. I'm ... not sure it sank in; I barely have my own pants on half the time, I doubt I'm clueful enough to help anybody else pull theirs up. Argh.
Still, it was not nearly as bad as the flag conversation. I will be the first to admit that I don't know anywhere near as much about the history of Vietnam as I ought. However, given the little I do know - and given that AT told both of us that her parents had fled Vietnam after being put through a "re-education camp" - I, at the very least, am aware that it was just abysmal to respond to AT's declaration that she would not be attending any event featuring the current Vietnamese flag by saying that it was (this is a DIRECT QUOTE) "being too picky". Talk about a logjam of rage; I was half expecting my own head to explode, never mind AT's.
... it's only until May, it's only until May, it's only until May ...
In less infuriating news, I had two Harry Potter dreams that I only vaguely remember, and a third about spiders that was truly awful (one of them was huge and black and shiny and under my bed, and the other was smaller and kind of like a daddy longlegs but then it grew and grew and its body was all fat and squishy when I kicked it out the door except then I was trapped inside with the big black one-), all on the same night. I must have been sleeping pretty badly, to wake up three times, but fortunately I could nap the day after.
Also, despite having to study for a Hearing exam that was moved up, and slogging dutifully away through my thesis, I've still managed to get to the fourth chapter of the second book of the HP AU. Which may be due to the fact that I spent all of my classes on Tuesday writing in my fic notebook, and managed to get down a very pleasing ~2,000 words. I am such a terrible student. /o\ I also watched the first Narnia movie today, because it came through my Netflix, and, man, if you're looking for it at all, the Peter/Edmund just leaps off the screen and slaps you in the face. (Then again, I may be biased; most of what I remember about the second one consists of Peter and Caspian smoldering at each other and Susan's battle eyeliner.)
That was ... maybe a smaller wall o' text than usual? I'm trying to cut down a little. :D