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. ) Argh.

Still, it was not nearly as bad as ( the flag conversation. )

... 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

It's kind of astonishing, and perhaps a little pathetic, just how much the music I'm listening to affects my mood. A couple rounds of "Down to Earth" the other day, and I got so chest-squeezy I may have actually mildly strained a muscle in my back. ^^ I also fell down on the stairs today, which was very special; I expect to have two rather impressive bruises on my knees tomorrow.

I'm also a little alarmed by the frequency with which I'm finding myself composing posts in my head when things happen to me. o.O

B and her boyfriend have had their first true argument, by which I mean there was crying and yelling involved, albeit over Skype. I managed to escape upstairs, and helped AT with her Spanish homework, despite the fact that pretty much everything I know about Spanish, I learned from French. After that, I got to sit by and read Br's book on Proto-Indo-European, which I heart like mad. Linguistics is the discipline of my heart.

Which reminds me: having gotten my Lit books, and having a moment to spare, I want to put up a couple of the Egyptian poems, mostly for my own future reference, because they are awesome.

( My love is one and only, without peer ... )

My favorite bits of that one are mostly pieces of phrases - "bright in the forehead of a lucky year", "blueshadowed sidefall of hair", "heart would run captive to such slim arms". And, of course, the delightful euphemism of "god's plenty below". :D

( I was simply off to see Nefrus my friend ... )

This is one of the funny ones, although it also has a couple phrases I find particularly touching (particularly the "oh, look at you, feet" part). I find myself liking how the speaker reminds herself to be realistic in the last stanza, but can't stop herself from one last, wistful oh, Mehy.

And a shorter funny one - ( I think I'll go home and lie very still ... )

The last line actually made me laugh out loud a little, the first time I read it. ^^

And the last one: ( Love of you is mixed deep in my vitals ... )

I like the second half of this one better than the first; the last few images stuck with me the best (particularly "the hearth of familiar arms").

All of this, plus the PIE stuff, reminds me that I am, at long last, very nearly finished with the Babel passage, and, as a bonus, Psalms 23 and 137. However, I need to run through them one more time to make a few last corrections to the grammar. I also have been struck by a new conlang bug - this time, I'm thinking something with cases, and maybe combinations of glottal stops and syllabic ms and ns (possibly even ls and rs, although I do want to be sure I can pronounce the end product). I kind of half-finished a conlang that used a relatively simple sort of click, once, and I'd like to try that again, too. I need to expand my phonetic horizons!

Ahem. So, barring any totally unforeseen grammatical snarls, I vow to myself to post the darned thing tomorrow. That, plus another chapter of HP AU and a few more cliché-bingo-fic wanderings - and some homework, of course - and I may actually feel like I've managed to accomplish something this week. \o/

Mon reflet sur une glace
me parle au présent;
les rides sur mon visage
ne m'ont jamais fait faux bond.

Tout ce temps,
tout ce temps,
j'ai pu garder mon coeur d'enfant.

( Au creux d'un coquillage ... )

This song has been stuck in my head at intervals for at least two days. Good thing it's so pretty.

ETA: ( Translation! )