Morning update
Sep. 9th, 2006 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassNOT a new poetry piece today, but a bit of an update and some links for the bored:
Link #1: Everyone involved in writing or editing, especially in the business arena, should read this article on Weasel Words. Sometimes funny and very insightful, it exposes how much business writing really is just meaningless jargon.
Link #2: Yet another humorous Beowulf rendition, I give you Beocat! You're welcome, Liam.
And now, to answer the age-old question: What have I been doing for the last day or so? (Well, other than writing sonnets...)
Yesterday morning I awoke far earlier than usual to attend a job-hunt seminar at JEM. It ate up most of my morning. Parts of it I'd heard already from my experience at YES, but parts of it were new and informative, especially their section on answering hard interview questions. The one downside to attending seminars like this is that I inevitably feel guilty about the state of my job-hunt and the amount I'm doing (or, more appropriately, not doing) on the search. Ah well. There is, at least, an easy solution to the problem: do more!
When I got back yesterday afternoon, I didn't feel like doing much, so I pulled out my sais for the first time in almost a year and started practicing. Unfortunately, I'm not very good. I'm nowhere as good as this guy, or even as good as this guy, but what this girl is doing may be within the realm of possibility for me, with some practice. In related news, I think Ian is trying to get me to go to Shadowcourt as Elektra. In other related news, does anyone know how to download clips from Youtube?
Of course, it doesn't help that my sais are about 6 inches longer than they should be, compared to my body size. As I understand it, you're supposed to measure from the tip of your middle finger to your elbow, and use that as the sai length. My measurement is about 15 1/2", whereas my sais are 21 1/2" long. Which makes it a bit awkward to do some of the twirly stuff. Also, they're quite heavy, and I don't have the wrist strength (or callouses) I used to have when I was practicing more often. 45 minutes of off-and-on training was all I could manage. The pressing question is: will I actually keep training with them, or will they return to my closet for the next year and gather dust, as so often before? Only time will tell.
After that was done, I went for dinner with the Crazy Roman and shisha with Ian, Jimmy, Kristen, Pat, and (very briefly) Kyn. Yummy on both counts. Of course, I discovered that having a cup of tea after dinner followed by a small pot of green tea at shisha makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep. Stupid caffein.
Finally, on the way home, I decided I would memorize the entirety of The Peasant Knight, by Mistress Rosalind Jehanne. I'd heard it at Pennsic, loved it, and have a recording of it on Sir Bryce de Byram's CD. I'd been sort-of working on it all day, but had only managed to memorize scattered half-lines. So, standing at Lucien L'allier metro station at about 1 am, I went through the arduous process of actually playing out the whole song, line-by-line, and memorizing as I went. It's a long piece (about 58 lines), but I managed to finish the closing lines as I walked up my driveway 45 minutes later. I am pleasantly surprised to find that I remember the whole thing this morning, without looking at the lyrics.
Of course, working through the song has led me to the realization that, no matter how well I perform this, I will never be able to perform it the way I first heard it, because I first heard it from Garraed Galbraith, an utterly stellar bass singer. It was at a large bardic circle, and as he began, others started to harmonize, the drums started beating... it was a thing of magic, it truly was. I cannot replicate that. I can do the song in my own way, certainly, and hopefully bring song of my excitement to it, but it won't be the same. This is somewhat disturbing to me, as I know that for some of my audience, I'm one of the only bards they'll ever hear (along with, say, Conrad, Cairn, Chiara, and a few others from the Northern Region). I want, desperately, to bring the feel of a big circle of experienced bards to our group, just so they can feel what it's like. Because it's worlds different from me standing up and singing. Alas, I'll just have to try to import more bards, or bring people with me to bigger events. *grin*
And now I suppose I've gone on too long again, as I often do. I suppose I should have breakfast at some point, and figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my day. And I suppose the first step of this process would be to press the button that sends this update onto my journal and stop fooling around. TTFN, then.
Link #1: Everyone involved in writing or editing, especially in the business arena, should read this article on Weasel Words. Sometimes funny and very insightful, it exposes how much business writing really is just meaningless jargon.
Link #2: Yet another humorous Beowulf rendition, I give you Beocat! You're welcome, Liam.
And now, to answer the age-old question: What have I been doing for the last day or so? (Well, other than writing sonnets...)
Yesterday morning I awoke far earlier than usual to attend a job-hunt seminar at JEM. It ate up most of my morning. Parts of it I'd heard already from my experience at YES, but parts of it were new and informative, especially their section on answering hard interview questions. The one downside to attending seminars like this is that I inevitably feel guilty about the state of my job-hunt and the amount I'm doing (or, more appropriately, not doing) on the search. Ah well. There is, at least, an easy solution to the problem: do more!
When I got back yesterday afternoon, I didn't feel like doing much, so I pulled out my sais for the first time in almost a year and started practicing. Unfortunately, I'm not very good. I'm nowhere as good as this guy, or even as good as this guy, but what this girl is doing may be within the realm of possibility for me, with some practice. In related news, I think Ian is trying to get me to go to Shadowcourt as Elektra. In other related news, does anyone know how to download clips from Youtube?
Of course, it doesn't help that my sais are about 6 inches longer than they should be, compared to my body size. As I understand it, you're supposed to measure from the tip of your middle finger to your elbow, and use that as the sai length. My measurement is about 15 1/2", whereas my sais are 21 1/2" long. Which makes it a bit awkward to do some of the twirly stuff. Also, they're quite heavy, and I don't have the wrist strength (or callouses) I used to have when I was practicing more often. 45 minutes of off-and-on training was all I could manage. The pressing question is: will I actually keep training with them, or will they return to my closet for the next year and gather dust, as so often before? Only time will tell.
After that was done, I went for dinner with the Crazy Roman and shisha with Ian, Jimmy, Kristen, Pat, and (very briefly) Kyn. Yummy on both counts. Of course, I discovered that having a cup of tea after dinner followed by a small pot of green tea at shisha makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep. Stupid caffein.
Finally, on the way home, I decided I would memorize the entirety of The Peasant Knight, by Mistress Rosalind Jehanne. I'd heard it at Pennsic, loved it, and have a recording of it on Sir Bryce de Byram's CD. I'd been sort-of working on it all day, but had only managed to memorize scattered half-lines. So, standing at Lucien L'allier metro station at about 1 am, I went through the arduous process of actually playing out the whole song, line-by-line, and memorizing as I went. It's a long piece (about 58 lines), but I managed to finish the closing lines as I walked up my driveway 45 minutes later. I am pleasantly surprised to find that I remember the whole thing this morning, without looking at the lyrics.
Of course, working through the song has led me to the realization that, no matter how well I perform this, I will never be able to perform it the way I first heard it, because I first heard it from Garraed Galbraith, an utterly stellar bass singer. It was at a large bardic circle, and as he began, others started to harmonize, the drums started beating... it was a thing of magic, it truly was. I cannot replicate that. I can do the song in my own way, certainly, and hopefully bring song of my excitement to it, but it won't be the same. This is somewhat disturbing to me, as I know that for some of my audience, I'm one of the only bards they'll ever hear (along with, say, Conrad, Cairn, Chiara, and a few others from the Northern Region). I want, desperately, to bring the feel of a big circle of experienced bards to our group, just so they can feel what it's like. Because it's worlds different from me standing up and singing. Alas, I'll just have to try to import more bards, or bring people with me to bigger events. *grin*
And now I suppose I've gone on too long again, as I often do. I suppose I should have breakfast at some point, and figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my day. And I suppose the first step of this process would be to press the button that sends this update onto my journal and stop fooling around. TTFN, then.
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Date: 2006-09-11 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 02:44 pm (UTC)