Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

The time has come, the Walrus said, �

Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005
1:07 p.m.
My house is being overrun by 16-year-old boys (plus one of their girlfriends). It is a long story, so I�d better talk fast.

My son, whom I love unconditionally, aspires to great things. His English class is studying the 1960s right now, and they were to choose from among different topics to prepare some kind of presentation. He chose the Vietnamese War as his subject matter and planned to film a short video incorporating several aspects of the conflict, using several of his friends as actors. He required innumerable props as well, a source of some anxiety actually, as you will see, one of them being a video camera which he hoped to borrow from a friend.

Buddy Boy researched his subject, wrote a script, planned his actions, but didn�t tell me or his dad about this project until recently. I have been very busy with after-school stuff (as has he) and hadn�t been able to ferry him around to stores until just yesterday. He needed some camouflage wear (which we obtained), weaponry (which we did not) and a video camera, since his friend�s had ceased to operate. Although he paid for the other expenditures himself, I got stuck with this latter one, which ended up costing me just under a grand (that includes the warranty, a kit with extra battery pack, digital film and leather carrying case, and a tripod); but I am informed that it can be used as a digital camera, which means that I�ll be able to take pictures and post them in my diary without having to wait until I use up a roll of film and get it developed.

Now the house is full of his friends, it�s pouring rain outside, and they�ve shot one scene.

The third professor in our department accompanied his soprano wife in a recital of Lieder last night (there was some Barber thrown in and they did some Mozart in Italian, so it wasn�t totally auf Deutsch, and what struck me as funny was that it was almost identical in format (and some content) to the recital I gave with him two and-a-half years ago: Mozart songs followed by Schumann�s FrauenIiebe und Leben in the first part, Schubert and Barber (we did Brahms) and Strauss in the second part. I really tried to listen objectively and not let my personal biases bias my enjoyment of the evening, but the truth is that he is a very dull accompanist. He plays the notes more or less correctly, in rhythm, but is not ever with the singer in the sense that they are one instrument. She has a lovely voice and was doing some very expressive and musical things with the texts and songs (her ornamentations on the Mozart were quite beautiful), but she has one colour (a silvery quality especially suited to early music), no strength in her bottom register, and I had to shut my eyes because I couldn�t stand to watch her. Her technique is terrible. She cheats a lot, and this prevents her from ever getting a rich sound except for once, in the first Barber, when she had to get quite loud and actually used diaphragmatic support and got rid of that �breathiness� which I find so objectionable. Afterwards I greeted her and told her it was �lovely� and shook her husband�s hand and congratulated him on a job well done. There is never a reason not to be civil.

Hubby and I adjourned afterwards to the Java, where Grandpa Mike was playing a gig with Kevin O and his organist collaborator. It was loud, seriously loud. We stayed for two sets, and towards the middle of the second one my ears were in real physical pain. It was such a relief to step outside into the rain and relative quiet afterwards. During the break I played backgammon with one of our music students, a seriously nice young man who did two years in engineering before deciding he wanted to be a musician instead, a jazz guitarist in fact. I slaughtered him in the first game, he trounced me in the second, and the third was very, very close, with him getting his last markers in while I had just two left. I�ve demanded a rematch.

As a result of such a late night, I slept in until almost 10:00 this morning, having to be at the cathedral for the dress rehearsal for tonight�s concert at 11:00. I sing perhaps 10 minutes out of the whole show. It hardly seems worth it. When I got there the two saxophonists were rehearsing and I listened while all their articulations were lost in the general �woofiness� of the acoustics. Richard confided in me afterwards that the programming for this festival was not his idea, that he had supported me (I was supposed to be performing all the vocal stuff, but the guy in charge decided I wasn�t good enough and hired another local soprano to perform in a piece by him and another young composer who was writing a piece specifically for me), saying he had never heard me sing badly. Sweet.

But, while I was wandering around the bima (the English word for this part of the sanctuary escapes me), I started examining the floor tiles. Most of them are ceramic earth tones, but hither and thither diamond shapes of the local stone are inset, a blue-veined granite and a red stone shot with white. Right on the raised dais where stands the altar I noticed several of the red diamonds displaying embedded fossils in their highly-polished matrices and smirked to myself at this evidence of prehistoric life displayed so blatantly in a house of worship of a religion which eschews the idea of evolution. Ha ha!

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