Curtain

23. Curtain falls on Act I (May '06)

And so the academic year draws to a close, and all of the multi-colored beanbags, silk scarves, chainsaws and bowling balls that I've been juggling are gracefully dropped, switched off, or flung down alleys to knock the pins to kingdom come. The noise fades, the chaos subsides, the lights come up, and I am able to look around again, outside this tiny circle of fast-moving objects requiring intense concentration in order not to slice off my nose or crunch my metatarsals.

Hello again :).

It's been a long time.

In that time I have done many things:

-eaten hundreds of bowls of Jordan's Crunchy Oat Cereal (yum!)

-dodged dozens of raindrops (and been drenched by thousands more)

-seen the sun progress from "setting before it gets a chance to peek into my mostly-west-facing window" to "bursting through the blinds for the entire afternoon, chasing my harp around the room, giving it no permanent place to hide from the finish-damaging, glue-melting, other-horrors-too-unimaginable-to-imagine rays"

-had my American accent subtly melted and pressed into the mould of rounder "o"s and more rearward "r"s, adding one more year's-worth of drift to my tectonic vowel shift

-plucked and plunked a plethora of notes on harp and piano, some sweet, some....em....experimental

-got into musical grooves with other players where inspiration flowed from some unknown source out into the air, rained down and made the sidewalk sparkle, then evaporated back into the night

-ran nose-first into some brick walls of organisational ineptitude at the college, and had to scramble around or dig underneath or sometimes charm my way through them in order to access some of the secret gardens of musical tuition that by rights should have been unlocked and presented to us as part of our course

-found myself in the position of teacher (sometimes not-so-enthusiastically, as when compelled to step in and teach other students things I barely understood myself [see above organisational ineptitude], and other times quite enthusiastically, such as taking on both a harp student and a piano student [the latter a complete beginner at the age of 85! there's positive thinking!])

-had the music I've made captured and played back to me, and thought, "So that's what my harp sounds like from the other side....what a nice tone it has that I somehow never hear! And the music wafting out of it's not half bad, either" and also thought, "So that's what my piano playing sounds like from the other side...hmmm, the notes are all there (well, mostly all there) but somehow they seem more like Post-It notes, tacked tactfully in place, rather than freely-scribbled graffiti, brightening up the brick walls with uninhibited self-expression. Well...something to work on next year"

-got into a familiar sort of acquaintence with the people in my classes and in my band, but with all those years between us, felt more like the older-sister-I-never-was than one of the gang

-started Ceroc dancing, a weekly social-event, calorie-burning, viscerally-musical, salsa/jive-style dance, and finally met some people in Perth whom I can call friends

-made contacts through the college that led to playing background music gigs, several weddings, and playing at a fund-raiser concert

-learned a whole heck of a lot that I've always wanted to know about music theory

-played a zillion and a half scales

-and had about 327 cups of tea.

Overall a very positive experience. Most of the interesting things happened in spite of the specifically planned course, but then that's the way it usually goes. Next is a summer of relaxation and travel (back to the States from June 1st to July 13th to visit family and friends, and then various jaunts around Scotland to visit friends and friends), and then prepare for a second year of this being a full-time student thing.

Have a lovely summer!

Love,
Andrea

Photos from one of the bands I was in. I can't remember who took the photographs, but they're pretty dynamic!

Andrea Blumberg