ready...set....

6/22/99

tattoo news

Sent this e-mail to my friend Manda:

>I got a tattoo
>betsy

Got this back:

>About time you joined the club. What and where?

Manda was the first person from our high school group who actually got a tattoo. All the others boasted, bragged, talk-talk-talked, but she was the one who went and did it. She has a little Bohr atom symbol-thingy on the fleshy part of her right forearm, near the wrist. She likes the atom symbol because her initials are MMM and the symbol has those three little intersecting rings, spelling out her initials in a circle.

***Don’t bug me about the Bohr atom crap. I know it’s antiquated. If I knew anything at all about atoms and such, I wouldn’t be looking for professional euphonium gigs.***

The crescent moon has peeled. Scared me at first, when the little blue and green flecks rubbed off as I applied the vitamin A+D ointment. The guy said it would peel, but he didn’t say the colored part would be peeling. Now it’s smooth, just the tiniest bit raised up. By tomorrow it should be indistinguishable from the rest of my skin.

Bill’s Daily Epiphany pretty stones entry made me miss my rock collection.

I had a huge rock obsession when I was a kid. It all started when the millage failed and my mom, as a young teacher, was forced to teach general science to bored, pre-dropout high school kids. In order to help herself cram, (I suspect,) she hooked me on rocks and crystals. Matt was assigned insects—I think I got lucky.

I began by picking up pretty ones from bank parking lots and under the playground swings. Got a lot of good stuff from my granddad’s farm in Indiana. Then I got caught up in identifying, classifying and displaying everything. Bought a rock tumbler and started making my rocks all pretty—my cousins tried to eat some of my polished specimens because they looked so much like candy. I won awards for science projects on erosion and crystal formation. And then I figured out what a great euphonium player I was, and the rocks were banished to the basement. The most I did in high school was buy and string beads from gem and mineral shows.

When I see polished rock displays or crystal-growing kits in stores, I get a little bit nostalgic, but those look like toys, to me and they’re easily pushed into the back of my mind. The polished crystals in Natural Wonders look so plastic, so very unlike the rocks that come out of a home tumbler. Bill’s photo had a few “real” tumbled rocks mixed in with the fancy kind, and now I’m wondering if my old tumbler is in my parents’ basement somewhere.

Had a euphonium lesson today, and boy do I suck. I hate it when I don’t play for a while, then I try to regroup and find some stuff to work on. Some sort of kick in the pants, some music to “rev me up,” as Professor Sinder put it. I went in today with a handful of solos that I may or may not work on; the key idea here is that I haven’t worked on any of them yet. What does that give us to do in the lesson? Freaking sight reading. Reading these solos that I really should have glanced at before bringing them in like a dumbass.

This is the time of year when I’m super-motivated to work on stuff, but I end up scattering my brains far and wide. Solo material, technical catch-up, transcriptions and checking music out of the library. By the time I get around to playing it’s not as much fun any more, and I have nobody to play for, so I lose interest. I’m one of those summer slacker types.

Can’t do that this year. Nothing to do in August, no school-related reason to keep myself in shape. I must be motivated. Must. Keep. Playing. Two students a week isn’t going to cut it. Maybe I need a section of this journal dedicated to “What I’ve Done in Music Today.”

I spoke to Sinder about my recital plans, and my January idea is now officially a recital tour. Euph 2000. Two shows so far: one in Adrian, one in East Lansing. Woo-hoo. Possible repertoire includes Gillingham, Knechtges, Barat, Vaughan Williams, Schumann, Boccalari, and Jan Bach. But not all of that, of course.

Nice list. You’d think I’d quit saying “I don’t know what to work on!” and work on some of that shit, huh? Huh. That would make too much sense.