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1. I forgot to mention this earlier, but in April I posted 7,000 words of fanfiction, which is an okay-ish month's work for me. It would have been more, but stress tends to interfere with writing -- gasp shock horror -- and then I was fighting my remix, so eh. Also I really want to get through my last three Cotton Candy Bingo prompts, but the Edmund's-first-Narnian-winter one is refusing to gel properly, so I think I'll shelve that idea for later and try to fit some other fandom/character(s)/plot to the prompt.
My remaining prompts are news, unexpected love, and the WILD CARD square, by the way, if anyone has suggestions.
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2. My parents visited yesterday, partly just because, partly for Mother's Day, and partly because of my season tickets to the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble concert series. They picked me up after church (the lesson was on working together, btw), we installed my air conditioner, we went out for brunch at Mahogany Grill, we did a little shopping (mostly gardening stuff), we attended the concert, we grabbed some fast food for dinner, and they left.
The concert consisted of three pieces. First was Ravel's Chansons madécasses, which are three songs with lyrics from Évariste de Parny's poetry. Second was a piano quintet (standard string quartet plus piano) written by Steven Stucky, a local-ish composer. After the intermission was Schubert's String Quintet in C, D. 956.
The songs are an exercise in weird instrumentation: piano, cello, flute (with occasional piccolo), and soprano voice. They are an interesting mix of dissonance and harmony, very changeable in mood and effect -- even within each of the three songs. The first, "Nahandove," is basically a love song, someone waiting for a beautiful young woman to arrive, having sex, and saying farewell with the anticipation of repeating the incident next evening. (One would tend to assume the narrator is a man, given de Parny's time period, but the part is written for a woman to sing, so... an interesting effect, which I liked.) The second, "Aoua," is a warning to the people of Madagascar not to trust white men; it's very dramatic and powerful. The third, "Il est doux," is probably also meant to be sort of a sensual love song, but it comes off as straight-up male entitlement, with the narrator being all, "It's hot and I'm lying here in the shade; now dance for me, women, until the evening breeze comes, at which point I want you to go make dinner." Um. Yeah. And the narrator here has a stronger implicit gender than the narrator of "Nahandove," since the address is to "women," not "other women," and then the whole you go make dinner, instead of we'll go make dinner; there's a distinct attitude of women-as-objects and narrator-as-subject, whereas in "Nahandove" the girl is also an active participant in the love scene.
Anyway, moving on!
Stucky's piano quintet is interesting from a technical perspective, but I found it weirdly boring to listen to despite the dramatic shifts in mood and tempo it makes at several points. It just felt kind of shapeless to me -- like it had neither a defined classical structure nor a thematic/emotional point to make that carried the music through some sort of journey. It was like... technical exploration for the sake of technical exploration. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, I suppose, but it's not my cup of tea.
Awkwardly, Stucky was in attendance and introduced the piece himself. The audience gave half a standing ovation at the conclusion. I'm not sure how many genuinely liked it that much, how many felt socially obligated, and how many were just saluting the musicians for their technical skill, because as I said, it is a very technically demanding piece -- or at least sounds that way.
Schubert's quintet was lovely, of course. Pieces that survive the centuries do tend to be good, or people wouldn't keep passing them on. I liked the third movement best -- as I said to Dad, you could almost dance to the first and third parts of it, and even the slower, minor middle section is amazingly catchy. I can easily see why it's considered a masterpiece. :-)
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3. I get so tired of explaining the situation with the smoke shop to customers. First, I have to make sure they've even read the HUGE signs in the windows, to know that we're closing. Then I ask if they've read the explanatory notice, which we have posted in at least a dozen places around the store.
( cut for bad-tempered rant )
My remaining prompts are news, unexpected love, and the WILD CARD square, by the way, if anyone has suggestions.
-----
2. My parents visited yesterday, partly just because, partly for Mother's Day, and partly because of my season tickets to the Finger Lakes Chamber Ensemble concert series. They picked me up after church (the lesson was on working together, btw), we installed my air conditioner, we went out for brunch at Mahogany Grill, we did a little shopping (mostly gardening stuff), we attended the concert, we grabbed some fast food for dinner, and they left.
The concert consisted of three pieces. First was Ravel's Chansons madécasses, which are three songs with lyrics from Évariste de Parny's poetry. Second was a piano quintet (standard string quartet plus piano) written by Steven Stucky, a local-ish composer. After the intermission was Schubert's String Quintet in C, D. 956.
The songs are an exercise in weird instrumentation: piano, cello, flute (with occasional piccolo), and soprano voice. They are an interesting mix of dissonance and harmony, very changeable in mood and effect -- even within each of the three songs. The first, "Nahandove," is basically a love song, someone waiting for a beautiful young woman to arrive, having sex, and saying farewell with the anticipation of repeating the incident next evening. (One would tend to assume the narrator is a man, given de Parny's time period, but the part is written for a woman to sing, so... an interesting effect, which I liked.) The second, "Aoua," is a warning to the people of Madagascar not to trust white men; it's very dramatic and powerful. The third, "Il est doux," is probably also meant to be sort of a sensual love song, but it comes off as straight-up male entitlement, with the narrator being all, "It's hot and I'm lying here in the shade; now dance for me, women, until the evening breeze comes, at which point I want you to go make dinner." Um. Yeah. And the narrator here has a stronger implicit gender than the narrator of "Nahandove," since the address is to "women," not "other women," and then the whole you go make dinner, instead of we'll go make dinner; there's a distinct attitude of women-as-objects and narrator-as-subject, whereas in "Nahandove" the girl is also an active participant in the love scene.
Anyway, moving on!
Stucky's piano quintet is interesting from a technical perspective, but I found it weirdly boring to listen to despite the dramatic shifts in mood and tempo it makes at several points. It just felt kind of shapeless to me -- like it had neither a defined classical structure nor a thematic/emotional point to make that carried the music through some sort of journey. It was like... technical exploration for the sake of technical exploration. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, I suppose, but it's not my cup of tea.
Awkwardly, Stucky was in attendance and introduced the piece himself. The audience gave half a standing ovation at the conclusion. I'm not sure how many genuinely liked it that much, how many felt socially obligated, and how many were just saluting the musicians for their technical skill, because as I said, it is a very technically demanding piece -- or at least sounds that way.
Schubert's quintet was lovely, of course. Pieces that survive the centuries do tend to be good, or people wouldn't keep passing them on. I liked the third movement best -- as I said to Dad, you could almost dance to the first and third parts of it, and even the slower, minor middle section is amazingly catchy. I can easily see why it's considered a masterpiece. :-)
-----
3. I get so tired of explaining the situation with the smoke shop to customers. First, I have to make sure they've even read the HUGE signs in the windows, to know that we're closing. Then I ask if they've read the explanatory notice, which we have posted in at least a dozen places around the store.
( cut for bad-tempered rant )
