Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"My politics have not changed since I was at college; but I was then reckoned a moderate rightist, and I am now a flaming liberal. I look forward to being right of center again; it may not take very long." -- subnumine, user profile (retrieved November 2008)

( lj:subnumine, on political labels )

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( Thursday, Friday, start of Saturday )

Played the concert, feeling half-present. Frustrating. Okay, non-musicians reading this might not be aware of how mistakes are perceived onstage, but for the most part one notices one's own mistakes and is convinced they were obvious to the rest of the band, but only the most glaring (and often not especially important) of anybody else's mistakes register consciously (I'm told this is different in a choir than in an instrumental band), and even those are largely forgotten by the end of the following tune ...

But on Saturday, I was hearing mistakes from my bandmates, mostly in the brain-fart category, and though I haven't asked them yet, I'm pretty sure my own were bad enough for them to notice. There's an oft-repeated bit of advice: don't leave your best performance at the dress rehearsal. I think we did exactly that. I'd love another shot at some of that setlst, with all of us rested and alert, so that the stuff we worked out in rehearsal, some nifty sounds, could be heard. (I did get a crappy recording -- mono, lots of hiss, suboptimal mic placement, wonky levels -- and listening to that later, I didn't catch any glaring mistakes from our drummer.) I suspect we were all tired and distracted; I know I was. The tune I was most worried about, I played cleanly; but the one I'd drilled and drilled until I could play it ten times in a row at various speeds with nary an error, I flubbed when I was the only one playing melody. If the audience thought we did okay then I guess we did okay, but with the repertoire, instrumentation, and arrangement notes we had, there should have been fire, and we didn't deliver fire. Frustrating.

Especially on "Tourdion" and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen", there should have been fire.

( Regency Ball ... then Sunday through today, day by day )

This weekend is another gig, but it's a large group and I'd only said, 'probably' for it, so if I'm feeling so crappy that I don't think I can play well, or in too much pain to drive to it, I do have the option of punting this time. Since it'll be all sight-reading (I don't even know the setlist yet), I'll need to be feeling fairly alert and together -- anything less, and I'd better just not show up. So let's see whether I can finish recovering from Darkover by then.

---

More con notes (less chronological): I played eleven instruments on Saturday (an even dozen for the whole weekend). Admittedly somewhere between three and six of those were guitars, depending on how narrow your definition of 'guitar' is. ( list )

I haven't tried to figure out how many different centuries the tunes came from, but I think I count at least five genres. I brought two instruments I didn't wind up playing (tambour and tambourine, though now that I think of it, I should've used the tambour in the tune I played with Maug and Myfanwy), not counting the stuff that lives in the woodwinds case along with the recorders I used. I never got to hear a full concert by Ellen, but I did get to listen to her playing in the lobby late Friday night.

Except for a little bit of time in the lobby Friday night and a longer time in the con suite Saturday night (and the part of Maug & Myfanwy's concert that I was in the room for but not playing in), I didn't really 'attend' the con. I was performing, or setting up, or hauling instruments from place to place, or rehearsing, most of the time I was at the convention. I was working. Or recovering. This is not a complaint; it's an observation, and an explanation for folks who knew I was around but didn't get to hang out with me, and why I never saw the art show, went to any non-music programming, or browsed the merchant area. Now I like performing, and I like having opportunities to perform for my people; that's why this isn't a complaint. (This convention was rougher than most for me, by a large margin, but that's because of how poorly I was feeling physically to start with, not that it was more time and work than usual.) My point is that this is the consequence of the choice to perform and take a comp membership instead of begging off the schedule and paying for a day membership: I don't see all that much of the con, and I don't get to hang out and catch up with people as much as I would otherwise.

So there are folks who got a brief hug, or a nod and a wave, whom I would have loved to have had long conversations with, and a few people with whom I started conversations but didn't get to get back to after interruptions. I'm thankful for the time I did get with a few friends (and even for just the sight of several others I didn't get to do more than wave to). I really need, for the sake of my mental health, to get back into a regular convention cycle again ... er, and to try harder to see people outside of conventions. Money and physical health are the hurdles here. Hmm. And I'm grateful for the chance to pick a couple friends' brains for info I needed, and regret not having had a chance to be purely social with them later.

Anyhow, I'm glad I got to be there, to the extent that I did.

( Day by day how-I've-been from Thanksgiving on, and a whole lot about performances at Darkover )

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osewalrus coined a useful word some time ago, which I've used in oral conversation but don't remember whether I've used yet in a text medium. Having recently read a post in which he gives the explicit definition, I thought it might be good to repeat that definition here for the edification of anyone who reads me and not him, and doesn't find the meaning entirely obvious from its roots:

Cassandrafruede: the bitter pleasure experienced when something awful you predicted that could have been avoided if people had listened to you comes to pass, even though you also get screwed through no fault of your own

I know several of my other friends experience this from time to time and may find the word handy.

[I can safely assume that all of my readers know which Cassandra it refers to, right?]

( coined by osewalrus: 'cassandrafreude' (and if you think the meaning is obvious because of the 'cassandra' part, you're probably right) )

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