Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Went to Pirate Feast. Played. Got tired. Got massaged. Played some more. Got to see silmaril's "that was a tricky tune but a fun one and I nailed it" smile. I like that smile. Got to play with anusara even though we were at opposite ends of the band-spot. Made someone blush. (She'd probably blush even more if she realized how much of what I said I actually meant -- she probably thought I was only saying it to make her blush.) Sliced my knee open while loading the car. Hung out with folks afterwards and watched an old episode of Buffy that I hadn't seen before on DVD and the most recent episode of Angel on VHS sitting next to Anusara, which was nice. I was kind of amused when she removed my thong. (She unlaced my shirt, you pervs!) Came home and spent an hour unloading the car, washing my feast gear, putting things away, moving stuff from my sporran back to my purse, etc. Now I have a glass of Skull Splitter (Scottish ale) in front of me, and a chance to sit and collect my thoughts on the day before I go to bed.

I got to see a bunch of folks I don't see often enough (they weren't all at Arisia), which was a very good thing even though I was busy most of the time.

Fortunately the weather never felt as cold as it was. I never put my coat on, though I certainly needed my gloves. I swear it felt like almost freezing when I left P.G. County at 2:00 AM, even though I know it was actually almost eight kelvins colder than that. (18F for folks who don't use a convenient temperature scale. :-P ) I expected to feel warm when I was playing. I didn't expect to not feel cold hours later.

(Hmm. "Almost [as warm as] freezing" sounds funny. Like I should have phrased it "almost melting". Except that I expect that to sound funny to everyone else. Does it?)

And now I think I'll let my mind wander and see whether my fingers can keep up with it.

I'm fascinated by how much I can change the geometry of my fingernails in one evening of performing. I've got quite a serious bevel worn into the end of the layer of acrylic on my thumbnail, a flat spot off-center on my ring finger, a more subtle bevel on my middle finger, a spot where my index finger nail (not protected by acrylic) is no longer rounded (it's actually very slightly frayed, too -- I need to file it down below those tiny cracks before they spread), and a concave section at the tip of my (also unprotected) pinky nail. This is pretty typical damage from one Homespun Ceilidh Band gig. On occasion, I've worn clean through the acrylic and exposed the actual nail on a couple of fingers, and that acrylic is thick.

Before I started playing Celtic music, I could get away with just using my natural nails. A weekend of really heavy playing would see more wear than growth, and sometimes the first three fingers would have transparent spots in the nails, but over the course of a month I'd have more grown than wear. Back then I was playing electric guitar a lot more of the time, and not performing as often.

Nowadays I play outside the house way more often, it's almost always acoustic steel-string when I do so, and about half the time it's unamplified, occasionally outdors, and I'm keeping up volume-wise with two fiddles, two bodhrans, a hammered dulcimer, a viola da gamba, a cittern, and a flute. (Yes, that's how large the band is. Wanna hear how full such a large band sounds? We have a CD...) I play loud. I hit those strings hard. And when we kick into a reel, I hit those strings really hard lots and lots of times in a small amount of time. (It's not just the instrument mix that makes me play loud -- much of the music we play just seems to want that. A guitar sounds different at different volumes (though I read a review of a Rainsong guitar which mentioned that the graphite body and soundboard sounded pretty much the same no matter how loudly the reviewer played it, IIRC).) Between the excitement factor in many of those tunes which sometimes carries me away, and some of them wanting that crunch, I'm hitting pretty hard even when I'm plugged in. Except for a few tunes that want the mellow sound.

So even with my pretty-darned-thick nails (which I have even used to play bass guitar with, when I've wanted a picked sound on the bass), I eventually had to face up to the fact that wear was starting to match growth, which meant it took a long time to recover from breaking a nail. A friend talked me into going to a nail salon and having acrylic put on. It's been mostly a win (except that it lets me hit even harder, which can be a strain on my fingers and hand if I get carried away). I prefer the sound of natural nails most of the time, but the extra thickness is a reasonable price to pay for not worrying as much about breakage and being able to play a few weekends in a row without my nails shrinking before my eyes. My pinky and index finger don't get as much wear as the others -- the pinky is okay without the protective polymer layer; the index finger could use the help, but I do want to have the bare-nail sound available as an option when I play melody (at which time I'm much more picky about tone), so I make do with that one bare too.

Traffic was a mess in the afternoon. Yeah, there was that protest downtown (in DC), but I95 was packed all the way down from Baltimore, and I thought the march was pretty much over about the time I got on the road. Then Adelphi Road and Riggs Road were completely wedged for a ways. It took me about twenty minutes longer than it should have to get to the gig.

A couple of bandmates had forgotten their feast gear (packed and sitting by the door, just never made it to their car). I remembered at the last minute that I had to bring dishes, so I just grabbed the basket and hoped everything I needed was still in there, instead of picking out what I expected to use. I always bring a couple of spare items, but this time I had everything but my coffee mug and the third goblet. Between myself and one other bandmate, we were able to lend enough stuff to cover the folks who didn't bring dishes.

On the other hand, I wish I'd brought just a little more electronics. (Yes, we were (slightly) amplified at a feast. This hall needs it. Even so, we had a lot of trouble hearing each other, though the audience could hear us well enough.) John brought a small mixer, I brought an even smaller mixer, we ran them through fairly small amps (John's Trace and my Peavey), and I brought a couple of mic stands -- one to use as a candle holder over my music stand, and the other 'cause I figured Silmaril could use a mic if she joined us.

Well, we ran out of channels, and we should've had one more stand. If I'd disassembled the stereo in my office and brought the mixer from that, we would've had enough inputs and it wouldn't have taken up much more space. Monitors would've been really helpful in that room, and with my 8-channel mixer we could've wired up some monitors, but I'm not sure we could physically fit monitors into the space we were in. So I'll probably have to resort to watching John's bow when I can't hear him or the drummers next year, too.

While loading my car, I bumped into something someone else was carrying. Felt a wee scrape on my bare knee. When I finished loading, I took a look and realized I was bleeding. Bleeding more than I thought I should be, too. I started asking around for rubbing alcohol -- more for how the skin would react and slow the bleeding a bit than for any concern about infection, because I didn't want to get any blood on my kilt or my sock while driving. The best we could do was one of those "moist towellette" thingies that comes in a foil packet, which revealed that I was bleeding even more than I thought I was. (Note that I wasn't exactly gushing -- I wasn't even actively dripping -- it's just that a) it was enough to worry about blood getting on stuff I didn't want blood on, and b) I really though I should be bleeding less.) So I let someone tape a gauze pad on me.

When I got home and got undressed, I went into the bathroom to take a look at it and pour some peroxide over it in the tub. Much to my surprise, it was still even oozing a little when I got home. I'd expected it to close much more quickly than that. Once I cleared the dried blood from around it, I saw why it had bled so much. Whatever I bumped into was sharp. The cut isn't deep -- it's only slightly more than the scratch it felt like in terms of depth -- but the edges look like a real slice. I think the thing I bumped into cut me sideways a little instead of in.

So it'll probably be annoying for two days instead of one and will probably even itch a little as it heals. Feh. More importantly, I dare not wear a fuzzy sleeper to bed tonight unless I put another bandage on it. And dealing with bandaging it will be annoying. (No, not difficult, just annoying. Don't wanna. *pout*)

My ale is gone, the tape I'm listening to is almost over, and I'm finally sleepy as well as tired, so it's off to bed for me.

And if anyone was actually wondering, I started "Butterfly" on the open B string instead of sliding up the B on the G string.