So I am now finally officially settled back into Pennsylvania life and writing writing writing my noir with the goal of handing a final draft to Eric and a few others by the end of September, and I am also trying out a play and working on a ghost story and playing around with a few more ideas, and for once I feel like I'm actually using the masses amounts of free time at my disposal in a way that is lovely and productiva... not just lovely. No more petting horses! Sigh. Today I have worked on the noir for hours, with short breaks only to watch one episode of Mad Men, to take a bath and read some of the awesome The Cutting Room, and to talk with mah friend Chelsea on the phone as her twin girls screamed and squawked in the background. SUCH PRODUCTIVITY! I DO go to Seattle next week with Barb, and shall meet up with many wondrous people there including Ms. Cherie Priest, but in the mean time I plan to be very very nerdly and write like a mofo.
Also, yesterday I had another accordion lesson and have now committed myself to practicing for 20 minutes a day so that I might actually one day be able to master this instrument. At this stage the fact that you have to read music and play it with your right hand, and ALSO read music and play it with your left hand, and ALSO count out beats and play said music at the right tempo, and ALSO be opening and closing the bellows the whole time... not to mention doing all the above without being able to SEE any of the notes you're playing... Well, it is some damn complicated. But I will persevere and my inner genius accordion player shall be unleashed.
OH AND: ok, so you need to be able to feel out the middle C on the bass side, the left side, at all times, and my accordion has EVERY C hollowed out so it's hard to find the middle C sometimes (whereas my teacher's accordion has only the middle C hollowed out). So I'm always struggling to find the right C and we're always saying we need to mark it somehow and then last night she said there are things called BASS BUTTON JEWELS that look like fake diamonds and I can stick one into my middle C so I can almost find it.. and well, my heart went all aflutter. I MEAN. I AM LEARNING TO PLAY AN INSTRUMENT IN WHICH FAKE DIAMONDS CAN BE INSERTED! And soon my already gorgeous gorgeous instrument shall be even more gorgeous, and in order to anchor myself my left fingers will forever be searching out and latching onto a fake jewel, and to me this is how everything should be in this world, at all times.
Oh and Thursday I went to my first dark room photography class at Penn State, which I am sitting in on and which is taught by my awesome friend Rob who has helped me so much with photography info for the noir. So I sat with many arty chillen in a laboratory-lookin room and learned all about F stops and shutter speeds and depths of fields and all those other 50000 details that added to the whole learning-to-read-sheet-music thing might possibly make my brain explode in an array of bloody gorgeousness.
Anyway, for the class the final project is to put together a series of like 10 photos on a certain theme/subject/whatever. And after class I talked to Massie, who is about to move to THE GRAIL, this cool commune typa thing in Cornwall on the Hudson in NY, like 1.5 hrs outta NYC in the Hudson Valley, that is part of a network of "grails" around the world which had their start in like the 20s as sorta alternatives to convents for women who wanted to pursue a spiritual path but remain open to the mens and marriage.. and anyway this one grail is now the only one left in the US that women actually live on, those women being these three ladies who live in this main house, plus this awesome girl Marcie who is good friends with Massie who lives in this big old farmhouse which is hers for the year, and now hers and Massie's, in exchange for them working the organic garden and implementing a number of other projects meant to get the community more involved in Grail activities. SO. Massie moves there Sept 15 and I was planning maybe in November to go up and stay for a while, maybe as long as a month, and I told Massie I'd offer some writing services as well as teach a workshop or two and ANYWAY I realized my photo project should OBVIOUSLY be super cool and autumnal and black and white and documenting these womens and their lives at the Grail.
Which will obviously make it the best photo project ever.
Also, next Wednesday I start a new tribal bellydancing class with this woman Shannon, now that our old teacher Alexa has vamoosed. And yesterday I went back to my personal trainer after three weeks and I almost died.
The end.
Also, yesterday I had another accordion lesson and have now committed myself to practicing for 20 minutes a day so that I might actually one day be able to master this instrument. At this stage the fact that you have to read music and play it with your right hand, and ALSO read music and play it with your left hand, and ALSO count out beats and play said music at the right tempo, and ALSO be opening and closing the bellows the whole time... not to mention doing all the above without being able to SEE any of the notes you're playing... Well, it is some damn complicated. But I will persevere and my inner genius accordion player shall be unleashed.
OH AND: ok, so you need to be able to feel out the middle C on the bass side, the left side, at all times, and my accordion has EVERY C hollowed out so it's hard to find the middle C sometimes (whereas my teacher's accordion has only the middle C hollowed out). So I'm always struggling to find the right C and we're always saying we need to mark it somehow and then last night she said there are things called BASS BUTTON JEWELS that look like fake diamonds and I can stick one into my middle C so I can almost find it.. and well, my heart went all aflutter. I MEAN. I AM LEARNING TO PLAY AN INSTRUMENT IN WHICH FAKE DIAMONDS CAN BE INSERTED! And soon my already gorgeous gorgeous instrument shall be even more gorgeous, and in order to anchor myself my left fingers will forever be searching out and latching onto a fake jewel, and to me this is how everything should be in this world, at all times.
Oh and Thursday I went to my first dark room photography class at Penn State, which I am sitting in on and which is taught by my awesome friend Rob who has helped me so much with photography info for the noir. So I sat with many arty chillen in a laboratory-lookin room and learned all about F stops and shutter speeds and depths of fields and all those other 50000 details that added to the whole learning-to-read-sheet-music thing might possibly make my brain explode in an array of bloody gorgeousness.
Anyway, for the class the final project is to put together a series of like 10 photos on a certain theme/subject/whatever. And after class I talked to Massie, who is about to move to THE GRAIL, this cool commune typa thing in Cornwall on the Hudson in NY, like 1.5 hrs outta NYC in the Hudson Valley, that is part of a network of "grails" around the world which had their start in like the 20s as sorta alternatives to convents for women who wanted to pursue a spiritual path but remain open to the mens and marriage.. and anyway this one grail is now the only one left in the US that women actually live on, those women being these three ladies who live in this main house, plus this awesome girl Marcie who is good friends with Massie who lives in this big old farmhouse which is hers for the year, and now hers and Massie's, in exchange for them working the organic garden and implementing a number of other projects meant to get the community more involved in Grail activities. SO. Massie moves there Sept 15 and I was planning maybe in November to go up and stay for a while, maybe as long as a month, and I told Massie I'd offer some writing services as well as teach a workshop or two and ANYWAY I realized my photo project should OBVIOUSLY be super cool and autumnal and black and white and documenting these womens and their lives at the Grail.
Which will obviously make it the best photo project ever.
Also, next Wednesday I start a new tribal bellydancing class with this woman Shannon, now that our old teacher Alexa has vamoosed. And yesterday I went back to my personal trainer after three weeks and I almost died.
The end.
posted by Carolyn Turgeon at
5:34 PM
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