All the Plays a Stage, and We.....
I am now re-writing this entire post as Blogger ATE it when I was nearly done. I shall choose to think I am meant to work this day thru a little more...
Cabel had a great day. He was so happy. He got lots of attention, met lots of new dogs and I bought him this great new Doo-dah from an animal rescue group. He slept all the way home.
I didn't get many pictures today, but here is Joe Smith, from Bedlam, playing my new Ullieann pipes. It's not a great photo, but there you have it. He says they are mighty fine pipes, and need a little work, but that he can do it for me, and then teach me to play.
It seems to be a thing that is coming around to me. About ten years ago, I gave Joe a fiddle, all inlaid and lovely, but he loved it, and I didn't play it much. Now he is teaching me pipes. Joe says that Ullieann pipes are the instrument that pulls at his soul. Me too. It's such a fine bit of magic, pipes like those. He also says they are harder to play than anything else created on this earth.
My respect for Mark Sieve reached new heights today, watching him perform the show with his new partner John. The crowd was sad, as was to be expected, but it did my heart so good to see the support and the standing ovation at the end. They pulled it off like the professionals they are.
It hit me harder than I thought. I thought I had done my tears, but there they were at the end. I thank Todd Menton for being there and giving me the strength to go back and talk to Mark. Todd is opening for them this year, as Paul and I did before, Todd was the act who opened for them before Paul and I. It made me so happy him there, even tho the circumstances were sad.
(no weirdness, I was truly happy to see Todd, and am glad he is there, his leaving, and Paul and I's had nothing to do with each other, or Joe and Mark, and we are all true friends)
It is so hard as you want to be there for a friend who has lost so much, but at the same time, you don't want to intrude.
(Gayle, you didn't, and it meant a lot that you came up and spoke)
I thank my friend who went with me today, My Fire, who also knew Joe. I needed her, and her being there helped me so. We had a weep together, and kept it together. SO much love out there today, so many memories. SO much family.
Talking with Mark was a good thing. We had hugs, and some laughs, remembering Joe. We talked of George Carlin's take on death, and how you get a five minute warning and should use it to do something dramatic. Mark says actors get 15 minutes. I got to have hugs with Joe's daughter, our Ice Maiden. I got to meet John , Marks new partner and shake his hand and tell him he was good, and say "Tough gig, no pressure or anything..."
Tough day. Lovely day. Healing day. Long day.
Got to come home to Neighbours and Bengals.
I think I may have said more the first time I did this, before Blogger ate it, but perhaps I need to leave it at this. With one thought..
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
I have always thought that said pretty much everything....
Love, and sweet good nights,
Lorraine
posted by FabulousLorraine @ 8:58 PM
46 Comments
46 Comments:
So nice that you have soft (though often prickly) cats to come home to and kind neighbours surrounding you.
I am sure today was a tough one. Death is never easy to deal with. I am just glad you have such wonderful positive people in your life to help you through the rough spots.
Good luck on the pipes. It sounds like the music karma is coming back around to you.
*hugs*
As you said... tough gig.
I think your music karma sounds wonderful, though.
That's a tough day, and a good day, too. I'm glad it brought you the comfort you needed. I hope you got some good rest, too-- you sound tired! Have some tea, and then rub your face in some cat tummies. (If they'll allow that sort of thing. Mine would, but mine seem to be more docile than most.) Nothing like some furry cat belly to cure what ails ya.
Cabal looks like he's ready to join the circus. Perhaps this is the month to teach him to ride a unicycle.
Cabel must have had quite a time if he slept all the way home! I didn't think that dog was capable of running out of energy.
I hear that Joe Smith can play anything. From what little I saw of him I have no reason to doubt it.
I'm glad it was a healing day.
How great that you have some one to teach you the pipes.
I'm sure it meant so much to Joe's friends and family to have you there.
I hope today is peaceful for you!
Good Morning Everyone!
Venus is STILL being cuddly. May take her to the vet as she IS letting me rub my face in her tummy....And pick her up. Cats know.
Joe can play any instrument. Very well.
Jess, as far as I know Cabel can ride a unicycle, I mean, hello???? I am teaching him to drive himself around...
Say, Jess you ight know this...I have been reading a lot of Liousia May Alcott this weekend, and found an edition that uses "Ain't" and "Don't" oddly thoughout Havn't had enough tea, but was that common in 1868?
I have another where it has all been changed to proper ENglish...
Thanks everyone, for you thoughts. I feel a lot like I'm in a good place today. Must have been having to write that post twice. Hastens the process...
"ain't" was taken off the 'proper English' list when I was small (20 odd years ago). I remember a radio piece that I heard as my father was driving me to school about how "ain't" would no longer be acceptable English.
Oh the strange things you remember from your childhood.
Ain't sure ah knows a-rightly, Miz Lorraine, she said, affecting a grossly inaccurate Mississippi-backwater-circa-1890s accent. My guess would be that it depends on the edition, and the grammatical standards used by the publisher during a given publication year. One edition might replace all the "ain'ts" with "don'ts" in the interest of protecting sensitive readers from grammatical incorrectness; other editions would hang on to the "ain'ts" to preserve the style of Alcott's original manuscript. I'm not sure which was more common to begin with, or that there actually was a grammar standard for American published works (like the way they all use the Chicago manual of Style these days) by the 1860s-- it's possible that print standards were still largely up to individual publishers back then. I'm not really sure when all that changed.
Now, is Cabal learning on a stick shift, or an automatic? If he's driving a stick shift, I'm dead impressed-- that's one hell of a dog. I sure as heck can't drive a stick. The one time I tried-- and this was just in a two-gear, golf cart type thing-- I crashed into a parked car. I have not and will not attempt it again.
It's occurred to me just now that possibly you weren't asking about publication standards at all, and further that my Nerd Panties are showing. Oh dear. I'll just go hide under the bed now.
No Jess, that's what I was asking, exactly. I had one edition that left them all in, and another that changed them all, and I was curious.
I've seen that used before in the era, and wondered when it had changed, or why or what exactly the story was. And figured you would know, hee-hee....Expect more such queries!
Rubious, sounds like it wasn't all that long ago, if you heard that, that it stopped being used.
When she was quite small, Maddy used " Amn't " for Am Not . Rather clever I thought. Why isn't that used?
lol...nerd panties are PERFECTLY alright here Jess. Believe me.
I remember that as soon as I heard that 'ain't' was taken off the 'proper' list... I determined to use it as much as possible. All the while my inner snob was screaming 'don't use that word you ignoramus'.
btw.. love the new collar on the jester-dog. So chic!
Oh good! Because I have many, many pairs of Nerd Pants. Some of them have rockets on. :D
Ha! I felt the same way about "ain't," Rubius! Just being told not to use it made me want to. :D I also like "amn't," for that matter. We should use our collective Powers of Internets to force its use upon society at large. If we're sneaky, no one will realize what we've done till the OED picks it up, and then it'll be too late. Muhahahahahaa.
*hugs*
It sounds like it was the day you needed. I'm glad.
Nerd Panties. Hee hee. Are there any other kind here? :)
How language evolves is all so fascinating!
Ok, it's official, the use of Ain't and Amn't are now to be used and encouraged on this blog.
I amn't kidding.
Same here, on being told not to use Ain't. Wanted to. LOVED saying back, "OK OK so Ain't ain't a word..."
Hans told me this morning that there was a special Hell for people who bought their dogs Renn fest costumes. I told him I had gone over to the other side, and even contemplated having a turkey leg...
Nerd panties are the only kind of panties to wear.
I love seeing how language changes too...
ain't got but a sec and skimmed quickly: nerd panties. snicker.
Just as long as you don't respond "Yea, verily" to the offer of said turkey leg. That's how you know you've gone too far.
I can control this. Really. I don't have a problem. I don't need help. No yea verily's have passed my lips...
And I amn't buy the dog fairy wings!
It's like lawn ornaments...Some people can have them socially, one, maybe two or three, and then stop.
But some people can't stop. First it's a few, all very open, then before you know it, the sun is coming up on 8, 10, 12 new ones in the yard...And it's all down hill from there....
Actually 'So ain't ain't a word anymore' was exactly what I said to my dad when I heard it on the radio years and years ago. It is strange.. when I read what you wrote Lorraine the whole scene just popped into my head complete with my tyke-rambling.
Language is great...I am enjoying picking up L33T speak these days (I have recently been referring to my mistakes as 'Fails' and big ones as 'Epic Fails'). I watched a vid on youtube the other day that had subtitles.. all in LoLcat (although I thought it was more L33T than LoL). I thought it was great... there it was 'Subtitles available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, LOLCAT, etc...'
I'm kinda like that with plants... first it was just a few planters on the roof.. now it's a whole garden.
beware the roaming gnomes.
It sounds like a good hard day at the faire. Cabal looks right handsome in his little collar thingy!
I love amn't. I amn't going to use ain't too much though. I think it is one of those words that one needs to say with an sort of aristocratic lilt to pull off well.
I will have trouble with ain't as well, but will do well with Amn't I think.
Rubious? What are you talking about? I have never heard of L33T is it a kind of bagpipe, she says hopefully....
L33T or L337 is basically gamer-speak or hacker speak. It is short for 'elite' and my understanding is that it is used primarily by gamers so they can type quickly (in a sort of code) and it uses numbers instead of letters or abbreviations to shorten common phrases Wikipedia has more
It is the original internet-slang. LOL is an example of it, as is ROLF ('laughing out loud' or 'rolling on the floor laughing').
I suppose you could say that LOLCAT is a derivative dialect of L33T... a language-sub group that has branched off in search of hamburgerz.
Hey BirdChick is about to be on my TV! (I knew there was a reason I had it on in the background. Working from home today.)
Where is she on? I want to see!
Rubios, must look deeper into this....Very interesting, who knew?
Arggg! Sorry. I did not see your comment until it was over. She was on KSTP's Twin Cities Live. I think it will be on their website.
A Poem for Rubius:
Beware the roaming gnomes:
beware their glassy stares, their grins, their ever-pointed hats.
Do not let them in.
In twos and threes they'll come a-clumping,
bumping up your stairs to dance
about your bed, till you're asleep.
Then they'll feast upon your head.
And you will dream of albatrosses;
you will dream you still have eyes.
Beware the gnomes that go a-roaming.
Do not let them in.
Sleep well tonight, Rubius! That poem is totally your fault. ;P
Also, can anyone explain why I'm watching this? No. Neither can I.
Nerd panties! I got me a whole dresser drawer full of those. Hee-hee!
Cabal looks very happy in his new accessory. Maybe Grendel needs one as well. He looks quite cute in clothes, if you count the body language of "Aw, Mom! Take it off! All the other dogs are laughing at me!" as cute, and I do.
Note to self: must take picture of Grendel in t-shirt so ALL the dogs can laugh at him.
I've been fantabulously busy, but am right now taking a break because apparently math stopped working Friday afternoon sometime, and hasn't gotten back from its long weekend yet. If the absolute theoretical maximum value is X, then Y cannot be larger than X. CANNOT. But it is.
Er....
And Lorraine, you asked many days ago -I was at Pennsic, even weirder than Renn Faire.
"Ain't" has never been proper English. It is, and has been, slang for "is/am not." It was not an official word until, IIRC, the late 1970s when it was added to the Merriam-Webster (?) dictionary. I have been trying to stop DD1 from using it, as it sounds "hick," or uneducated. I use it, but only for emphasis.
Yes, there are times I'm an intellectual snob. The truth comes out. My maternal grandmother taught elocution, and that was before she went back to college and became a librarian.
That being said, I ain't a-gonna tell nobody whut they can an' cain't write. ;)
Love the Poem!!! Thanks Jess! You see there is a 20 foot tall gnome in Nanoose (near where my parents live).. and after I went to University someone installed lightbulbs in its eyes... you can imagine my horror when, driving down the highway, I looked up to see a giant gnome with glowing blue eyes staring at me!!! Now that is going to go roaming through my head, I am sure of it.
... and there is NO explaining ice-skating chimps. snicker.
Truth be told, Ariandalen, that was why the radio announcement stuck in my head. I remember thinking "Ain't is no longer proper... but I was always taught it was terrible to use the word 'ain't'... very improper... and now it is NO LONGER proper??? Damn, missed my chance.... Ain't ain't ain't, lala lala la"
Wikipedia says some interesting things about ain't
Jess, I LOVE that poem!!!! I'm saving that one. Maybe putting it to music. Like bagpipes, hee-hee....
So Rubius's roof garden complete with gnomes, inspired a poem, which is going to be a song....Is there a painting out there? A sculpture? Jewels? Can we take the idea of someone putting a tree on a roof with a gnome, and run with it? Short story? Novel? Essay? Humor?
We were talking about doing a Project that could go in many directions and be inspired off eachother, weren't we? Could this be the Thing we have been waiting for?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I have to find the picture of Hera's dog in his coat. She wins the Freaky Pet contest hands down. Cabel didn't seem to mind. He just likes to have fun, and if it means wearing silly clothes, so be it. Yes! Pics of Grendal please!
I think we can be intellectual snobs if we want. As long as we are not snobby about it, hee-hee...
Jess, step away from You Tube. You have much better things to be doing!
I'm off to find the lost Birdchick TV.
I am afraid that I don't actually have gnomes up there... just poppets.. but that's kinda close.
My aunt, however, has gnomes GALORE in her garden... we are talking a COLONY here. She has gnomes, gnome parts, gnome anything in her garden.
Even broken gnomes that were discarded from other people's gardens.
Beware the roaming gnomes indeed!!!
Hee hee! I should be delighted to see it set to bagpipes! Or any instrumentation, for that matter. Wow. I've never had a poem end up a song before. And there I thought I was just being randomly silly. :D
(Ah, crap. Should've been a line break between "their" and "grins." Stupid Blogger comment box and its lack of auto-stanza-formatting, fuss, grumble.)
Broken gnomes discarded from other people's gardens...is it because I only just woke up from a 45-minute nap that it seems like such a strange and sad image? Like they're drawn there. I want to see this gnome garden.
What is this Mystery Project? I'm intrigued by the idea of a series of works which sort of talk to each other. I've actually been messing around a lot in that vein with poems lately-- responding to other poems, or sometimes paintings. It's kind of a fun way to think about another piece of art-- you sort of get into the piece in a way you might not just by looking at it or reading it, or whatever. (Did that sentence even make sense? Gah, never fall asleep after dinner.)
It is kind of haunting, and I just fought off a nap....I do like it, and will set it to music, tho not, perhaps, bagpipes.
We were talking a couple weeks ago about finding something, a theme, a poem, painting, and idea, and all doing different things, doing what we do best, based on it. Whatever that may be.
We (ok -I-) let it slide, despite reminders, hey , I get busy, but it's still a cool idea. We never figured out what the WHAT was tho...And your poem woke it back up for me.
Sleep, perchance to dream, broken gnomes from other peoples gardens, haunted dreams....Are we onto anything here?
It was Sue who kind of came up with the idea, and now I can't find her comment.
Wow what a wonderfully creepy image. Gnome parts strewn about. I like it in a roof top garden, with a big old Yew, at night, with a full moon. Graveyard-like. :) And the poem is great! Can't wait to hear the song.
A woman playing bagpipes on the roof top garden with all the Gnome parts around her...
Look what great images we are coming up with! And Nathilie and Val, to name teo, are missing it. I suspect Va is behaving herself and working, and Nathilie is on holiday...
Whew, I'm back. Glad to hear the show went well and was healing and cathartic! Awesome about the musical instrument exchange, even if it did have a gap of years.
Gnomes, yew trees… damn. What is our theme again?
From Friday to this morning, I was in Las Vegas, with my best friend; he drug me off to the Four Seasons for debauchery. It was not quite the timing I wanted, as the painting still needed doing -- but he posed for it, fixing my problem of no one wanting to get Shirtless for Art.
The underpainting is drying as I type this. I'm hoping to get another layer on tonight; it's hot enough to dry it, I think. Though I'm not taking any chances, and I spent 30 minutes blowdrying it, too. Probably will need some more of that tonight.
Umm..Not sure what our topic is, I think we are still figuring that one out. But welcome back! Can't wait to see this painting and hurrah's to your friend for getting shirtless for art!
I missed all of you, too. :)
The painting is at the Oh, crap stage at the moment -- all white and blue on burnt umber. Looks like nothing remotely resembling art. Now is the part that requires faith.
We have faith in you , Val! That's what makes art great!
Ain't and nerd panties and gnomes, oh my;)
Rubius, when I think of broken discarded gnomes and gnome parts I want to repaint them with details and a little glow in the dark paint and make gnome zombies. (yeah, my nerd panties are showing;) Maybe I was inspired by Jess' lovely poem.
Pantagruel, white and blue and burnt umber sound nice to me *shrug*
Or is it that the colors are a bit wonky until they dry?
Kali, the reason the underpainting's colors look odd is because of the centuries-old technique I'm using for the painting. I'm using the Flemish technique, of doing an earthtoned underpainting, over which I'll be glazing thin layers of transparent color, and then adding some layers of opaque paint where the light areas are, while keeping my dark areas transparent.
So since I'm starting with a very dark canvas, I'm using the canvas for my darks, and then adding white on top of it, then fading it out to get a monochrome picture. The cool thing about putting white on top of burnt umber, is that when you thin out the white, it gives you a neutral blue. When you go back and add a glaze of a warm skin tone on top of that blue, it gives you the perfect color for shadows in skin. So right now, my figure looks ghostly pale and bluish, with brown shadows, and very dark, rich blacks -- all weird. If you do your underpainting carefully, and solve all your drawing problems in that layer, then the rest of the painting becomes very simple, as you're just then laying thin, translucent color over what you've already done.
This is a pretty slow method of painting, because you've got to wait for each layer to dry before you can put the next one on. (Which is why I was freaking out last week about the deadline being moved up a week -- that's like saying, 'Hey, that 50-page paper due in a month? It's now due in 48 hours. Have fun!' And going out of town for the weekend did not help.) With each layer, the painting looks more and more lifelike. The burning question is whether or not I have enough hours in the week to get the figure looking lifelike, as opposed to its current cadaverous state.
My first encounter with AIN'T (real life acquaintance, not in a song) was when I first got to the US as an exchange student (I never encountered it in England). I immediately was told that it wasn't proper so loved it, of course.
Since I have nerdy panties too, I can just see a story about the place where old garden gnomes go to die (I wrote one about typewriters graveyard once, so why not gnomes?).
You seem to be recovered from your sadness - at least from the most pungent part of it - Lorraine, so I hope the pain will fade away.
To the sound of pipes and with a merry dancing white dog in a colourful outfit.
The sound of my pipe playing would comfort no one I am thinking as of yet, anyway, but thank you, I am feeling better... You be sad, then move on.
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