Sister Ghandi and Violin Karaoke
Apart from attending weddings and helping with school libraries and hunting in vain for knee length socks and stitching costumes back together and carving halloween pumpkins and knitting nothing in particular very fervently in an attempt to (yet again) quit smoking, this week I be mostly reviving my violin.
It’s been lying inside a dusty box in various parts of the house untouched for the last twelve years which would make my Grandmother twist in her very pretty grave high up on the hilltop if she knew.
See, every time I consider opening that case, I would remember my teacher and suffer from huge pangs of guilt and would walk away and close my eyes and hope the guilt would dissappear under the bed again.
My teacher was a nun, a very small nun who reminded me of Ghandi and who was at least 125 years old if she was a day. She would make me go limp like a powered-down robot before every lesson, and told me that pressure was a waste of time, that I could only be as good as I am, so why worry?
I remember enrolling for classes with her at some stage during my school life, and picking up a violin and making it screech horribly. I could already read music, that wasn’t the problem, it was the damn bow not doing what it was supposed to do and the fact that the notes on the strings are entirely invisible. With a piano, at least each note is pre-defined, a black or white key to either be pressed, or not. A violin relies on the ear of the player, a finger slid slightly too far south makes the music sound a bit like a vomiting goat.
After a few months of learning scales and arpeggios and chromatics and the like, Sister Ghandi told me I was to do an exam. It was at this point I wondered if she actually switched on her hearing aid at all during lessons, surely no examiner would want to entertain me after just a few months?!? No matter how much I protested, she went ahead and enlisted me for exams anyway, not for some low grade warmer upper, no no. She went right ahead and booked me up for Grade SIX.
I had an impossible modern mumbo jumbo piece and an increadibly weird hungarian dance to learn in a tight space, but she had faith in me and made me do it, no matter how much I complained.
I passed it, too. I did really well, and became leader of the band geeks, of which I was entirely proud.
Then I left school after my leaving cert and never looked back.
I could have called the convent to see if she was still alive, but I never did. I could have checked in on her to thank her for all her hard work, but I didn’t. I couldn’t handle the fact that if I did call the nuns, they would tell me that she had shuffled off the mortal coil and was now fiddling at the Lord’s right hand side in heaven. I just couldn’t bear to hear that.
Which is stupid, because there is a slight chance that she’s still alive. I’m just too afraid to find out.
So, in her honour, I am attempting to re-tune these tired old strings and learn all over again via Internet Karaoke.
Internet Karaoke?!?!? Again poor Granny turns in her grave!
Via www.virtualsheetmusic.com, I found the following video on YouTube:
Which might not make a whole lot of sense as it is, but if you fiddle along with it, it might sound something a little bit like this:
Someday hopefully, at least.
No one gets hurt if they don’t act funny
There’s a very excellent scene in Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ – I’m sure you know it. The Fun Lovin’ Criminals robbed a sound byte for their ‘Scooby Snacks’ track it’s that cool. Skip to 1:20 in the following video if you have no clue what I’m on about.
I was reminded of that quote tonight.
I stole Pacino’s cat. I fear that if it had been left with him any longer it would soon be an ex-cat. It’s tail is, for the want of a more scientific term, pretty crusty. It looks like you could break it off and smoke it.
I heard Puppychild giggling in the bedroom earlier… I went in to investigate to find her upside down, her upper shoulders dangling under the bed – she looked like a decapitated pink chicken. I heard the engine-roar of a large cat’s purr from the darkness somewhere.
“What ya doin’?”
“Playin wit the cat!” said a muffled child’s voice.
“Are you torturing that poor animal?!”
“Torture? That’s a good idea!! I like that!”
UB Grateful
I don’t go to concerts much. I’ve never been to Oxygen or the Electric Picnic, but I plan to change that eventually. I went to Radiohead once, the most exiting part of that gig was watching the kids spewing all over each other… I think the downer music was a bad buzz. They should have called it the ‘whitey’ tour.
I went to U2 once, but can’t remember much of it. There was no drugs or booze involved, it was just… meh. I wouldn’t have minded sticking around for the fireworks, but the crowds were too damn huge and ducking out early seemed a wise idea at the time. As much as I respect Bono and his efforts, he is an undeniable twat. His is the only assassination I’m actually looking forward to for curiosity value, but that wasn’t me that wrote ‘DIE BONO DIE’ towards the Grand Canal part of the Dart line, I swear.
This t-shirt sells itself, really.
Then there was Paul Simon. Supported by Van Morrison, Blind boys of Alabama and The Fun Lovin’ Criminals, this was easily the best concert I was ever at. I was kicked out twice for acting like a mad thing while sitting on TAT’s shoulders, and almost passed out when Paul returned my tinkerbell wave. Hey, my crush on Paul Simon cannot be explained, let’s just leave it at that, eh?
Tenacious D of course almost made the winner of the ‘best concert ever’ award. Almost. I’m looking forward to the porn version; The Prick of Destiny. I want to see a REAL cock push-up.
Oi! Hands up, cheater.
I went to Bon Jovi once, but don’t judge me, they were free tickets. I followed two women around and watched them shatter their reputation as classy independent women and wished I had brought those vodka injected oranges after-all. Men that age shouldn’t wear leather trousers, that’s all I have to say about that.
Guns ‘n Roses was another freebie. It was exactly what I expected it to be.
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers was absolute kak. They botched the speaker-rig in center-field so I spent the whole gig searching desperately for at least one of the twenty five people I’d come with, with my hands clasped tightly over my ears. The only place the music sounded halfway decent was from the porta-loos. I got used to the smell eventually.
—–
Now, thanks to a lady who may or may not be the full shilling, but who has thankfully developed a crush on my taxi-driving husband and ‘uses’ him at least fifteen times a week (and booty calls him at least twice that amount), we have tickets to UB40 at the O2 in November. Apparently her dad works for a large publisher and is the man to ask for tickets and back-stage passes.
I’ve no idea what I’d say to UB40 if I wandered into their stoner-room though. ‘Did you have to bastardize Reggae so blatantly?’ I might say. Or… ‘Don’t you think it a bit of a cop-out that all your top hits were cover versions of someone else’s music?’ Then again I might not. I might just say ‘Howyeh Maxi… this concert made me feel really old! Thanks for that, mate.’
Not that I’m not grateful or anything.
Open minded
Puppychild has fallen in love with a little traveller-boy from down the road; I caught them kissing behind the bin-shed yesterday, and today they spent three hours together in her bedroom.
I sat quietly in the kitchen picturing a nasty argument in twelve years time involving her daddy laying down in no uncertain (and severely politically incorrect) terms who she should and should not date, leading her to elope and run away to a halting-site in Kells.
Then I wandered in to check on them and found the wee lad dressed from head to toe in a fairy costume and high heels with a pink handbag over his shoulder and realised that I’m probably over-thinking things after all.
Ham Shank
Several highly disturbing thoughts swirl around my head on a daily basis, it seems unfair that I shouldn’t declare at least one of them here;
Laughingboy is but eight years old now, and he will grow into a man, even if this idea seems absurd to me… there’s little I can do to stop this happening. Men have needs, needs that require locked bathroom doors and copies of Victoria’s Secret. Laughingboy will have needs too, I get preludes every now and then when I unwrap his nappy of a morning to be greeted by a wee stalker winking at me. If your average bloke chokes his turkey at least 356 times a year, who’s going to do that for Laughingboy?!? Do I bring him on holidays to Amsterdam for a month around his birthday to make up for lost time? Do I put an ad in the local newsagents window for some willing lady to do the job every Tuesday?
I once caught a middle aged lady giving her poodle a ham shank on a park bench one day… I wondered then what would happen if she had a disabled son instead of a stupid looking dog? Hang on, I just have to go and vomit for a second…
…that’s better.
I wonder if most people in my position would ever think about the dangers of re-absorbed baby-batter and the side-effects thereof, or is it just me? Mothering is such a weird job sometimes.
