of cabbages and kings

[_fissures]

For New year's Eve my parents are planning on going back to the Wenty house during the day. When they come back they'll have my piano books with them - books I haven't touched since May when I broke down in my piano teacher's studio and she berated me, her voice shrilly climbing octaves like a chromatic scale. It was my last lesson and concluded

Comments

[aquaell]

Good luck with the Latin, ma belle.
& I, too, am returning to that fucking ivory, after a year of no lessons (!) and evading the Diploma once, at sixteen. After being forced for years, I am returning voluntarily, not being able to stand the thought of another year without it.

But I am moving, away. Cradling a rented piano in a rented space. Paying for lessons with what? The money I make from giving them?

Better learning a dead language than adoring a decomposing god, I say.

xx!

[_fissures]

where shall you be going? a different city or a different country?

[aquaell]

Ugh. A different city. For now. I always add, "for now", even though I am doing the exact degree I want, am living with the person I want, am LEAVING, and with $40 000 I didn't have before - it is Not London and so I am Not Entirely Content.

But this does mean I now have excess finances enough to go to Morocco at the end of next year/this year, and live there by myself for a month or two.
& that will be enough. For Now.

& you - Sydney! Political Science!
People keep asking if I'm excited. I reply by barely managing to lift my eyebrow. Et tu?

[_fissures]

People never ask about excitement - only the money; sometimes about how it feels, when it really it doesn't (and why should it?) feel like anything.

Your plans sound - if not delightful - than marvellously concocted. Morocco! Incidentally, a friend of mine is planning a world trip and stopping in Morocco too.

[taintedsky]

i stopped my lessons this september to go to uni. every week prior to that i would rush halfheart'd practising the day before lessons & it was apparrent in my horrible technique/pieces. when i am away i listen to piano music often and wish i could play again. when i come home this summer perhaps my mother will force me to take up lessons again but i would much rather slowly meander with my choice of pieces, on my time, without pressure or frustration of exams. (what for? not like i'll use the certificates to teach or anything.) at my last exam i trembled and screwed up so much. my examiner was really lovely and frowned during one of my scales, asked me to do it again, which was shameful, really.

[_fissures]

that was what the fight was about, almost: i said i would return to the piano once the madness of university entrance exams were over and she insisted that i never would return - i thought her momentarily mad: some rabid fear that once tasting freedom, i would never fall senseless down the rabbit-hole of routine practice.practice.practice. i said that was alright if i never returned to take the last exam, as long as i could play and she replied harshly that the certificate was pointless, proved nothing and i could 'hardly' play as a diploma student. but then, if so, why force me to take the certificate? and if i couldn't play as a diploma student, when could i play? when would come the signal that i could play without her? or was she simply raving because she thought i should never be without her tutelage?

to love music, but not to live on music - i think that is for us.

isn't there a piano at uni that you could sometimes sit down at and just lose yourself in the melody of some delicate, half-remembered Chopin?

[taintedsky]

not at uni, i don't think. a friend of mine has a piano in her house in victoria but i would be to embarrassed to play. i come home around once a month, though, so that's enough. i really don't think i'm suited for anything musical but i like it enough to trifle with.

[_fissures]

i'm terrified of playing in front of others as well - embarrassed and uneasy. sometimes i am goaded into launching a few barely mastered phrases and cadences in front of others, but i always attempt to retract quickly, deftly scurrying away. i'm glad now that i was forced to stumble into learning, because it will be - if nothing else - another avenue to escape the madness of coming days and years.

[quotata]

well i dun even noe wat to do with my layout... i want something totally orginal.. but *shrug*

[_fissures]

I liked my old viennawaltzing one with all the orange accents and the small, neat grey writing. I'm a bit too preoccupied (with latin and digital cameras of all things) at the moment, but I'll put something together soon. Or force Nadia/Mich/someone else to, soon.

Also about tomorrow, there's a bus tha will get us to Elizabeth st. at 3.01pm that leaves from the stop at 2.31 - so try to be at the bus stop around 2pm, to give us enough time to put your stuff away. that means you should probably catch the 1.15 at Railway Square, stand A (395) - i don't have the timetable for 393.

[pseudodipteral]

My dream is to learn French in order to read Proust, Rimbaud, Artaud and Collette in their lingua franca. I'm starting next year! I already have Italian down but there really isn't a lot of interesting things to read in Italian asides from Dante, which is closer to Latin and FAR. TOO. DIFFICULT.

[_fissures]

Dante!
A birthday present for a friend last year was a t-shirt screen printed with lines from his Inferno - we thought it would suit her temperment.

Of the living tongues, I wish to learn French, amongst a list that includes German (my cousin has promised to tutor me someday) and Russian.

So you're taking Arts(languages) at Uni next year? Or are the degrees a little different in Melbourne? A friend of mine is going to take Medicine at Monash and she's made us promise to visit, so perhaps when I'm down there in the new year, we could meet up? Since I was inconveniently away when you came to Sydney last.

[pseudodipteral]

I am not precisely sure what I want to major in just yet, but I was thinking either Literature or Social Theory with a diploma in Theatre Studies. I don't know how long I'll keep the languages up, but I love them ever so much. I would also like to study Russian and maybe Spanish.

What are you studying next year?
I can't wait for your visit!

[_fissures]

Economic and Social Sciences/Law.
Admittedly I was bribed by a rather generous scholarship by the Economics and Business faculty, but the degree sounds much more dry than it is, I hope. For some peculiar reason, Sydney University teaches political science through its Economic faculty - and I do love political philosophy and feminist jurisprudence.

But relinquishing the possible Classics and History majors of an Arts degree is part of the reason why I have suddenly decided to teach myself Latin.

Your majors sounds very exciting! And should all go well, I should be in Mlebourne mid-February. Will definitely be in contact as the event moves toward transpiring.

[restaurant]

I thought it was you whose name I saw in the paper.

Languages are wonderful. I've always wanted to learn Finnish.

[_fissures]

was it the smh? i heard from a friend that i might have been mentioned, briefly, just a whisper of a name listed. but i never saw it myself.

to understand a language, a vernacular, to me, seems capable of permitting the enhanced understanding of entire cultures and histories. perhaps though, i am overinflating its properties.