Saturday, August 29, 2009

Too good.

Agh, you know your blog posts are exciting when your husband greets you with
"Hey, I really liked your post about the orchestra thing today!"
Me (possibly being deliberately obtuse): "Orchestra? What are you talking about?"
(Of course, I know damn well what he's talking about, but like hell am I going to let him call a band an orchestra.)
Him (looking all cute and hey! But I READ your blog and I even remembered what it was about!): "Oh, the kids' thing you went to this morning."
Me: "Ohhhhhh. You mean the BAAAAND."
And our good friend sits across the table looking just a little confused by the elaborate charade of "Honey I cared enough to read your blog" being enacted.
UNTIL darling husband: "But I was a little surprised when I checked in and read all about this marmalade painting and thought hee hee hee, that's pretty funny and awesome, and then, I realised you were writing about me, and went "HEY!""
I could only raise my eyebrows. That's what you get for besmirching benches with marmalade. You have been warned.

Today has been...a day.
This morning was great.
*Bach A Minor Concerto,
then a
*pretwinkler and her big sister - whose fifty day challenges are paying off.
*A Gossec-Gavotter who is playing with beautiful tone and starting to read pitch :)
*Vivaldi A Minor II mvt which led to exploration of pos. changes and how note-reading needs to expand to accommodate IInd, IIIrd, IVth -fluent reading.
* The BUMMER lesson. This is what happens when eleven-year-olds think they'd like to play violin because their friend plays it and THEY sound really cool and playing the keyboard is such hard work (well, ANYTHING is hard work when you don't practise)... tears and no practice.
I have to remind myself that this is a life lesson. No, I will not 'fire' her from lessons. Age nearly-13 is a good time to start taking responsibility for choices. I can't force you to practise, I can only show you what happens when you do (or don't). And she is going to have to own her choice not to continue, because this is a great place for the blame game of "So and so LET me give up" or "My teacher wouldn't let me keep going..." Nah-UH.  I am not into this. It's just tough love.
And then there was...
* The lesson of a nicely-prepared concert piece and moving forwards.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My wife occasionally admits to reading my blog and may occasionally say it was 'okay'. If I'm lucky. :)

There's something reassuring in eleven year olds thinking that the violin is cool, even if they're probably in a minority.

Cwybrow said...

Haha. I think my husband understands that he lives with a creative person who would like to spend ALL her hours creating different things...and therefore understands that reading my blog is necessary to maintaining some kind of relationship :)
And actually, more eleven-year-olds than not think violin is cool... if it's played well. And sometimes when it's not but the player is cute (like my little three y-os. They understand that we all start somewhere and they had dodgy posture once too. But the most positive feedback I ever got busking was from kids& teens who would go "That's so COOL!"... see, there's hope yet :)

Cwybrow said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris Gooch said...

I like the Bummer lesson - it's the mark of a great teacher!

Cwybrow said...

I'm gad you like the bummer lesson...I had to have a bit of a midnight debrief.