Week 17.7: December 19

My theory final was Monday, and also our last baroque violin class. My gut E string broke near the beginning of class, and someone suggested we use it to cut the chocolate cake Elizabeth had brought.

Perhaps the first SFCM cake ever to have been cut with a gut E.

That was our last class, so M and I went to the library in our free afternoon and picked up several books and films we have wanted to watch all semester. The animated Christmas display was fascinating.

The trains move and the Ferris wheel rotates and the tram goes back and forth, but you can't see that....

Spent the rest of the week running little errands, tying up loose ends and trying to stretch my leftovers. Oh yeah, also a little caching down in SoMa.

Art.

In the evenings M, N and I have been watching Japanese anime, Pixar short films and retro Tintin episodes. Life's good., and it's about to get better, see you tomorrow, YYC!!

- Antisocial Violinist

Week 17: December 15

Last Sunday Nick really wanted to go to the Wave Organ, so we made an expedition out of it. We ended up doing a whole lot more walking than we planned, but had a great time, and the organ was awesome. The Bay was bright and wet, all slap-happy against the rough stones, and Marin Headlands were smudged with haze from the sunset. 

That's Alcatraz in the distance

Wow....

Stairs to nowhere!

(almost) albino pidgey

The Organ itself is on the end of a long man-made peninsula and apparently sounds best on full moon nights, since that’s when the tide is highest. We could hear the ocean glooping out its tidal rhythms through the concrete pipes. 

Ears to the listening ports

My week was mostly taken up with battling pinkeye (which is better now), trying to get my visa sorted out, studying for the Western Civ final exam, working on my Theory take-home final, and practicing for lessons/classes with my former teacher, who was here for a residency. So, not all that interesting, but I did hear a George Crumb piece at one of the chamber music recitals. The group performed Vox Balenae, with black half-masks and deep blue stage lighting. It’s a long piece, but I found it fascinating and super effective.

On Thursday was the dreaded Civ final, which was slightly more difficult than I expected. Oh well, it’s done now, and yesterday the Three Explorers were out once again, with the Presidio as our destination. On our way, we noticed a lot of Santa clones.....apparently it's the Annual Polk Street Santa Claus Pub Crawl......

San Franciscans seem to have a romance with snow, always talking about how beautiful it is and how they wish it would snow for Christmas. Outside City Hall they even had a sorry little patch of man-made snow. I bet you all wish you could send them ours.

This made all three of us laugh a lot.

Our walk through the Presidio was, again, rather longer than expected (this always seems to happen) but we saw so many interesting things that no one regretted it. 

On the grounds of the Palace of Fine Arts

The whole Palace is like this

The wild Presidio

Oooh, abandoned warehouses!! So much scope for adventure.....

Rather gloomy

M pulled this stunt BEFORE we saw the plaque below.

"Please Do Not Touch. Embrace the solutions, not the globe" Whoops.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

We got to watch another ocean sunset – the Bay looks stunning in every stage of light, although my photos aren’t really an accurate representation of its beauty. 

At just the right time of day, the windows of Berkeley turn to molten gold.

I promise you this looked SO much better in real life.....

 My next blog post will be on Thursday, not Sunday. Why? Because I'm COMING HOME on Friday morning, that's why!!! Email me if you want to get together - I'll be home until January 20th, and I am determined to see as many people as possible before I have to come back here. And before you ask - no, I will not be blogging about my life in Calgary, since that's even more uninteresting than my SF life.......

- Antisocial Violinist

Week 16: December 8

All the Conservatory orchestra’s regular concerts are finished for the semester, but the orchestra has a few other interesting functions as well. On Monday some of us were assigned to read for the orchestration class and conducting class. There were five students in the orchestration class, meaning five different orchestrations of the same piano sonata by Hummel (a student of Mozart’s). It was really interesting to read all of them and see the solutions each kid had found; each one had sections that worked and sections that didn’t. Some textures were idiomatic, proportioning the orchestra nicely; others were pretty clunky, and each kid had at least one really stupid-sounding moment. It was a new experience, and I found it fascinating to examine what it is that makes an orchestration work (or not).

Anecdote from the life of an Ian student: Tuesday I went up to the sixth floor for my lesson. Ian’s office opens onto the terrace, and when I knocked on the door, Ian came out and promptly instructed the previous student to walk around on the terrace while playing her piece (Wieniawski f# minor). The pianist was stuck in the room of course, but Ian left the door open (it was not a warm day) and the girl walking round and round, stepping up onto the benches and playing her heart out, with Ian all casual on the bench opposite, occasionally shouting encouragements, was a fine sight. Laugh all you want, but I tell you she sounded fantastic.

I seem to take a lot of SF vista shots while caching, but oh well, here are a few more. The GGB is quite pretty when lit, despite the blurry photo (can’t figure out how to make camera take night shots).

Sunset

Sun gone

I played in the last studio recital of the semester on Friday night, having contracted pinkeye the day before. It did not hurt, and since I always play shut-eyed anyways, it didn’t affect my performance at all – in fact I felt both movements were reasonably successful. However the eye looked quite dreadful even though it was mostly painless, and I received a lot of sympathy from my colleagues, which I appreciated. Myself, I found the whole business rather funny. (If anyone has tips on getting eye drops to actually drip into your eye, I’d appreciate them.)

Yesterday I was at the library, and as I walked past the travel section I had a whim to look through some of the Canada travel guides, just for kicks. I picked up some useful bits of info such as “Cars are driven on the right side of the road. Steering wheels are on the left side” and found a priceless description of Calgary which proclaimed that we are “blessed with a pleasant climate – low humidity, lots of sunshine and moderately cold winters, tempered by warm chinook winds” Chuckle, snort, guffaw. Whoever wrote that has obviously never visited Cowtown during winter. Or, as friend J put it: “It’s a very pleasant climate if you stay indoors”

Here, have a picture. This is the preface to a book of solo instrumental works, some written for cello and some for viola – or “tenor violin”. These were written back in the day when violists really were the underdogs in pretty much every genre, a stereotype they retain to varying degrees, and which leads to the phenomena known as Viola Jokes.

 - Antisocial Violinist

Week 15: December 1

On Monday I had a delightful experience, from a book lover’s perspective at least. I had gone to the public library to see if I could find a copy of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. I asked around and found out that their copies of the book include the original Arthur Rackham prints, which are apparently so rare and valuable that the copies are stored in the archives, on the sixth floor. The archives are an extremely quiet, ancient-feeling place. There are huge books of yellowed maps, encyclopedias, and other reference materials of all shapes and sizes. I had to sign in and request the book to be pulled from the back. The librarian brought out not one, but two hardcover copies, one bound in red and one in cream, both with thick yellow paper and titles embossed in gold leaf. I was given a seat at one of the many desks (each one has its own lamp attached), and was presented with a sort of foam trapezoid on which to prop up the book, eliminating the need to spread it flat on the desk and potentially crack the spine. I was also given two lengths of heavy white cord, which could be used to keep the pages open without getting oily fingerprints on the page (you drape the cord down the edge of the page and it holds it down). It was a real treat to be in a place where books are treated with such reverence, and where reading is considered the most noble of pastimes.  

I spent Thanksgiving break in Orange County with my Californian relatives. San Franciscans tend to treat SoCal with disdain, but it is a really beautiful place, as you are about to see.

Great-Aunt Lucy's street

Great-Aunt Lucy's house, with Cousin Danny stringing up Christmas lights

Birds of Paradise in her garden

 View from the upstairs window

Same window a few hours later

On Thanksgiving Day we had a big dinner all together, then walked along the coast to the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where the annual gingerbread sculpture was on display.

Yes, that is ALL gingerbread (except the kids)

The walk back was quite lovely.

Lots of surfer dudes out surfer duding

 American Thanksgiving Day was also my 18th birthday, and it was Cousin Laura's birthday two days before that, so we had to sing and celebrate. I was incredibly surprised when Cousin Laura presented me with a birthday cake she had made, and I began receiving birthday presents. I felt very lucky to have such great family down here, and very loved.

18 candles, count them

The day after Thanksgiving we went to the zoo in Palm Springs. This was a great time. We saw pretty much everything in the whole zoo and were all exhausted by the end.

Do people ride zebras? No one could tell me

So I decided to ride one myself on the carousel. Galloping my valiant steed through the savannah

WHOA THEIR KNEES ARE BACKWARDS

Unicorn!!!

Tame rats. Now there's a great pet.

My namesake, the spiky porcupine

I didn't know this.

Another close cousin, the Mexican wolf

The rest of the break was more beaching, kayaking, oceanizing, homeworking and violining. I was sorry to leave, and return to the noisy concrete stench of SF, but I guess that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Today I finally made it to Lombard Street, "the crookedest street in the world". I was really there for a cache, but I had to take pictures as a cover, so here are my cover pictures.

This one's for you, Dad

And so is this

Looks like Ian's non-musical brother opened an ice cream shop

I'll leave you Calgarians with this nasty thought: On December the first, yes the First of DECEMBER, I was outside strolling in a T-shirt, and the weather was so beautiful that I went to the park and lay on the grass, luxuriating in the warm sun. 

- Antisocial Violinist