Third!

It's the third of November. The third day of posting. And the third time I am feeling inadequate and unprepared.

I should be given a hefty bunch of handicap points today, though: I'm posting from Aumsville, Oregon on dial-up. That's right- there are still people in the world who cannot get DSL because they live too far out in the sticks for anyone to bother running the cables to them.

In lieu of actual thoughts, I'll tell you about Josh Bell's playing the other day. It was great- way better than I had thought it would be, even. I think I've successfully cultivated my "jaded professional" skin, thick and scaly with a slight green tinge to it. There are plenty of amazingly talented players who I respect, and a boatload of others whose technical ease I covet openly. But the "I think I'd like to play chamber music with/ buy all their cds/ listen to/ even pay actual money to see rather than scamming comps from friends" category is pretty empty. In violin there are some old guys plus Victoria Mullova, Gil Shaham, and now Mr. Red Violin himself.

He even played a snippet of Red Violin music as an encore- and I remember being annoyed with that fricken melody about 1/3 of the way in- and it was literally stunning. When it was all said and done and we mere mortal musicians were milling our way toward stage right, a violist with the best sense of humor started to play- faux extra poorly- the first few bars of that Kreutzer etude we have all played a million times.

Anyway, JB was a stud, as advertised.

Also, the violist next to me is going to be my friend. She may not know it yet, and I may have to stalk her a little. This I know, and this knowledge is mine simply because she answered my, "Great shoes!" with, "Thanks- they're from Cross Dressers dot com." and smiled one of them straight-forward Minnesota smiles.