Musicophilia

The Briscoe bandwagon is rolling with gusto, although it is less of a wagon and more like Bart’s lounge room, and less like rolling and more like rocking. Bam! I didn’t even plan that sentence. I just come up with this stuff. Did some awesomely fun gang vocals on Sunday, and whoever wasn’t at the mic was engaged in a game of tag team scrabble. Playing “pixies” over a triple word score for 54 points still wasn’t enough to win it for me, but something about board games makes me gleefully happy. I think it is to do with my sibling-less childhood and the fact I never had anyone to play them with. Insert pity. Yes, I am that pathetic.

Anyway, it is great being in someone else’s band and not having any pressure to really do anything but turn up and play your bit.

I’m reading Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks just now, and it is fascinating. The kind of fascination I experience when I’m trying to eat dinner and watch a David Attenborough documentary at the same time – it just ends up being a fork hovering in the air with my mouth partially opened, eyes glued to the mating dance of the Birds of Paradise. That’s what this book is like. Thinking about the weirdness of the brain makes my brain fry. I mentioned earlier my intrigue at the juxtaposition of a perfect melodic singer having seemingly little sense of natural rhythm. Apparently it is not so uncommon. Another thing that tickled my fancy was the creation of music from silence – to write, I often have to spend a long period of time untouched by sound. It’s as if it gives the music a chance to crawl in. I thought that was pretty weird, since surely sitting at an actual instrument or at least humming a tune would be the most sensible way to birth a song, but it turns out I’m not too much of a freak after all. Which is not to say that I don’t occasionally pick up a guitar and noodle out the start of something. Because I did yesterday. It was very exciting.

There’s a free seminar on climate change supposed to be happening on campus here at lunch time, so I’m going to go sit in on it and take some notes. Of course, that’s providing that any of our students show up to it. Which they probably won’t.

Tomorrow is Blood Bank day. It’s a bit annoying actually because we’re going out to see The Fall tonight and it means I won’t be able to drink anything. All for the greater good. If you’re a B+ in need, then boy do I have a Christmas gift for you.

Human

21 postcards in. I'm pleasantly surprised at who has come through with the goods. I often wonder what our postman must think.

Due to what has been a high-stress, high-emotion and high-activity week, we decided against doing the Manly walk today (which turned out to be a good move because there was some rain earlier too). Instead we slept in, treated ourselves to a big breakfast, and rented a Wii game that we are pretty appalling at so far. I'm starting to feel human again.

I went and bought a copy of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", apparently a modern classic, by Carson McCullers. I'm assuming this is the book Tim challenged me to read, as Cormac McCarthy didn't have one of the same name. There is something wonderful about a new book, particularly one that has been recommended to you. A fresh paperback, waiting to be devoured. At the moment I'm struggling to read "The Pillars of Hercules" by Paul Theroux - not because it isn't interesting or well-written, on the contrary, but I'm just not engaging so far. Travel books aren't really my usual bag. So it will be nice to have a crunchy novel to bite into again.

I'm pleased to say that we've done what feels like a lot of cycling the last 2 days, and it has been very rewarding. I'm becoming more familiar with Woodstock's movements and quirks, and feeling the bond grow between bike and owner. I'm still not confident of taking the journey to work - mostly due to a combination of a couple of steep points and peak hour traffic - but I"m considering maybe doing a partial ride (catching the train the remainder of the way).

I realised last night that somewhere this week, I stopped meditating. Whoops. I'm pretty sure the last time I did it was Tuesday. Must put together a game plan for making this one stick, because I think if I can get into a routine, this will be really good for me. My brain is unrelenting for most of the time, so being able to train it to eat a chill cake would be nice.

Ben is in the kitchen making cookies, so I think I'm going to go and write a song for Bart's challenge now. The idea for Song 1 has been floating about in my head the last few days and I think I can knock it out relatively quickly (she says, with naive overconfidence).