[stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

[Aine Kelly-Costello]

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my absence of late from the list.  I only now bothered 
to take the 5 minutes required to change my subscription address 
so that I can send e-mails to it (my other one decided that while 
I am overseas, I can receive e-mails but not send).  I've 
thoroughly enjoyed reading all of the CNF blindness prompts and 
can of course relate to many of the experiences.  It's nice being 
able to share them with each other.  I've attempted a prompt of 
my own (below and attached).  Feedback is most welcome :)

Also, if I ever wanted to try and get it published, does anyone 
have any suggestions of places I could submit it to, or any 
things that would definitely need improving on before it goes 
anywhere?

Thank you :)


Aine



A DAY IN THE LIFE


  The end of one more jam-packed day of music-making was 
approaching.  It had started off rather well, as I munched on the 
daily two pieces of toast with peanut butter and honey (my 
favourite), and partook in the daily morning chitchat.  This 
naturally progressed to that tooth-brushing, hair-brushing and 
generally tidying up stage normally encountered before the day's 
first commitment.  All was coming along just as it should until I 
realized I was the only person left in our accommodation 
building.  I should also mention here that I'm totally blind.  
Now, the isolation wouldn't be a problem if I had spent a large 
amount of time at this complex.  However, I was in fact attending 
a short summer course based at one of the largest private schools 
in the city.  This, quite frankly, is somewhere you do not want 
to get lost, not least because practically all of the buildings 
minus the one you want to enter will be locked for the holiday 
period.  And there are A LOT of these buildings.
  Anyway, delaying was not going to be the solution.  Nor, I 
doubted, was rushing.  I grabbed my cane and casually wandered in 
the direction of the exit.  I passed through the lounge, which, 
at any non-rehearsal time would have contained an almost 
suffocating mass of musicians magically transformed into sports 
fans, gamers and people like me wishing they could relax.  But 
right now, only silence.  Either someone was sitting in a corner 
eyeballing their smartphone and ignoring me, or the room was 
empty.  I decided on the latter after a 30 second circuit, and 
passed into the entrance way.  More silence.  That sort of eerie, 
echoey air of solitude which has you know in know uncertain terms 
you are the only sole alive in the vicinity.
  There arose a further difficulty here, though.  I had always 
left the building with the throng up until now, and typically 
hadn't paid the slightest scrap of attention as to where exactly 
I was going.  So once in this glaringly bright glass dome of an 
entranceway, it was necessary to uncover the mystery as to which 
of these identical-looking pieces of glass was in fact a closed 
door.  If you are me, and happen to possess the locating skills 
of a chick who hasn't quite learned that crashing into 
transparent solid objects hurts, this is an extremely 
time-consuming job.  If there was a security camera right there 
and someone was watching it, I'm sure they would let you know my 
sanity was highly questionable.  On my fifth circuit of the 
entrance way, I thankfully managed to locate a functioning door, 
and stepped out into the humidity.  Just as I was making up my 
mind as to which direction I would tackle first, I heard the most 
beautiful sound in the world.  Plod, plod, plod ...
  "Excuse me!" I cried.  My saviour was still too far away to 
hear my plea.  "Excuse me!" I cleared my throat and tried again.  
This time, I got a response.  Not only a response, but a willing 
guide to the rehearsal.  Tardy students sure have their uses.
  An orchestral rehearsal is not somewhere where turning up late 
is taken lightly, though.  Especially not when you have to 
traverse the maze of not only music stands and instruments, but 
also chairs with humans on them-humans with appendices sticking 
out in all directions supporting their fifteen thousand-dollar 
babies.  When I finally took my seat beside my co-principal 
flautist, I almost relaxed.  Maybe we hadn't rehearsed this piece 
before, and maybe I wasn't quite sure of all my cues (it was a 
world premiere-so recordings were non-existent), but at least 
there were two of us on my part.  If the sound energy emanating 
from my flute and the score sitting on my lap had a disagreement, 
it probably wouldn't be too obvious.
  Said security evaporated as quickly as it had arrived, however, 
when my partner suddenly, mysteriously was felt ill, promptly 
vacated his chair and melted into the back recesses of the 
cathedral.  The orchestra never stopped.  We had just gone back 
to the beginning, and I had been blending in rather nicely with 
my fellow wind players.  However, this particular piece had a 
very relaxed beat.  So relaxed, in fact, that counting bars of 
rest turned from a mathematical chore into a guessing game.  I 
had barely played two notes of a flute solo succeeding a 14 bar 
rest when I realized the orchestra was being stopped.  "Flute, 
one bar too early." (Why did it have to be me? Everyone had 
already stared at me when I walked in late).  "Sorry, sir," I 
mumbled, while my face dutifully aimed to break a redness record.  
"Oh, don't worry, I see we have no first flute." Huh? It took me 
a second to realize he must have thought I was a second player, 
sight-reading the unwell first boy's music, never mind that my 
eyes didn't work.  I was rather relieved at his forgetfulness but 
still felt slightly ashamed.
  I was pleased when lunch time eventually arrived.  The world is 
a much less stressful place when you are sitting around a table 
with friends - and food, of course.  The respite was not allowed 
to last long, however.  A ream of chamber music for this 
evening's rehearsal was awaiting memorization, and if I didn't do 
it now, then it would be sort of like a class trying to tell the 
story of cinderella without mentioning the ugly sisters.  I can 
think of easier tasks.
  After a dutiful stab at the memorization, it was time for a 
workshop on Music pedagogy.  This, apart from the stuffiness 
which tends to send one to sleep (and actually caused one poor 
girl to almost faint), passed without any great event.  
Sometimes, normalcy is the best.  I did however manage to note, 
despite my semi-asleep state, that the suggestion the string 
teacher offered for teaching bow-holding involved something about 
positioning the hand in such a way that the fingers represent 
parts of an elephant - his trunk and ears, if I recall correctly.  
Just one slight problem with that, miss.  I wonder whether you'd 
take the time to invent a new strategy if you were teaching 
someone without sight.  Because your average four-year-old 
blindy, probably has zilch conceptual understanding of the layout 
of this monster's facial structure.  It's not like your going to 
find one loose in the zoo and idly wander up to it to give it a 
hands on facial exam, is it.
  Our mid-afternoon snack was more short-lived than expected, 
interrupted by an announcement that we were not, in fact, really 
supposed to have had a break at all and should currently be in 
the court-yard, listening to some philharmonia players tell us 
their life stories.  Okay, it wasn't that bad.  I actually found 
it quite interesting, as, just like all the other students there, 
I longed to experience the thrill of belonging to an orchestra 
like that one day.  But the downside was that 15 minutes into the 
hour, I had a strong urge to go to the bathroom.  There was no 
getting out of there, though.  You would have had to be 
incredibly crafty to pull it off if you happened to be sitting at 
the back and sighted.  So what were my chances, in the middle of 
the crossed-legged mass on the floor, and blind.
  The hour of bladderly torture ended eventually, to be replaced 
with the aforementioned evening chamber rehearsal.  I genuinely 
enjoyed the first 20 minutes.  We were going over a movement we'd 
started work on yesterday, a quirky, not altogether predictable 
tune that none the less had a sort of charm to it.  Then we came 
to one of the movement's I'd learnt two hours ago.  If you are 
one of the few who are blind and also have the misfortune of 
being required to memorize large quantities of music on a regular 
basis, you will know that rehearsing something newly memorized 
before you have the chance to sleep on it is extremely dangerous.  
But if you are sighted, and a highly-esteemed professional 
clarinetist, the fact that the late handing out of the chamber 
music might cause the blindy problems may well have never 
occurred to you.  Such was the case now.  Those momentary pauses 
where I had to stop to recall my part were consistently enough to 
mess up our trio, and send us back to the beginning of the 
section.  And our coach, nice as he was, was in no mood to 
appreciate that my lack of rhythmic correctness had nothing to do 
with a lack of effort.  It in fact had everything to do with 
being overworked, and, quite frankly, rather fed up.
  I really put my foot in it when we went on to what what had to 
be the simplest movement of all.  My part went "da-da-daaaaah, 
dee-dee-deeeee" 11 times.  Then 3 bars of dah, dah, dah, dah, dah 
, dah ...  Before ending once more with it's repetitive refrain.  
Now, for the choice of a piece of music needing to be memorized 
and rehearsed there and then, that had to be a dream come true.  
But to my dismay, I soon discovered I seemed to have newly 
acquired a mental condition in which my brain couldn't quite 
manage to distinguish between the numbers 8 and 9.  Of course the 
harder it tried, the more it switched off.  Obviously counting to 
eleven, was out of the question.  I'm normally a top math 
student, and I could count well past eleven at the age of two, so 
I knew explaining my current ineptitude to my coach and fellow 
players was a lost cause.  By this point, I was also faint from 
the lack of food.  All I wanted to do was curl up in a nice 
me-shaped hole, and hibernate.
  Over dinner, my mood improved fractionally (the knowledge that 
you no longer feel like keeling over tends to have a positive 
effect on general well-being), but I still couldn't wait to be 
alone in my room.  No such luck yet, however.  One practice 
remained, and that was Sight-Reading.  It's all in the name, 
really.  But whoever said blind people can't sight-read and play 
an instrument with two hands at the same time!
  This was our third sight-reading practice on the course, and by 
now, I had my technique down pat.  First, what you did was you 
insisted they tell you the names of the ten odd pieces 
beforehand.  You went on to youtube and listened to them all on 
several consecutive days.  By this time, according to my tried 
and tested theory, some of there notes would have subconsciously 
seeped into your brain sells.
  This day, we unfortunately ended up beginning with something 
you weren't going to find on youtube, seeing as the composer in 
question was also the conductor and had only put the final 
touches on the score that morning.  Well, that was when stage two 
of my theory went into practice:
  * Ask adjacent player for the starting number of bars rest and 
first note, before beginning
* Pay attention to when they put their flute up (usually given 
away by a sticky key or shirt-sleeve rustle) and copy
* Use perfect pitch to finger along as they play, 0.1 seconds 
behind them
* Be brave enough to play in repetitive parts, but always with 
great caution.
(A dodgy plan perhaps, but to this day, it has never failed).
  Near the end of the practice, during Beethoven's Pastoral 
Symphony, I was happy to have the chance to put into practice 
both stages of my secret method.  I found it a nice catchy tune, 
and I'd done the youtubing homework.  We were going along very 
nicely.  I was even able to play several forte bits at volume, 
and enjoy listening to the orchestra delight in the myriad of 
tone colours the music evoked.  The melody was being passed from 
the violin, to the oboe, to the clarinet, to the cello, and I was 
pretty sure our turn came next.  Up went my flute.  But at the 
moment of truth, my fellow first flautist did nothing.  Okay, I 
don't know if he did nothing, exactly, but what he definitely did 
not do was play.  I turned to him with a question-mark on my 
face, hoping he'd get the message.  He did, in fact, but not in 
time.  Never mind, there would be plenty more opportunities to 
play that soaring line in such a famous piece.
  I was actually enjoying myself so much that when the time came 
to pack up, I was sorry.  The adrenaline must have kicked in by 
then.  I laughed and deplored over the oh-so-strenuous life of a 
high-school musician with my friends.  It didn't matter any more 
that I turned up to the morning rehearsal late or had to take 
time from lunch to memorize or that I almost cried at the chamber 
rehearsal.
  "You know that entry in the Pastoral," my co-principal flute 
buddy was laughing with his best friend.  "She knew where it was 
and I missed it!"
  In the momentary gap between dreamland and my head hitting the 
pillow, there was just enough time to reflect that maybe being a 
blind kid in a sighted world of musos wasn't so bad after all.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: A Day in the Life.doc
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 12801 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/stylist_nfbnet.org/attachments/20130202/de23f2d2/attachment.obj>