[stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

[Donna Hill]

Hi Aine,
Thanks for sharing this; it is a very interesting look into the life of a
young blind classical musician. I like the detail you put into your problem
of finding the way out. I believe you came to the list while I was away
working on my novel, and I haven't gleened much about you since I've
returned. Most noteably, I don't know if you are still a student and why you
are abroad -- that does sound nice though. I hope you will take my comments
in the spirit in which they are given. There are a few things I want to
point out. 

I had no idea you were a floutist till you sit down next to your fellow
floutist. Didn't you have the flute with you on your journey to rehearsal?
You could pick up your cane and your flute. Otherwise, the flute comes out
of nowhere, and I think the reader needs to think about you and the flute
from the beginning. It would help later in the story when you're venting
about the elephant description. 

In this passage ...
Block quote
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,...
Block quote end

"If you are me" is incorrect grammatically. With "if" in these hypothetical
situations which can't possibly exist, you use "were." If you are interested
in a conversational tone, I'd fudge it with "If you're me."

Block quote 
  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 ...
Block quote end

First, I love the concept at the beginning that shows your maturity in
realizing that neither delaying nor rushing were viable options. It does
show up, however, a tendency that I noticed several times. You have a
sentence that isn't a sentence. "Nor, I doubted, was rushing." This is a
clause in which the predicate is assumed to correspond to that of the
previous sentence, "was not going to be the solution." You could add the
thought to the previous sentence --"and I doubted that rushing would be."
or you could make a complete sentence. Also, the use of "nor" without
initially using "neither" is something that they maintained was incorrect
grammar when I was in school (many moons ago). If you want a separate
sentence here, try something like "I also doubted that rushing would help ."


There is something else in this that I find troubling. Your first sentence
is a strong affirmation of your conviction that delaying was not going to be
the solution. The use of "doubted" in the second sentence (or, as part of an
additional phrase in the first one) feels like backpedaling on this
affirmation a bit, taking away some of the strength of it. I guess the
question is whether you are deliberately trying to differentiate between the
level of certainty you felt about the two non-solutions. If you had less
conviction about the value of rushing, then I would suggest a strong second
sentence to that effect. If not, but you wanted to introduce the concept of
doubting for other reasons, how about including it in the first sentence? 

Here is another nonsentence -- "But right now, only silence." You could fix
this by inserting "there was." Also, I think you could sustain the action by
putting the phrase "after a thirty second circuit" to the beginning of its
sentence., 

Moving along, I am confused by the following:

Block quote
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.
Block quote end

I'm not sure why this passage is included. If it's just to vent or show wit,
I think it could be made clearer. First, you go from talking to the reader
to talking to the teacher (allbeit inside your own head) with no transition.
You could say, "I wanted to say ..." 

Also, the reference to any blind person's understanding of an elephant
conjures up for many people the old saying about several blind people
touching various sections of an elephant and coming up with vastly different
understandings of what it was. That saying is born of the world's prejudice
toward blind people, not leaving any room for any of us to have already
figured out that we hadn't been examining the whole thing and doing
something about it. Since the elephant thing was brought up by the teacher,
using it may take more care than had they compared the finger position to a
rino.  Also, the passage  threw me because it seems at first like you were
talking about yourself as the blind person whom this teacher might be trying
to explain finger position. Then, you introduce being four years old. That
caused me to wonder if you meant fourteen. 

If you aren't trying to make your reader work, you might add a casual
reference in the preceding paragraph to your being a flute player; you could
say something to the effect that being a flute player, you dozed in and out
of the strings teacher's  explanations ... But you managed to hear ... 

Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Aine
Kelly-Costello
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 11:23 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

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.