Musical Mishaps

Performing on stage is amongst one of the most terrifying things you can do in life - there's no real escape (unless you refuse to feel the audiences' eyes burning through the back of your head as you leap across endless rows of chairs to the back of the hall) and there's little margin of error (you know that the little old lady in row three is counting every single mistake you make); so there you are, pitying yourself for having signed up for the stupid concert in the first place and completely trapped in the confines of accuracy and the hall itself. This fear can only be intensified if you're insanely malcoordinated.

Piano

One of my first performance recollections on this instrument involves me tripping up on the way to the stage, falling off my seat and playing every single note wrong because somehow the thought of transposing the whole piece up three notes was more appealing to me than admitting I started on the wrong one. Aside from personal mishaps, there's also been times when the piano itself was not up to par - most prominent in my memory is the piano that lobbed its keys at me in a way similar to if it were hurling ninja stars. All I wanted was to practice on a real piano for half an hour before a concert, what I didn't expect was that the 200 year block of wood was set up to be home to 88 keys all set out to kill anyone with the misfortune of touching them. My recollection of this event is somewhat like this :

but being brutally honest what really happened was somewhat more like this :

Violin

There's been far worse misfortunes with the violin - there's more components that can go wrong. I've had strings snap in the middle of performances (I now have a massive fear of ever touching the E string), I've had catapulting bridges, exploding shoulder rests and there was that one time that I accidentally let go of my bow and watched it fly off into the first row of the audience. Sheet music has flown off, music stands have toppled over as if they've had far too much to drink and a couple of times I've managed to destroy chairs - no-one knows how it happens, it just does. I'm the thinnest person imaginable so the only logical explanation for such occurrences is that the chairs in the music department in my school have conspired against me, along with the piano.

My attempt at fixing the remains of my shoulder rest

Saxophone

For once, I believe that this was through no fault of my own and thankfully I never performed on the sax so only my teacher was there to witness the following. It was 1:50 on a Thursday and I was running late for my sax lesson, I ran up the stairs to my teacher's studio, barged in and upset a bucket of water that was by the door (apparently it regulates the humidity in the room but I know it was a trap), having righted up the bucket I set about constructing the saxophone and was ready to prove to my teacher that his efforts in making me a top saxophonist weren't futile, I was ready to conquer the world - for once I had practised my saxophone and I was determined to take his breath away. However... no matter how hard I tried, the measliest little squeak would come out the metallic lump in my hands, the harder I blew the more high-pitched and squeaky it'd get, after five minutes laughing at me, my teacher finally mustered up enough breath to tell me to stop playing and dismantle my saxophone so he could see if there was an obstruction. I checked my case - I'd taken out the cloth and pipe cleaner so what on earth could be obstructing it? It was then that I felt something hit me on the back of the head - a little finger puppet version of Cinderella lay on the floor all crumpled up, I recognised it as belonging to the demon-child of one of my mum's friends but I was far too embarrassed to have thoughts of revenge. I packed up my belongings and left the room, my teacher was kind enough to put the incident in my report much to the exasperation of my tutor...

I'm not sure if there are any morals to the above stories or tips to hand out - don't play musical instruments? but then the world would be boring... so I'm going to settle with - take care of your instruments, they can bite back...

Squirrel Nests and the Like

so... this is a visual representation of what I normally get up to, aside from terrorising orange cats in weird trees I also play violin and piano, attempt to speak several foreign languages, read (mostly books on which English Language teachers would spit on i.e. Harry Potter or the Terry Pratchett Series), watch films and wander aimlessly around town. This wandering gives me an endless supply of opportunities to make a fool of myself, unfortunately my town is pretty small so if I do manage to make a fool out of myself in front of someone, not only will they remember but chances are they'll see me the following day.

I'm phenomenally crap at art, for which I am sorry, the pink blob is me, in the top left picture
I'm running away from a squirrel, in the top right picture I'm fending off jedi squirrels :)

I should probably elaborate on the above story considering it's actually based on some truth. It was dusk, I was innocently walking through the graveyard outside my school with a group of friends; laughing, talking, stamping on and eating the walnuts which had fallen from the nearby trees when we spotted the Goliath of walnuts. I'd never seen a nut that big, it was massive, I had to have it. The only issue was height, I was about 5 feet tall at the time and no amount of jumping was going to get me to the nut, so I did what any rational person would do, I scoured around for a stick. Upon not finding aforementioned stick I decided to throw a rock at the walnut so I could bludgeon it off the tree. Thoughts of treasuring the walnut forever were in my mind, what I did not anticipate however was the squirrel nest. Within seconds a group of irate squirrels flew out of their bundle of sticks, running in all directions. Panic ensued, I told my friends to save themselves, that I would remain behind and fend off the angst-ridden squirrels, however when I turned around I found that the bastards had already thought of this plan for themselves. The next part is a haze but I can just remember watching the squirrels eventually returning to their partially broken home from on top of a park bench (- for some reason I had thought that these expert climbers who could jump from tree to tree with such grace and ease couldn't get to me if I curled up in a ball on a bench made up of rotting wood), and as I peered up, I saw one of the grey terrors pick up Goliath from his resting place and make off with it. The only thing I had then to remember my plight was cold, cold shame and constant reference to it for the next few weeks :(

The moral of the story - don't throw stones near squirrel nests, especially if your aim is amongst the worst in the county.

A note of explanation

I'm clumsy, really really clumsy. There's nothing I can do to control it - chairs, tables, feet just fly out at me and the only thing I can do is to close my eyes and accept the inevitable - I'm going to trip and reunite with my old friend, the floor. After an (admittedly brief) lifetime of such eventualities I've been encouraged by a number of friends to write up my experiences. They claim my clumsiness will somehow diffuse from my persona into the words I write and thus my affliction will disappear, I may be gullible but that's just stupid. However I will write in an attempt to possibly brighten up someone's day ever so slightly :)

Love,
Smellfunny
xxx

N.B. all posts will (sadly) be drawn up from personal experience albeit exaggerated at times because that really is the way I feel they happened...