Booyah

I passed.
Along with 31 fellow pianists (out of 46 competitors), I was deemed worthy enough to participate in the second part of the exam on June 24th.
So apparently 2/3 passed instead of the supposed half...that leaves a lot of worthy competitors for the next part, but I am nonetheless content with these developments.
This comes after I spent the entire weekend looking up graduate programs for Master degrees in literature (I don't even know where I get these ideas).

Anyway, I'm off to practice and likely drink tonight.

More importantly, Lucky, objectively the best cat ever, turned 18 yesterday.















In cat years, that makes her 126. What a true champion amongst the animal kingdom.

Quoi?

There was a question on my solfege exam this morning asking what the marking "mp" means in music.

Wow.

All I can say is that if you've been playing an instrument for fifteen years and can't answer that question, you're in serious trouble. Like, "throw your oboe into a massive firepit and jump in after it" kind of trouble.
And if you've playing an instrument for more than a week and can't answer that question, you're still in trouble.

Along with a few more astonishing questions, the "theory" part of the exam involved writing a short (five measures) melody.
Maybe I was missing something important--I scratched mine out in a few minutes and was the first to turn in my exam.
Of course, this is France. While the rest of the students kept finishing their tests, the teacher (also the head of the school) actually picked up mine, looked through it, and made facial gestures. These ranged from nods to furrowed brows to outright laughter at certain points. Was it necessary to do this in front of the class? I suppose so.

I'll learn the results of my jury tomorrow. Will report back later.

More importantly, my internet dating site finally landed me a date with a francaise named Drumcaype (note: to protect the girl, I scrambled the letters of her name and added a few more). Although she looks like an adorable blonde in her photo, I won't bat an eyelash if a grizzled, 48-year old Korean farmer shows up to the cafe. Such are the risks we take with internet dating.
I guess it would still be fun with an old Korean guy though--we could go bobbing for apples and giggle alot, and maybe do a round of cosmic bowling. Then he could show me his home country. Keep an open mind, right?

Choeur

We had our final choir performance last night.
Some of you may be surprised to learn that I was even singing in a choir at a little music school at Saint Germain des Pres, but the explanation is simple. Singing in the choir technically makes me a "student" at the school, and being a "student" gives me access to their lovely practice rooms.
The choirmaster (also the head of the school) long ago figured out my scheme and now won't even make eye contact with me when we cross in the halls.
The choir has been an overwhelmingly low priority for me--one week I skipped three out of four rehearsals, and I didn't even buy the sheet music until last week.
I guess I also missed the news that this would be a formal concert--I could have sworn that the choirmaster said it would be "informel" and that we wouldn't need to dress up, but maybe he was saying it would be "infortune" (wretched). Although that'd be a pretty negative comment for a choirmaster.

Anyway, I showed up to the church last night to find the women in black dresses and the men in tuxedos. I was wearing jeans, Pumas, and a dusty sweater with a bunch of cheese crumbs stuck to it. Oops.
A kind woman in the choir called her husband to bring me a nice pair of pants. Unfortunately, he brought another pair of jeans--a few hues darker and about four sizes tighter, but still jeans.
I expected to get some very French comments, and I did. Example:

*During* the concert, between songs, while the large crowd is applauding, the woman next to me murmurs:

"You were supposed to wear a white shirt."
"I know, I'm sorry. I didn't know."
"In France, we dress up for concerts. They dress up for concerts everywhere."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"I mean, you play piano concerts right? Don't you wear white shirts for that?"
"Yes. I'm sorry."
"We wear white shirts to concerts here."
"I'm sorry."
"It's like that everywhere."
"I'm sorry."

Another example:

A guy in the dressing room passes me and looks at my Pumas.

"Looks like you forgot your bowtie, huh?"
"I'm sorry."

This could go on endlessly. Needless to say, it was a fitting end for my stint with the choir.
Even better, there's actually video footage from last night. I'm the guy about ten seconds in who's wearing a sweater. I'm hard to miss.

Foutu

My first piano juries got changed to Friday. As in, the day after the day after tomorrow. They used to be on the 29th. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!!

This wouldn't really be a problem if I didn't have to play that damn Chopin "Black Keys" etude. I don't know what my deal is with this piece--I've played harder stuff, and it's something that a lot of 15-year old pianists can handle. But for some reason, the gears just get stuck on this one. Or, more accurately, my hands get stuck, thus making it sound like shite.

In general, my morale concerning my school has been steadily decreasing for the past six months or so, to the point that I found myself browsing university websites today for master's programs in foreign language education--what I imagine I'll fall into if/when this piano thing falls through.
I guess I'm somewhat happy I'm getting it over with though. If I fail, I probably won't bother taking the other exams, which will at least save me a bit of stress.

I've been thinking about metaphors for how I've felt throughout this school year, and especially now that it's winding to an end. I've come up with a couple accurate ones:

1. That feeling when you start a book and put it aside for a long time. Then when you pick it up again, you have to reread everything to remember what happened. It's a kind of annoying feeling that you're wasting your time, and you're often tempted to just put it aside and pick up a new book.

2. When a chica is clearly not interested in you, and you make some huge, last-ditch effort to snag her, reasoning that if you're going to fail, you should at least fail in a last blaze of glory.

I guess I'm regressing into "complaining" again. Maybe I should go practice instead.
Please light a candle for me and my jury. Preferably one of those gingerbread scented ones.

Ellen

I had a dream last night that I was on the NYtimes website looking at the Top 10 most emailed articles.
The tenth most emailed article was about the death of Ellen Degeneres--she had apparently been struggling for years with health problems and prescription medication addictions.
I then woke up this morning to find that gays can now marry in California. My subconscious is up to something, but I'm not really sure what.
If someone could make sure Ms. Degeneres is okay, I would feel better.

On another note, I used to think that eating sugar cubes when I ran out of food qualified as hitting "rock bottom." But I then decided to take a swim in the most soiled of waters by joining a French online dating site called "Meetic."
This is the first and hopefully last time I resort to online dating, although I'll admit that I'm kind of enjoying it so far. After deciding that the usernames "GigglyAdam" and "AdamDaThroatSlasha" wouldn't translate well, I settled on the horrendous "AdamRicain."
"Ricain" is a pejorative term for Americans in French--it's basically the equivalent of a German giving himself the username "RolfTheKraut."
I am clearly playing the "adorable foreigner" card here in a way that makes me nauseous. You have to write little blurbs about yourself--mine begins with "Hello!" (written in English) and ends with "please don't make fun of my anglophone accent :-) "
You then click and fill out little forms talking about your hobbies--there's specific buttons to click for "role playing games" and "figurine collection," albeit none for "playing bingo without a shirt on."
You then look at pictures of people and "flash" them, which is a cute way of saying you're interested. I must be somehow targeting a certain demographic, since I've only gotten five flashes so far, and almost exclusively from Korean women in their 40s (this is actually not an exaggeration).
Anyway, again, here's hoping for a bit of luck in these exciting times.

La fin s'approche...

...and there you have it. An entire season has apparently passed without me updating this thing.
On the other hand, I had nothing legitimate to write about until last night, when I finally accomplished a lifelong goal: I snuck into the VIP room of a swanky club by impersonating somebody else.
A group of posh Italians were in said VIP room for a birthday party. A French friend who was with me gave me a useful tip: whenever there's a large group of Italians, there's surely a "Giorgio" somewhere in there. Thus the strategy when I approached the bouncer:

Bouncer: Yes?
Me: (with exaggerated, fake Italian accent and rolled "r"s) Yes, I'm a friend of Giorgio.
Bouncer: Giorgio? Giorgio who?
Me: Giorgio, uh...Lugano. Mr. Lugano.

I read a book in fifth grade in which one of the characters was a teacher named Mr. Lugano. Why this was the first thing to emerge from my subconscious, I will never know.

Bouncer: Giorgio Lugano?
Me: Yes, he's in here somewhere.
Bouncer: Okay, go ahead.

Sweet. It was everything I could have dreamed of: free vodka and leathery Italian women dancing on tables as the intoxicated crowd hooted "Bene! Bene!". I drunkenly kept whispering the phrase "cool as a cucumber" to myself, although in retrospect, I have no idea what the hell that meant.
In conclusion, I felt special for the first time since 1998, when I won a pair of movie tickets in our school raffle. I lost them within a week.

Apparently my exams are approaching alarmingly quickly. I'd like to do what some people do before sports games and place bets on which exams I will pass:

ANALYSIS: FAIL. The French harmony system is both different from, and inferior to, the system that everyone else uses. We never learned it, and the teacher never really bothered to teach it to us.

SIGHTREADING: FAIL. There's something about improvising cadences in different keys on the final exam. Our teacher has never been sober enough to go over this with us. I'm buying the textbook next week, but I'll have to do some heroic cramming to learn everything in two weeks.

SOLFEGE: PASS. That's a pretty optimistic prediction, but I'm really not any lousier than the other students in my class. And they can't fail all of us! Right?

CHAMBER MUSIC: PASS. I own Debussy's "Petite Suite" and the Brahms waltzes. If the jury thinks otherwise, I'll burn the building down.

MUSIC HISTORY: PASS. Has anyone, as long as music conservatories have been around, ever failed a music history exam?

Then, there's the exams I care about. The piano juries.
This works in two phases. On the 29th, I play a Chopin etude, a prelude and fugue, and some dumb contemporary piece. Half of the students will then meet their demise.
The half that rest will play the rest of their program at the end of June. Half of those students will then meet their demise.

This depends solely on my nerves. My nervousness flairs up sporadically and can be the difference between a shimmering rendition of "Jeux d'Eau" (see Atlanta 2007) or a shite rendition of "Jeux d'Eau" (see Italy 2007). Thus my predictions:

If I do not get nervous: PASS
If I do get nervous: UNKNOWN
If I take a huge whiff of ether and down a bottle of poppers before playing: FAIL


Here's hoping for a bit of luck in these exciting times.