Plumbum

Today was quite lovely: yellow sunlight, yellow-edged oak leaves which it shone through and over, blue sky, a mass of cloud here and there, a proud colour on the roof-ridge against the sky, reds emerging at sunset, and a nippy chill for this time of year which streamed into Gi.'s room — Gi., whose tastes for the whistling wind of the northern wilds have evidently not vanished entirely.

***

I was inside for all of it, but seized of the useful impulse to do something, vacuumed and mopped in the kitchen. It has reached a pass where the Before and After are pleasingly distinct. But I swallowed a metal S-hook in the vacuum cleaner and fished reluctantly in the exhaust bag, only to find nothing and resort to rattling the pipe a second time in exasperation — thanks to aerodynamics which prevented it from travelling too far in, it was still lodged there. It was surprisingly anticlimactic when my stupidity was met without any perceptible penalty from vengeful fates.

A few days ago I removed the pipes under the bathroom sink in search of a clot. The clot itself looked gratifyingly primordial, i.e. a dissolving stalactite of soft whitish and brownish soap- I dislodged it but only after spraying water specked with soap sludge over half the bathroom floor and over my clothes. So this first foray into beginner's plumbing was not the grand event I might have expected.

Besides, I hemmed and hawed over removing the pipes at all. At first it took some force to dislodge them at the joint, which was a little mineral-encrusted. It was only after taking a firm hold of the pipes above and below, and being sure that I wouldn't rip the basin from the wall like an inept Superman, that I took the plunge (so to speak).

All of which isn't hugely exciting, but entertaining to experience.

*

On the piano I've tried the last(?) movement of Schubert's first trio again. For much of it I was thinking of other things and didn't struggle in the least against repeating what I remember from a recording in terms of interpretation, which I did in what I think of as my 'concert pianist' mode. The mode comes up rarely and generally makes me feel as if I were a ten-year-old who has put on her mother's dress and high heels and feels very sophisticated. But it's rather amusing while the effortlessness lasts. In the end I played it more like I think Schubert wanted, and it didn't go badly. At this point it's a wild guessing game, but I ended up adopting more or less the phrasing and some of the mezzofortes, etc., of the score without feeling hindered by it, so it must have gone reasonably well. Still, I think it's extremely helpful to introduce some foreign element to a score and then to revive one's view of it, whether it's playing the entire song on the cembalo, switching detached for staccato notes, dropping the damper pedal, or best of all to go against the grain of the music so that there is nothing facile about it. Which might sound a bit like I'll be banging my head against the noterack next for thrilling percussion effects in some vague derivation of Derrida, but I think I'm no less traditional for it.

The other thing is how 'Austrian' to make Schubert's music sound, because pleasing as it is to pick out bits of folklore and elements so typical of the region that they practically yodel at one from the page, I don't think he would entirely appreciate it if a pianist turned his works into a parochial fest along the lines of Disney films or a certain film with Julie Andrews rendering a nun. Fortunately, though, I leave the interpretation to the others when we play a trio. I do like trying things out in the piano part — different things each time, as they come to mind when we play, and they are mostly quite small.

The latest master experiment, which is to say one that I've tried in much of our three Haydn trios, is to relax and keep time according to Intuition. Which means that I wait until I have a vague feeling that I am supposed to hit the next note, instead of striking it when I become nervous about not striking it yet, or keeping mathematical time as a piano teacher (or any person with a speck of pride and musicianship) would doubtless prefer. Whether the Intuition is an unholy disaster or not, it seems to make me breathe more in time with the music. Also, what is certain is that I'm much less frazzled when I fork forth the Intuition.

*


Politically I haven't followed much news in the past days. I have, for what it's worth, become a little less smug about American politics since the federal German elections. I voted Green; in retrospect I wish I had voted for the Pirate Party. While it may seem full of itself I can probably agree with most of its platform, which does seem broader than it has been in the past, if the voter's compass on the Tagesschau website is a true indication. To be very shallow, all the politicians seemed particularly shouty and unpleasant this time around, though — perhaps unfairly — I am not nearly as unfond of Peer Steinbrück as I was of his predecessor Stein*. I think I shall have to live in an alternative reality for a little while . . . sugar plum fairies instead of politicians, and such-like.