Stuff and Things

So I've decided to give myself a proper challenge in my quest to learn Chopin preludes and after fiddling about with a few short and sweet ones (nos. 3, 11, and 13) I have decided to learn #24, and it is going to be fun and also terrible, because oh god giant intervals and cascading chromatic thirds. I am finding that pieces that are 5 pages or less are really suiting me right now, because it means I can do really close work on a few measures quite a lot without getting impatient and wanting to just know the whole thing all at once. Just right for my practice habits, which basically happen whenever I have something on the stove, or the kettle is on, or I am frustrated with whatever else I am working on.

I definitely got a little obsessed today though, and spent a good few hours hashing out the first page or so of #24 in between yelling at the piano, and at my hands, and at various performers on YouTube who made it look easy (I'm looking at you, Pollini. Grr.). But like I said, it's fun! I haven't gone for something properly melodramatic in a while. It's a great piece for showing off. I'm determined to make it work. Whether it actually does, will of course remain to be seen.

In other news, I have been felled by a head cold this past week, which has made working on my chapter (and almost everything else) nigh impossible because the sentences I string together tend not to make too much sense when my entire skull feels stuffed full of cotton wool. This was highly inconvenient, as it was the last week of term, which mean that I had a great many things to do, and many of them were left until the very last minute as a result. All of the truly time-sensitive ones did get done, in between frequent naps, but as I am now on the mend, I must get cracking on everything that's left over. At least I will have the library at my disposal now that all the undergrads have gone home for the holidays.

It must be said that I am really enjoying learning stuff about F.R. Leavis for my last chapter because he was crotchety and frustrating and histrionic, and apparently I like that in authors I study who are now dead (see also: Carlyle). No doubt I would find him endlessly aggravating in real life, but on the page and safely in the past, fascinating and hilarious! Truly, he had all the subtlety of Fox News, it's pretty funny.

That's all the news for now; we've had utterly ridiculous weather that can't decide between snowstorms and sunny clear skies, often switching off between the two every half hour, and it is at best aggravating. I demand spring to spring, on the double. Maybe then I'd be more inclined to bring my work out to the library every day.