#which is why i gravitated to music that wasn't in english for a long time

[sirtadcooper]

I was tagged by: @matbaynton - thank you! <3

Tag someone you want to know AND/OR some of your besties.

This turned into a monster of a thing so I'm sticking it under a cut!

Favourite colour: I am rubbish at this question. I love various colours in various contexts, but at the moment I am really gravitating towards greens. Green is a colour I haven't paid much attention to before, but for some reason over the last few months I have taken an interest in it. I even bought a solid green jumper!

Last song: When Things Explode by Unkle. It's a song I first heard on an episode of Person of Interest and it's now on one of my YouTube music playlists. Takes me right back!

Last movie: I had to check my Letterboxd for this - that's how often I'm watching films at the moment! It was the 1995 version of Persuasion that I rewatched at the end of August. A film I only discovered recently but has become one of those instant comforting favourites.

Currently watching: Oh heck - I'm struggling to keep track, there are so many! I'm watching The English at the moment. Also Outsiders series 2, Taskmaster series 16, New Girl (on season 2), This Farming Life series 6 with my dad on a Sunday morning, All Creatures Great and Small series 4, Fletchers' Family Farm series 2, Schitt's Creek with @phantomviola (on season 5), The Musketeers (series 2) and Black Books (series 3) with @userdjarin and who could forget Our Flag Means Death season 2 which has taken over my brain! Along with all that I squeezed in a Primeval series 2 rewatch which I finished the other night. [slaps roof of my brain] this bad boy can fit so many narratives in it.

Other stuff I watched this year: HAH! I have an IMDb list of TV shows I've watched this year! It's long as heck! Silk, The IT Crowd, Black Sails, The Last of Us, Lost in Space, Endeavour, The Terror, Arrested Development, Community, Vicious, Prehistoric Planet, Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, Ted Lasso, Miranda, The North Water, His Dark Materials, And Then There Were None, Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Bear, Blackadder, 30 Rock, Chernobyl and The Expanse. And those are just the ones worth mentioning! And some of these I watched four times! Okay, one thing. Okay, it was The Terror.

As for films, it's a poor show this year - I haven't watched as many (see above for reason why). I have seen the latest Spiderverse film and I've love to see Barbie!

Shows I dropped this year/didn’t finish: The Mandalorian (sob!), Vikings (I think I was maybe an episode or two shy of finishing the first season but... man... I just wasn't having fun), My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (to be fair this might have been last year, I can't remember, but I know I stopped a few episodes into season 2), Fleabag (I watched one or two episodes... wasn't quite for me).

Currently reading: Darwin by Adrian J. Desmond and James R. Moore (about 100 pages in but I'm taking this one slow because I'm not hyperfixating on him) and Dead Famous by Greg Jenner which I am taking even slower. I've read quite a few books related to the Franklin Expedition this year (thanks, The Terror) and for a while I was reading pretty solidly but I guess that's what hyperfixation does to you!

Currently listening to: I'm not really listening to music much these days thanks to YouTube's annoying ad blocker pop-up so I'm typing this in silence, haha! But podcast-wise I'm doing great. Three Bean Salad is probably my favourite podcast at the moment. The humour is just too good, and I look forward to hearing the lads every week. I'm also binging The Rest is History which is a bit more serious but still has its fun moments. I'm also listening to Off Menu, No Such Thing as a Fish, The Bones Booth, Taskmaster: The Podcast, The Mariner's Mirror Podcast, and odd episodes of RHLSTP if I know the guest. I save podcasts for when I'm doing something like washing the dishes, walking or driving.

Currently working on: Now that the puppy I found at the end of August is vaccinated, she can go out and about, and that has led to me abandon the polymer clay for a while to return to a hobby that I haven't spent much time on since early 2020 at the latest. I wanted to make her some nice collars and leads so she looks smart for our walks which I will inevitably be photographing. I know it's kind of hard to see but I made this collar and lead for her.

I was a bit worried that I'd forgotten how to sew the leather but thankfully not. I have a few more straps of leather lying around that I'd like to make into collars and leads as well. And several rope leads that need whipping (you wrap thinner twine around the thicker rope to finish it and protect the end from fraying) but I'm having to take my time with those because the twine is murder on my soft, delicate, feminine hands. I can whip maybe four leads before my fingers are red. It's worth the pain!

Current obsession: Our Flag Means Death has taken over my life once again. Whatever happens in the finale next week, I know I will be a mess. Heck, I'm already a mess.

I'm tagging: some recent mutuals so we can get to know each other, but no pressure! @tigerballoons, @woofety, @jackharkness, @jddryder, @ajcrowleys and @skatingthinandice! <3

[tiikerikani]

Somebody from the choir I used to be in asked if I wanted to join her own women's choir thing and at first I was a bit hesitant (because like do I really need any more things in my schedule, and I'm ambivalent about the way she leads practices) but maybe having more stuff in my schedule will make me somehow make better use of my time because I have shit I need to get to? and get to sing stuff that isn't just church music.

Something like half the group isn't even Finnish (her included) so she runs everything in English and I think with a small group (it's like 12 people) you absolutely CANNOT get away with having anybody feel left out so I'm feeling somewhat optimistic about the social aspect too... I bring this up because she's really extroverted and in old choir she was like the international student that everybody just sort of gravitated to including socially (but maybe also because choir geeks/music students have kind of their own culture) and I felt really sidelined.

One singer is a voice teacher and last week she led warmup as a demo, and I was feeling like, ok is this an attempt to sneak formal technique on me, but I think as long as it's a group thing and nobody's being singled out for anything, then I can live with that. She's also offering to give one-on-one coaching before practices.

Afterwards the conductor sent out a group message with the practical details on how to sign up for those individual sessions and how it's a great opportunity they've been trying to set up for a while and it's good for you, and I'm trying really hard not to take it personally because I know it wasn't meant that way (though it felt patronizing either way), since I was very vocal (pun intended) about it being something I'm not interested in because reasons.

It's voluntary and I'm not saying that it wouldn't be beneficial (I think I am pretty okay as long as the warmup routine is good), it's just a thing I won't do even if it means I don't maybe sing as well as the others (I've only met half of them but even the amateurs have been singing/doing music more seriously and purposefully than I have). On the other hand it's such a tiny group and every voice really matters, so I feel bad about it regardless...

but like you've never had people tell you to shut up and stop sharing because "nobody wants to listen to that voice. go take lessons" which solidified my position on "everything I know about singing I learned from choir or experimenting on my own".[1] It's part of my identity that the classical/traditional sound I have is my default and not something I was explicitly taught.[2]

Anyway the group message was also like "when you have good control of your instrument then you can be free to focus on expression" but since when have I ever done it in that order, even on piano[3] ;-) like at practice I always feel kind of weird when they go through phrasing details (especially with very expressive music), because it's largely self-evident to me.

Returning to the bit at the start about filling my schedule, after putting it all into my calendar I'm not really sure whether I will continue after Christmas. It really is a lot (Christmas is a really busy time for choirs though) and the practices aren't on a super-predictable schedule and also I'm sorry Independence Day is a public holiday and I am treating it as a day off. I don't care that there's a Christmas party after practice. (Not to mention that music geek parties have their own set of problems because, let's face it, they are music people and I am not. Yes music is really important to me but it is far from the thing that defines me most.)

__________

[1] I mean sure I actually was pretty shit back then. people are better about not giving unsolicited feedback these days. This is also related to my similar thing about miniature painting and why I don't ask for or want feedback on my artistic things more generally. I do "how do I X", not "how is my X".

[2] People tend to adopt the style of whatever music they heard around them as kids, so for a lot of people it's pop or rock music, and maybe they train into other styles.

[3] Where in addition to technique, it was "learn the piece by memory so you can focus on expression" as well.

[cakeandpi]

there’re some songs - popular songs - that i’ve only known as vague mumbling sounds that, when i come back to listen to them years later, i realize there are actually words, like it wasn’t some weird in-joke among people that this ‘vague mumble song’ became popular because everyone else could understand the words, but between me and my hearing and the singer’s awful enunciation, “take these chances” became “da de dan ses”

this might explain part of why i prefer subs and why i have a tendency to rewatch and rewatch and rewatch the same ten seconds trying to hear just wtf was said when there’s not subtitles