TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 112

[Jana]

At 07:08 AM 1/6/2007, Tobie Shapiro wrote:
>January 6, 2000000000000000007
>
>
>Dear Every All,
>
>         Feyna will be taking a music appreciation course at City College 
> of San Francisco.  She'll also be taking a humanities course (buckshot), 
> and an English course (lots of reading).  We went online to buy her 
> books.  We'd gone on line previously to register her for classes and to 
> pay for the tuition, too.  Everything happens on line now.  When I was in 
> school, everything happened by waiting in line, not on line.  Since it's 
> a community college, the tuition didn't amount to too much, not compared 
> to the cost of a state university these days.  When I was in school, 
> average people could actually afford to go to the University of 
> California.  Now, it costs almost as much as going to Harvard.  It's 
> criminal really.  Education sponsored by the government ought to be 
> available to everyone.  It is the great equalizer.  Don't we want to lift 
> up the poor and give a chance to the less privileged?  I guess 
> not.  Anyway, the books for her classes didn't come to too much, except 
> for the music appreciation class.  This involved getting a series of CDs 
> and printed matter, specially concocted for the class, and I wound up 
> shelling out 350 hot simoleans for that.  Feyna was outraged.  But I told 
> her: that's the way it goes.  It's education.  We pay.  Now my checkbook 
> is a little thinner, but Feyna will be fat with knowledge.  Still, I 
> think they ought to limit the amount of money that they require you to 
> spend on any class.  This could break the bank. No wonder no one 
> appreciates music.
>
>
>
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>
>The anatomy of a cello
>
>         The tail pin on a cello is the long metal spike that comes out of 
> the bottom of the instrument.  It is meant to find a fixed spot on the 
> floor and hold the cello up so that you don't have to clench it between 
> your knees.  There was a time when that was the standard way to play the 
> cello, squeezing the thing between the knees to get the strings in 
> position for the bow.  But now, only historically informed ensembles 
> employ that technique when playing music from the eighteenth century and 
> before.  I've tried it. It's very inhibiting.
>
>         So this tail pin comes out of the cello from a hole framed in the 
> bottom.  The pin gets shoved back into the cello when you put the 
> instrument away, and a little key, like a wing nut, tightens to hold the 
> tail pin in place. There is another more exotic way of attaching a tail 
> pin to a cello, which is a piece of wood turned on a lathe, that holds a 
> tail pin within it.  And that piece of wood is what gets put in the 
> bottom of the cello.  Either way, the end pin comes out of something, and 
> is cinched in to keep its position so the cello doesn't slide on it to 
> the floor.  This can happen if you don't tighten the screw well 
> enough.  And it actually happened to me once when I was playing the 
> Kabalevsky cello concerto (go buy that CD.  It's a luscious concerto) 
> with the Northern California Honor Orchestra.  We were in concert.  I was 
> all dressed up in a chiffon magenta gown, with shoes dyed to match.  My 
> hair was neatly done, everything about me clean and orderly.  I was 
> hardly recognizable.
>
>         We were in the middle of the first movement and I had a big 
> octave run coming up, not even a chromatic octave run or an octave run 
> following a scale, but forward and back, up and down, then a furiously 
> bowed pair of octaves rising high into the upper register, part of a 
> grand finale to the cadenza.  It was that most difficult part of the 
> piece that I looked forward to with anticipation and fear.  Would I get 
> it right?  Would I mess it up?  Just a few bars before the octave run, 
> the tail pin started receding into the cello, disappearing from view as 
> the cello swallowed it up whole.  So, leaning on the cello, I began to 
> hunch over closer and closer to the floor.  This was when the emergency 
> tactics needed to be employed.  I hoisted the cello up and hooked the 
> scroll on my shoulder as I held the instrument between my knees, and I 
> played the damn octave run perfectly.  There have been crazy virtuosos 
> who planned emergencies like the breaking of a high string so that they 
> could show off by playing the entire piece on a lower string.  This was 
> not my gambit.  I prayed for a performance without extenuating circumstances.
>
>         I must have been around nineteen when I purchased a new end 
> piece, the kind that is a separate hunk of carved wood with the pin that 
> comes out and withdraws.  This tail piece, I could carry with me apart 
> from the cello.  The new end piece was very special.  The pin came out 
> like a stiletto from its sheath.  I could loosen the screw and flip the 
> end pin, sending the pin flying quickly out.  It would stop of its own 
> accord when it reached its full length.  There must have been a stopper 
> or an enlarged bulb on the pin that prevented it from coming out of the 
> tail piece.  I enjoyed myself immensely, flipping the pin out and then 
> pushing it back in, flipping it out and pushing it back in.  I brought it 
> with me to an appointment with my shrink, and I took it out to 
> demonstrate it for him.  Lookie what I've got!
>
>         I loosened the screw and showed Dr. Foote how I could get that 
> pin to fly out of the end pin and stop abruptly at its full length.  But 
> when I did this, the pin didn't stop flying.  It flew directly out of the 
> tail piece and stuck in the wall like an arrow, twanging only a few 
> inches from his head.
>
>         "What did you really mean by that?" would have been an expected 
> shrink-like reaction.  But he only gasped.  I guess I could have killed 
> him. I got up and pulled the end pin out of the wall, went back to the 
> couch and sheepishly put the thing away in my purse.  I apologized 
> lavishly, passionately.  I offered to pay to fix the hole in the wall.  I 
> wonder what I DID mean by that.
.
Oh, I love it!!!!!  Serves him right!
Hugs,
J