Adrift on the High C's

I've got the second-octave C (the one that falls above the treble stave and is the highest note for which fingering is usually given in standard trumpet instructional materials.) But it isn't secure yet.

At least I'm getting practice in, even if it is only thirty minutes a day. I keep thinking of new songs I'd like to try recording, but actually putting tracks down is all but stalled out (I do have another take at the lead trumpet for the Hellboy cover, but I haven't even stuffed it into Reaper.)



In writing, I had to tussle through a nasty Dorian problem, but solving it also gave me some idea how to make up the missing page count. Basically, my character is going back to Athens and this time engages more deeply not just with the history/archaeology (aka, does a lot of museum hopping) but also with cultural context.

This is also what I think of as "second week" tourist stuff. The first week you spend in a new place is all, "I have to climb the Eiffel Tower! I have to visit d'Orsay!" You are basically in full tourist mode. In the second week you've sort of figured out where things are and how to get around and talk to people and you have time to sit in front of a patisserie in Montmarte, drink coffee and people-watch.

Or, putting it another way, the second week is when you do laundry. You are still an outsider, of course. You are still a tourist. But there's a different engagement with the place. This is one of the bigger downsides of the If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium problem.

It's funny. My character is going into the Acropolis Museum just as I did; not terribly informed on Classical antiquity. My excuse is I was (and to an extent still am) tightly focused on the Late Bronze Age. Hers is that she only had a week to plan.

But yes, I'm reading Donna Zuckerberg's book as well, still finishing the Medici one, and gorging on podcasts mostly from the History of Ancient Greece podcast. I still have many, many questions. German dialects. Italian railroads. YouTube monetizing. I have decided that some of the historical figures in the story are going to be fictionalized; prominent among them, a pastiche of William Luther Pierce who is more of a collector and less, err, obvious as a white supremacist.



Thing of it is, I'm shy of hours what with the holidays, a couple of winter maladies, and a special project that ended up getting me less billable hours than I gave up to do it. At least I got a new digital caliper out of it. I'm not even quite making the time to get the writing and the music done, not at the speed I'd like, but I am starting to think I should be making use of my TheShop membership while I'm still paying for it, and cranking some props out to bring a couple bucks back in and pay off the credit card debt of my own Athens stay.