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Still alive
I said that I would post more and complain less. Or try, at least.
So, this is me trying. Again.
There was fun stuff, which was a lot of work and planning and preparation and very stressful, especially since I'm running on about 40% of the energy I had 6 years ago. But with reduced work hours it was manageable.
Choir performances
We had two-and-a-half choir performances in early May with the usual amount of additional practise, frantic last-minute practice, working out instrumentation (piano or electric guitar? recorder or violin?), arrangements (solo or tutti? full or reduced soprano ranges?), choreography, writing local dialect text to a Finnish song, learn as many as possible of the songs by heart, and keep Rajaton's "Butterfly" for women's' choir at least together, beginning to end.
Both of the main performances went well. Our secret ingredient (looking good doing it) got us over some rough spots, we got a lot of energy to the stage, the comedic parts went perfectly, no one (not even me) messed up the choreography, and even the habitually critical members of the audience said it was quite fine.
For my part(s), my tuned-down acoustic guitar held the tune despite the challenging temperature changes between warm days outside and the chill in old churches. I managed my second highest note (A5) well, but the H5 was a bit sporadic. I improvised.
The "and-a-half" performance we did kind of in our sleep (we lost eight bars in one song so naturally that even our conductor was not sure if something had just happened). This was at a yearly event where about seven or eight of the smaller local choirs used to take part. This year, it was down to four – the rest dissolved, or could not get as much as three songs on stage. And each of the other three present had really good conductors (I'd be happy to work with each of them!) who had done really a lot with their choirs. But there was so much still lacking. Maybe next year.
Role playing
Two weeks later was Whitsunday, which means that Monday is public holiday in Germany. The role playing group needs a long weekend to make it worth the travel, and this time it worked out.
Our MilSF version of "Prof X's school for gifted youngsters"-graduates are now doing their best to get inhabitants of our planet who survived the giant killer robot invasion into the prepared bunker citiy, and distract the giant killer robots from considering that there might be sentient biological life forms hiding somewhere. (Giant killer robots (GKRs) are easily distracted, because their main aim is to kill sentient biological life on sight. Out of sight, out of mind.)
We started getting back into the plot and the world on Friday evening, played Saturday and Sunday, and had brunch on Monday before everyone went on their way.
Another group of stragglers who had managed to hole up in a cave system had managed to contact the bunker city, and we were sent to get them in. It was a pretty routine mission. Except that, while we were finishing up, a large warship fell out of the sky in a very long parable, burning and shedding debris. We recognised it as one of ours that had been stationed out-system before the robots attacked (about seven years ago by now) and had been assumed destroyed in the first attack. It crashed near an uninhabited archipelago, and we were part of the group sent to find it and save what and who we could
Evacuation of the ship succeeded before it glided down an undersea slope to depths that would have crushed it. A shuttle was missing. The commander of the ship was an admiral, which meant that she was within her rights to take over command of our bunker city, and that was the first thing she did -- the second was to stop the search for the shuttle and the other survivors. Which did endear her to us not at all.
Due to some people acting fast and sneaky, we went back to the archipelago in a submarine to "recover the drones". We did so, and –such a coincidence! -- also found the shuttle and the survivors, on some island where an animal smuggling transport had crashed decades earlier, so the whole island was full of non-native animals that had managed to survive.
While getting the people out, we were waylaid by a hunting pack of 6-metre long six-legged weasels. We were kind of sorry to shoot at them, but we had to get out ASAP (because, GKRs) and they were faster than we. Fortunately the weasels were not completely stupid. After more than half of the pack was injured, they retreated. At least they are safe from the GKRs, who have a very clear idea what a biological sentient looks like, and weasels of whatever size do not fit the profile.
Interviewing the survivors did not make the admiral look any nicer, although we have to allow for the Rashomon effect. Two characters in our group act convinced that there is nothing we can do about the situation in any way, because the "other side" is legitimate, if she and her cabal are not already all-seeing and all-knowing, they will be so in a short while, and all our friends and allies will rat us out to her if we put as much as whisker out of place. My character is more on the chaos side of things ("there's always rats in the rafters") and if she had ever believed in "nothing to be done" she'd have died before her sixth birthday.
Let's see what happens.
Comic convention
In even years, from the feast of Corpus Christi (public holiday in Bavaria) to the Sunday after, the city where I live is hosting a non-profit comic convention. Since 2018 I've been going there with flederkatz, who can actually draw. We go to workshops, and when the course instructor asks who is drawing comics or is planning to draw comics, everyone but me raises their hand. Then everyone (it feels like) looks at me, and I say, "I'm writing comics, so it is very useful for me to learn more about drawing, that's why I'm here".
This year, there were no new workshops, and the weather was atrocious. We still found a lot to do. There were "Urban Sketching Crawls" offered, which I judged out of my league, but one of them was for free (paid by the city) and dealt with a dark topic relevant to local history and recent discussion, which I found interesting. It was accompanied not only by a sketching coach, but also by one of the city archivists. (Not going into detail here as I would not know where to begin or to stop.)
We went to several places where traces of history could be seen or imagined. I listened with one ear and battled with architecture and perspective on the sketch pad that flederkatz had lent me. I didn't even start to touch journalistic or documentary drawing or image composition and did not get out my (flederkatz') water paints as I feared I would totally fail at even setting up everything.
I went to a reading by Ralf König with Gywdion, which was relaxing and nostalgic -- the artist, his audience and his characters have aged together and still laugh about people very much like themselves. Ralf König says that he hasn't the foggiest of the current gay scene, could, at his age, not even attempt to join it, and does not want to make it up, so he stays with what he knows. Oh, and he is working on a gay comic version of the "Nibelungenlied", which, he says, needs more love and less war.
Flederkatz and I saw three movies: "Titina", about an Italian airship engineer, and Roald Amundsen's goal to reach the North Pole by airship. I found it uneven, but interesting. Also, as this is (AFAIK) about real historical events, it always felt to me as if doom was hanging over it all, and I had litte patience with the playful scenes. "Lonely castle in the mirror", which seemed to develop a bit slowly until all the pieces came together and fell like dominoes in the last 30 or so minutes. "Mars Express", a French movie, which felt somehow a lot like Blade Runner (not yet sure why. Androids? Evil corporations? Narrative style?), which we liked best of the three.
OK, that's it for now. I'll make another post (probably. maybe.) about the way in which 2024 was a mess (for me, personally).
So, this is me trying. Again.
There was fun stuff, which was a lot of work and planning and preparation and very stressful, especially since I'm running on about 40% of the energy I had 6 years ago. But with reduced work hours it was manageable.
Choir performances
We had two-and-a-half choir performances in early May with the usual amount of additional practise, frantic last-minute practice, working out instrumentation (piano or electric guitar? recorder or violin?), arrangements (solo or tutti? full or reduced soprano ranges?), choreography, writing local dialect text to a Finnish song, learn as many as possible of the songs by heart, and keep Rajaton's "Butterfly" for women's' choir at least together, beginning to end.
Both of the main performances went well. Our secret ingredient (looking good doing it) got us over some rough spots, we got a lot of energy to the stage, the comedic parts went perfectly, no one (not even me) messed up the choreography, and even the habitually critical members of the audience said it was quite fine.
For my part(s), my tuned-down acoustic guitar held the tune despite the challenging temperature changes between warm days outside and the chill in old churches. I managed my second highest note (A5) well, but the H5 was a bit sporadic. I improvised.
The "and-a-half" performance we did kind of in our sleep (we lost eight bars in one song so naturally that even our conductor was not sure if something had just happened). This was at a yearly event where about seven or eight of the smaller local choirs used to take part. This year, it was down to four – the rest dissolved, or could not get as much as three songs on stage. And each of the other three present had really good conductors (I'd be happy to work with each of them!) who had done really a lot with their choirs. But there was so much still lacking. Maybe next year.
Role playing
Two weeks later was Whitsunday, which means that Monday is public holiday in Germany. The role playing group needs a long weekend to make it worth the travel, and this time it worked out.
Our MilSF version of "Prof X's school for gifted youngsters"-graduates are now doing their best to get inhabitants of our planet who survived the giant killer robot invasion into the prepared bunker citiy, and distract the giant killer robots from considering that there might be sentient biological life forms hiding somewhere. (Giant killer robots (GKRs) are easily distracted, because their main aim is to kill sentient biological life on sight. Out of sight, out of mind.)
We started getting back into the plot and the world on Friday evening, played Saturday and Sunday, and had brunch on Monday before everyone went on their way.
Another group of stragglers who had managed to hole up in a cave system had managed to contact the bunker city, and we were sent to get them in. It was a pretty routine mission. Except that, while we were finishing up, a large warship fell out of the sky in a very long parable, burning and shedding debris. We recognised it as one of ours that had been stationed out-system before the robots attacked (about seven years ago by now) and had been assumed destroyed in the first attack. It crashed near an uninhabited archipelago, and we were part of the group sent to find it and save what and who we could
Evacuation of the ship succeeded before it glided down an undersea slope to depths that would have crushed it. A shuttle was missing. The commander of the ship was an admiral, which meant that she was within her rights to take over command of our bunker city, and that was the first thing she did -- the second was to stop the search for the shuttle and the other survivors. Which did endear her to us not at all.
Due to some people acting fast and sneaky, we went back to the archipelago in a submarine to "recover the drones". We did so, and –such a coincidence! -- also found the shuttle and the survivors, on some island where an animal smuggling transport had crashed decades earlier, so the whole island was full of non-native animals that had managed to survive.
While getting the people out, we were waylaid by a hunting pack of 6-metre long six-legged weasels. We were kind of sorry to shoot at them, but we had to get out ASAP (because, GKRs) and they were faster than we. Fortunately the weasels were not completely stupid. After more than half of the pack was injured, they retreated. At least they are safe from the GKRs, who have a very clear idea what a biological sentient looks like, and weasels of whatever size do not fit the profile.
Interviewing the survivors did not make the admiral look any nicer, although we have to allow for the Rashomon effect. Two characters in our group act convinced that there is nothing we can do about the situation in any way, because the "other side" is legitimate, if she and her cabal are not already all-seeing and all-knowing, they will be so in a short while, and all our friends and allies will rat us out to her if we put as much as whisker out of place. My character is more on the chaos side of things ("there's always rats in the rafters") and if she had ever believed in "nothing to be done" she'd have died before her sixth birthday.
Let's see what happens.
Comic convention
In even years, from the feast of Corpus Christi (public holiday in Bavaria) to the Sunday after, the city where I live is hosting a non-profit comic convention. Since 2018 I've been going there with flederkatz, who can actually draw. We go to workshops, and when the course instructor asks who is drawing comics or is planning to draw comics, everyone but me raises their hand. Then everyone (it feels like) looks at me, and I say, "I'm writing comics, so it is very useful for me to learn more about drawing, that's why I'm here".
This year, there were no new workshops, and the weather was atrocious. We still found a lot to do. There were "Urban Sketching Crawls" offered, which I judged out of my league, but one of them was for free (paid by the city) and dealt with a dark topic relevant to local history and recent discussion, which I found interesting. It was accompanied not only by a sketching coach, but also by one of the city archivists. (Not going into detail here as I would not know where to begin or to stop.)
We went to several places where traces of history could be seen or imagined. I listened with one ear and battled with architecture and perspective on the sketch pad that flederkatz had lent me. I didn't even start to touch journalistic or documentary drawing or image composition and did not get out my (flederkatz') water paints as I feared I would totally fail at even setting up everything.
I went to a reading by Ralf König with Gywdion, which was relaxing and nostalgic -- the artist, his audience and his characters have aged together and still laugh about people very much like themselves. Ralf König says that he hasn't the foggiest of the current gay scene, could, at his age, not even attempt to join it, and does not want to make it up, so he stays with what he knows. Oh, and he is working on a gay comic version of the "Nibelungenlied", which, he says, needs more love and less war.
Flederkatz and I saw three movies: "Titina", about an Italian airship engineer, and Roald Amundsen's goal to reach the North Pole by airship. I found it uneven, but interesting. Also, as this is (AFAIK) about real historical events, it always felt to me as if doom was hanging over it all, and I had litte patience with the playful scenes. "Lonely castle in the mirror", which seemed to develop a bit slowly until all the pieces came together and fell like dominoes in the last 30 or so minutes. "Mars Express", a French movie, which felt somehow a lot like Blade Runner (not yet sure why. Androids? Evil corporations? Narrative style?), which we liked best of the three.
OK, that's it for now. I'll make another post (probably. maybe.) about the way in which 2024 was a mess (for me, personally).