in which i am the most absurd of all humans
I've practised a lot of songs over the last five years or so since I started learning guitar. My guitar teacher gave me things that took months to learn (I never did master that Emiliana Torrini song), and even now I'm trying to get the rhythm right for Mumford & Sons' "Roll Away Your Stone".
Never, however, have I had to practise playing a song so's I can get through it without fangirling emotionally everywhere.
charismitaine bullied me into learning "I See the Light", and I am a ridiculous person.
You know who all of the other regulars at open mic night are? Cool Guitar Guys. The ones who play guitar all the time, in the backs of rooms, with their nice (torn and battered) jeans and their skater sneakers, the ones who somehow inevitably all love the White Stripes and know what all the fancy guitar words mean. And they have somehow miraculously not laughed at me yet despite me singing songs twice as old as anybody who's ever been in the coffeeshop and half of those with vampires sneaked in somewhere but if I fall bonelessly out of my chair1 and drop my guitar in the middle of the second verse they are going to. (I don't especially care what they think, and even more bizarrely they generally seem to find me nifty or something, thought we mostly dance awkwardly around each other because our worlds are so different that we don't really communicate that easily, but... man, I wish we had more girls. I thought girls with guitars were a thing!)
What hath Charis wrought, dear readers?
Anyway, Friday night is testing ground. If I don't catch the eye of my own reflection (and go on a fifteen-minute mental tangent about my selves in the alternate universes and how similar or different we may be and if I somehow miraculously have an altself who is cool, collected, and mature, and if she ever gets me in her mirror rolling around on the bed like a cat because somebody decided musical saw would be a good addition to a song and is horrified), or look at anybody at all, or think too hard about what I am singing or don't wish really really hard that I had a oboe (when do I not wish for an oboe, really? --or a musical saw, or an organ, or a blessed cello) -- anyway, if I'm really careful I should be fine? But ohhh, I had a dreadful near-miss trying to play "Your Song", and oh looooorrrrd could I ever even play "Full of Grace" or would I just start waaaailing in the middle and thinking about the time Alessandra and I watched "Becoming" for the first time and walked downstairs devastated to send me home and we didn't know what to tell Mrs H when she saw our faces and asked what was wrong?
why am I typing
why am I allowed to type anything at all
oh heavens I am just going to go pound away on this Mumford & Sons song until I have my ~dignity~ back.
(Not that Mumford & Sons is entirely conducive to my personal dignity, as basically every song on Sigh No More stabs straight through my soul, and I always beam foolishly when I sing the line "it seems that all our bridges have been burned / but you say that's exactly how this grace thing works", but, you know.
It's an improvement on how inappropriately gleeful I get near the end of "Henry Lee", anyway. LIE THERE LIE THERE LITTLE HENRY LEE TILL THE FLESH DROPS FROM YOUR BOOOOOONES~)
1 You want to know what I did in the cinema when Zachary Levi started singing? Um. Yeah. It was that. Look, there were like five people in the room. I was all alone in my row. I am a very physically emotional person! So, okay! I slid down in my chair and simpered and scattered candy wrappers everywhere! (The last bit was not on purpose.) It is what I do, okay. Tell me you have never done the same. Ever.
Also I am not sure if I ought to be troubled that my reactions to People I Fancy Really Rather A Lot and Books Which Are Really Really Pretty and Delectable Words are basically the same. Uhhhh. Combinations thereof can be disastrous. (Remember that time Damon Salvatore said asterisk? Because I do.)
Never, however, have I had to practise playing a song so's I can get through it without fangirling emotionally everywhere.
charismitaine bullied me into learning "I See the Light", and I am a ridiculous person.
You know who all of the other regulars at open mic night are? Cool Guitar Guys. The ones who play guitar all the time, in the backs of rooms, with their nice (torn and battered) jeans and their skater sneakers, the ones who somehow inevitably all love the White Stripes and know what all the fancy guitar words mean. And they have somehow miraculously not laughed at me yet despite me singing songs twice as old as anybody who's ever been in the coffeeshop and half of those with vampires sneaked in somewhere but if I fall bonelessly out of my chair1 and drop my guitar in the middle of the second verse they are going to. (I don't especially care what they think, and even more bizarrely they generally seem to find me nifty or something, thought we mostly dance awkwardly around each other because our worlds are so different that we don't really communicate that easily, but... man, I wish we had more girls. I thought girls with guitars were a thing!)
What hath Charis wrought, dear readers?
Anyway, Friday night is testing ground. If I don't catch the eye of my own reflection (and go on a fifteen-minute mental tangent about my selves in the alternate universes and how similar or different we may be and if I somehow miraculously have an altself who is cool, collected, and mature, and if she ever gets me in her mirror rolling around on the bed like a cat because somebody decided musical saw would be a good addition to a song and is horrified), or look at anybody at all, or think too hard about what I am singing or don't wish really really hard that I had a oboe (when do I not wish for an oboe, really? --or a musical saw, or an organ, or a blessed cello) -- anyway, if I'm really careful I should be fine? But ohhh, I had a dreadful near-miss trying to play "Your Song", and oh looooorrrrd could I ever even play "Full of Grace" or would I just start waaaailing in the middle and thinking about the time Alessandra and I watched "Becoming" for the first time and walked downstairs devastated to send me home and we didn't know what to tell Mrs H when she saw our faces and asked what was wrong?
why am I typing
why am I allowed to type anything at all
oh heavens I am just going to go pound away on this Mumford & Sons song until I have my ~dignity~ back.
(Not that Mumford & Sons is entirely conducive to my personal dignity, as basically every song on Sigh No More stabs straight through my soul, and I always beam foolishly when I sing the line "it seems that all our bridges have been burned / but you say that's exactly how this grace thing works", but, you know.
It's an improvement on how inappropriately gleeful I get near the end of "Henry Lee", anyway. LIE THERE LIE THERE LITTLE HENRY LEE TILL THE FLESH DROPS FROM YOUR BOOOOOONES~)
1 You want to know what I did in the cinema when Zachary Levi started singing? Um. Yeah. It was that. Look, there were like five people in the room. I was all alone in my row. I am a very physically emotional person! So, okay! I slid down in my chair and simpered and scattered candy wrappers everywhere! (The last bit was not on purpose.) It is what I do, okay. Tell me you have never done the same. Ever.
Also I am not sure if I ought to be troubled that my reactions to People I Fancy Really Rather A Lot and Books Which Are Really Really Pretty and Delectable Words are basically the same. Uhhhh. Combinations thereof can be disastrous. (Remember that time Damon Salvatore said asterisk? Because I do.)