LXIV Things about me (and counting)

1. I’m mainly a singer these days, but sometimes people still pay me to play the flute
2. I’m pretty good at flute because I practised a lot as a teenager
3. Except for really hard music, but mostly I get to choose what I play
4. When I was eighteen I decided to take up french horn
5. This was a lot easier for me than for most people because I have absolute pitch (or perfect pitch)
6. ‘Perfect’ pitch is a bad description, as it’s far from perfect. This is because I have spent many years singing in choirs, where the pitch rises and falls all the time, and you have to go with the flow
7. I have sung with the same church choir for sixteen years
8. Even I think that’s a stupidly long time
9. But it’s never become not fun, and now I get paid nicely for it. There are also a great bunch of people that I see every Sunday, and often more
10. If you’re a guy, choirs are a great place to meet women or men. There are lots of straight girls and gay fellas
11. Choirs (even church choirs) are great at drinking and partying. The Rev. Thomas Brantley Winstead (1875-1956) said “If the Devil can get into the church, nine times out of ten he'll come in through the choir”
12. Theatre people are also great at partying (as Kim would attest). Some of the biggest parties I’ve been to have been cast parties at the end of a show
13. For example, I had four chances to lose my virginity at cast parties, had I wished to (and had the nerve)
14. (Indulge me for one more of these) I fondly remember dirty-dancing with two hot girls at once. Mmmmm...
15. I haven’t had time for any theatre since November 2000
16. This is a disgrace, and will be summarily fixed next year
17. As far as theatre goes, I’m great at singing, good at acting and a choreographer’s nightmare. I work very hard at acting for very good results, and work very hard at dancing for very so-so results
18. I can’t do theatre this year because the choir I’m in is going to Europe (Germany, Austria, Copenhagen and Amsterdam)
19. Then I’m going to send myself absolutely beyond broke with a week in Ireland
20. Every time I’ve been to Europe I’ve meant to see Ireland. This time it’s happening
21. I’ve been to Europe three times with another choir and once with my band. The culture there is such that you can organise a concert and everyone will come, and then donate lots of money at the end
22. This doesn’t happen in Australia or England
23. I’ve never been to either America, but when I do I want to see San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago and all of Canada
24. South America has never interested me for some reason, but I thought the same about Japan and Germany and had an amazing time in both places
25. I get on especially well with Germans, for some reason, both in Germany and Australia
26. I have a an ambition to travel by train through Scandanavia, and have been fascinated by far northern places- Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Scandanavia and Siberia
27. I have ummmm... conversational French and German, German from school and French from university
28. I did a music degree in composition and tried to do a masters in musicology, but hated looking for references and knew I would miss a lot of them. The best part of the masters degree attempt was meeting the other postgrads in my supervisor’s room and talking about anything and everything. Because my supervisor knew everything
29. I went to almost all my classes at university, even aural training, which I manifestly didn’t need to go to
30. The university music school was at the same tram stop as my high school, so it wasn’t a great disruption, but only because I had been travelling an hour to get to school for four years
31. Oh yes, I was a ‘gifted child’ at school
32. This meant I went through school in four years
33. When I got to university, no one suspected I was sixteen, they just thought I was a remarkably dorky eighteen-year-old
34. I wrote a concerto and a big orchestral overture during my last year at high school (definitely in the juvenilia section of my œuvre), which was a good indication of what marks one needed to get into music at the time
35. My parents brought a tape recorder to the performance of the concerto, so I was treated to hearing the quite flawed performance whenever anyone came over
36. I was in a bush band (folk band) for ten years
37. I became very good at tin whistle, and still am. That has the girls queueing up ☺
38. Even more impressive is the ability to whistle two notes at once, or to sing and whistle two completely independent lines. According to the the Bible of Instrumentation (by Wheeler I think), that’s impossible
39. I lost my driver’s licence eighteen months ago
40. Lost in the sense of misplaced, that is
41. Since then I’ve driven three or four times (at the risk of being unable to produce a licence). I use my passport for identification these days
42. I don’t drive partly because it’s bad for the environment and partly because it saves me money
43. I like reading, relaxing and not driving on public transport
44. I have mild cystic fibrosis
45. Yes, it can be mild, depending on the two mutations of the CF gene
46. In my case, my lungs have goo in them, but not suffocating amounts.
47. My pancreas seems to be working fine, so when I see the dietitian, we discuss how well I am losing weight (normally CF patients don’t have enough digestive enzymes and are trying to gain weight)
48. Most men with CF (including me) are infertile. It’s a bit like a congenital vasectomy
49. Don’t worry, everything’s fully operational otherwise
50. I’m not too attached to the idea of passing on my genes (they’re faulty anyway), but if my partner really wants kids there are a few options
51. Every three months I go to the clinic where they have the doctor, a physiotherapist, a nutritionist, someone to test my lung function. There’s also a social worker and a psychologist but I don’t see them
52. Melanie and Lisa work at the hospital, so I often have lunch with one of them after clinic
53. I find the best way to fight infection (I suspect by giving my immune system time to do its job) is by getting enough sleep
54. I’ll be in a bad way after an honest week’s work of 40 hours, so I work part-time
55. This lets me write music and sing, so it all works out well
56. Really well, as work is considerably less interesting than singing, a nd much less interesting than composing. More remunerative though, alas
57. I usually swim three times a week, or more if I’m good
58. It’s great for my fitness and my lungs
59. I like to ‘warm up’ in the sauna. Once I’ve been there for 10-15 minutes my heart is going and the pool isn’t cold
60. Personality-wise, the Briggs-Meyer test calls me an INFP. This stands for Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving, but (as I’ve just found out) is way more complicated than it looks... a bit like TCP/IP
61. My mind is often two or three points of connection beyond the actual conversation, which leads me to blurt out very impressive non-sequiturs
62. For example, I cleaned my kitchen for the first time in a respectable period of time for a bachelor pad (ie. ages). I went to the café and instead of saying “I cleaned my kitchen today. I bet you clean yours more often...” I came out with “How often do you clean your kitchen?”, which left the poor café owner a little nonplussed
63. I quite like being introverted. Like one site said, I can be extraverted (such as when I’m acting) but it uses up a lot of energy
64. I’m never going to finish this, so I’ll post it now

Here’s an interesting entry I’ve been reading by .

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