disk error: memory full

More batucada last night. This time I brought ear plugs, but still went home again with a pounding headache. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that my brain is full and I'm trying to cram more info and beats in there than there's actually room for. I guess I'll have to forget some things like the word for that thing that hangs in the back of your throat and the whatchamacallit thing that does the thing. Hopefully I won't forget that street sweeping is every 3rd Tuesday and when rent is due. Anyhow played the tamborim again last night. I actually bought a repinique for the class, but the assistant teacher was saying that the repinique is the lead instrument, and it's fine to learn it, but the master teacher will give you a hard time if you decide to play it. I'm gonna leave it at home for now. I actually didn't just get it for this class only. I was inspired by On Ensemble (who came up here to give a show a few weeks ago) and they said they liked to try to learn new instruments and incorporate them into their sets and to just try playing them because what the heck--kumi daiko is constanly evolving and changing and growing and there is always room for experimentation. Plus I just wanted a drum to pound on and maybe for parades or whatnot. Maybe I should get a tamborim.

So last week we got to learn from the master teacher, but last night he was out of town so an advanced student was teaching. It was nice because he broke down some of the patterns and explained things like where the 1 is in a certain rhythm (and now I know what he was talking about! And also why knowing where the 1 is is so important!). It's also nice to learn from advanced students because they'll often have a little more sympathy for you and where you're at in the learning process because maybe they're still struggling at the things that a master teacher would think is so easy. I still think of myself of an intermediate student but sometimes Janet will be talking about her new space and how she's going to have taiko classes and says that I'm going to be one of the teachers and that just seems so weird to me. Guess I better get used to it because I hope to be standing in front of a bunch of cheerful, eager students--someday.

And taiko yesterday too. We reworked a song. I don't mind changing things. That was one of the things that used to annoy me--people would get really upset if anything changed, so I think we missed a lot of opportunities to improve things in favor of getting one thing down, right, forever. But anyhow, yesterday we took a song that I had beautiful notes for, and we reworked and did and redid and undid parts and cut them into pieces and sewed them back together new and improved, and shall I say, more interesting. And just cause I like to look at pictures, here's a pic of my beautiful notes post-rework mangling:

My mom used to get so frustrated with me because I had bad handwriting. She had handwriting like a school teacher, and my dad used to teach drafting so he has the neat handwriting of an architect. My elementary school teacher said that I tried to write too fast and that if I slowed down my cursive would be better. I say speed-writing skills are way more practical and applicable and anyhow, don't we like things fast?

Post Script

Isn't it funny how life can sometimes throw things at you like a bad joke? So I posted this entry, went to my weekly meeting, and came back to my desk only to find an email from our database guys saying that due to a "catastrophic hardware failure," all the work I did on Friday has just vanished. Poof! Like it never happened, like it doesn't exist. I'm gonna have to do it all over again! And what's worse, I have to figure out what it was that I actually did! I just hope that after a batucuda class my head doesn't explode and I wake up not knowing how to play a tsu-ku or what bachi are.