Glieuaeiel's DJ

Flute Solo

As a favor, I've asked a teacher to come play a piece of classical music for me. Now, another teacher and I watch as she performs an arrangement of it for solo flute. I had been worried she would refuse, so I'm glad she's doing this. She's quite good. In fact--is she somehow playing two lines of music at once? I listen closely but am unable to decide. Perhaps she's just switching between the two lines of music depending on which one has the moving notes. She reaches a climax in the music with lots of fast, leaping intervals. During the slower section after that, she interrupts the music to say to me, "Have fun practicing that." (An ensemble in which I play will be learning the same piece, soon.) A phrase later, she stops playing again to say something else, and eventually she stops playing the piece altogether, once it's clear that there are just a few slow chords remaining. The other teacher, who has been holding up a triangle in preparation to play it with the last chord, mimes teetering on the brink of playing then falling over from the waist. She's obviously saying she's disappointed that the flautist didn't properly finish the piece. After this, I think there's one more piece for us to go over.

Standing Room Only

People standing in the back are having a hard time seeing the presenter, so they keep shifting around in a counter-clockwise direction. Even though I'm back there with them, I think the constant shifting is more annoying than not being able to see. Cynthia, standing next to me, agrees. (Cynthia's a college housemate of mine, a year older than me.) Suddenly, the whole audience starts moving. Apparently the presenter noticed all the milling around in the back and decided to try to fix things himself. So now those people have made him interrupt his presentation. I hope they're happy.

As we're moving around, I stretch my arms over my head. Realizing that my left arm is behind Cynthia's head, I decide I might as well put my arm around her shoulders. It's a bit of a cliche, but I need all the help I can get. At first, Cynthia doesn't react. Then she moves my hand from above her shoulder to under her armpit, and says, in a surprised voice, "Glieuaeiel, you've put your arm around me." Like she's known all along that we're interested in each other, and the only slight surprise is that I would choose now to make a move. Then she calls me a first-year, which is an unfair dig at the fact that I'm younger than her (since in fact I'm a third-year). She's always been one to worry about not acting her age, though, so maybe it really does bother her. Anyway, it's actually a bit uncomfortable walking around in this position. [I guess the arm-around-the-shoulder thing is best used when nobody's moving.]

The presenter is saying something about wizards and what effect the concept of wizards had on our childhoods. Shortly, everyone starts moving around again, and I get separated from Cynthia. I wonder if I should try to find her again, but I decide she'll be fine on her own. I try to help out by moving some music stands, but then I realize that I'm not sure where they should go. Still holding the stands, I find a seat near the front of house left, then set the stands in front of me. Someone reaches past me to grab one of them, and I realize that the stands were supposed to be distributed so that everybody gets one. I keep one stand for myself and hand the last one to another person sitting near me.

Frags:

• A survey about preferences in fiction genres uses the word "tranny" to mean "the protagonist of a science fiction novel." It must have been written by someone old, who didn't realize that nowadays the word is an offensive term for something entirely different.