In a Manner of Speaking

Much of the difference between the British accent and the American accent (generically speaking in both cases) seems to be inflection and word choice. While there are some different pronunciations, I’m coming to learn that a lot of what Americans hear as an English accent is really much more to do with other factors from pronunciation.

This was highlighted to me on a recent trip on the Eurostar train from London to Paris. Jenna and I were sitting in a carriage that served breakfast. There was a family of four across the aisle from us. The Husband and Wife had two small children a boy, who didn’t say much, and a girl who did. I’m terrible at guessing childrens ages, but I think the little girl was around 6.

The train staff served breakfast (Full English) and we all dug in. A few moments later we hear the little girl say, “Mummy, this breakfast is really quite good, isn’t it?” Now it’s hard to “hear” in type, but this was such a quintessentially British thing to say that Jenna and I had a very hard time controlling our laughter. It wasn’t funny except that it was such a great illustration of how we learn culture at a young age.

That memory has stuck with us since the trip, and now whenever we have breakfast together, one of us ends up quoting the little girl on the train.

Wicked

Last night we went to see Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London. The show was excellent and Idina Menzel’s performance of Elphaba was really spectacular. The other actors were very good, the stage was fantastical, and the lighting was very effective and imaginative. We found the amplification on the actors and the pit orchestra to be a little too loud, but that was a minor complaint in what was a very enjoyable evening.

The musical is about Elphaba, the green girl who becomes the wicked witch of the west in The Wizard of Oz. It is based on the book with the same name by Gregory Maguire. I thought the story, while written in the early 1990’s was particularly germane to the times today. It effectively shows that there are often many sides to the same story. In The Wizard of Oz the witch is demonized. We just think that she is evil, but in this story we realize that she is really trying to do the right thing in most cases, but that her actions don’t always have the outcomes she would like. I think there is a powerful lesson to be learned there in our current political climate.

They Say Music is a Universal Language

In efforts to continue my flute playing, which I’ve done for the last 15 or so years, one of the first things I set out to do when we moved was find a local concert band to play with. I first found the nice folks at Southwark Concert Band who came equipped with their very own conductor from San Francisco. During the first rehearsal I attended, I was listening to the conductor talk about needing to play the crochets shorter. I had no idea what a crochet was. During the nightly tea break, I asked one of the other flute players what a crochet was. He pointed at a quarter note. I then pointed at an eighth note and asked what it was called. He replied it was a quaver. I was faced with having to learn a whole new vocabulary to describe note names. I came up with this cheat sheet I found on the web.:

• Semi-breve
• Whole note
• Minim
• Half note
• Crotchet
• Quarter note
• Quaver
• Eighth note
• Semiquaver
• Sixteenth note
• Demisemiquaver
• Thirty-second note
• Hemidemisemiquaver
• Sixty-fourth note
• Quasihemidemisemiquaver
• Hundred twenty-eighth note
• Semihemidemisemiquaver
• Hundred twenty-eighth note
• Rests - Where, for example, British say crotchet rest, Americans say quarter rest (not quarter-note rest)
• Dots - Dots are dots: a dotted minim, for example, is a dotted half note

I found myself having to say goodbye to these nice people, because, when rehearsals take at least 55 minutes each way to get to (and that’s only if the planets governing public transport are perfectly aligned, otherwise its more like 90 minutes each way), it is hard to stay motivated to go to rehearsals every week. Allen found a band that plays out of Paddington Station every Friday, which I now play in. It’s quite different. There are no rehearsals. Whoever that can, sightreads through new music every Friday. My sightreading is improving, and I’m now having to learn how to transpose (here you don’t raise things up a half-step, but rather a semi-tone). Transposing makes my head hurt. It is giving me the opportunity to continue playing when I can, and I enjoy that very much. The audience (transient though it is) is always appreciative as well.