Atunement - candid

A mechanical metronome has appeared on the piano, a present for my 57^th birthday. I didn’t want an electronic one. I couldn’t bear the idea of having the beat dictated by a device requiring throw-away batteries.

This reminds me of an episode in my life when I was living in Paris and refused to use an electronic guitar tuner. “If I can’t tune my guitar naturally using my own ear then I won’t play” I declared. All I needed to tune the guitar was to be able to fully relax but the pace of life in Paris is stressful, there never seemed to be any time to fully relax, and substances that take the edge off stress don’t exactly improve imperfect pitch. Eventually my desire to play the guitar proved stronger than my dislike of being aided by electronic devices and I bought an electronic tuner.

Pleased with my fully mechanical metronome, I wind it up. And I set it to play. It is exhilarating playing along with it, as long as I’m on the beat. When our beats start to diverge I get annoyed at it for having slowed down or speeded up. I become convinced that it is taking longer to swing to the left than to swing to the right so I turn it round to see if I have the same impression when it’s facing the other way…

cooking term.

French     English

verjus       verjuice

the ver means green and sour and not worm.

Instead of “signing” I typed “singing” and realised how close they are. Tracing, engraving. Later I try to type signed and it comes out as synged.

Lise is practicing Bach’s cantata “Sheep may safely graze”. Graze, gaze, phase, maze, peso.

segueing. to segue. I feel this word has sneaked into the English language behind my back. I know roughly what it means but must look it up and find out where it came from.

for quel que soit I usually prefer irrespective to regardless.

ruthless cunning has a certain ring to it.

Monadhliath mountains – how come I had never heard of these before? Did they just spring up suddenly when I wasn’t looking, or somehow segue into the landscape?

dutes for duties

Heinz Wismann has published a book called entre les langues – between the tongues. He reminds us that it’s the space between language and reality that allows meaning to sneak into discourse, and evokes the idea of us creating our own native language – which is how I prefer to translate langue maternelle rather than mother tongue.

Reading in World Wide Words about “the Dutch angle in film” being German, another mistaken use of Deutsch, which is also known as “canted camera”.

Members of death metal band Abortus Dei working on lyrics about a prisoner in his cell writing in his own blood.