Saturday 2nd of August, 2003
I have unruly shoulders.
I like
I like camomile tea
but not as much as I like peppermint tea.
The pattern continues
with breakages and clumsiness. I keep bashing the guitar. A smashed glass while setting up for lunch.
7:00 am Rise
7:30 am Sitting
8:15 am Breakfast
9:40 am Meet in Green Room
10:00 am Mass
The priest is a bit of a star, working the room like a pro. He has an assistant each side, exaggeratedly responding to what he says (and carefully laughing at all his jokes). I'm reminded of Larry Sanders and Hank. I haven't seen a Catholic mass before, so it's very interesting, and curious because it has more in common with the Shinay meditations that I go to at the Samye Dzong than I would have thought.
The priest makes a lot of our presence, of our geographical diversity and gets us to introduce ourselves by country. I'm surprised by how long it takes to, as it were, cut to the chase. Not impatient, just surprised. We play while the host is being prepared and then while it's distributed and then at the end, we play Asturias. The fairy fingers section in particular is stunning, at least to me.
Afterwards the Nuns have prepared a feast for us in the area outside their front door (which is in one of "our" corridors, so a shared area), with Coke and Fanta and a number of snacks, many of which are non-vegetarian but never mind. I take pictures.
The tiny nun (it appears that she's only allowed to speak on special occasions like today, and she's certainly making up for lost time) says that the records of the convent (on other sites before this) go back to the fifteenth century and that she was going to put us in today's entry, which certainly gives one pause for thought.
12:30 pm Set-up
Astonishing confusion - no one seems to know how many people there are eating here today, so I end up setting places claustrophobically close together.
1:00 pm Lunch
4:00 pm Tea
5:20 pm Meet for AT
I meet with Martín, Horacio, to go to a group meeting with Maude. We settle on Eye of the Needle and I end up playing high lead.
5:30 pm AT w. Maude, balcony
Maude's getting good at this, although she finds it difficult to talk over EotN so we circulate instead. These Argentinians circulate to win, I have to say. Maude identifies something important with the shoulders. It's always the shoulders. I have unruly shoulders. It is decided to play EotN at dinner.
6:30 pm Set-up
7:00 pm Dinner
We play the piece. Not the worst performance I've heard of the High Lead, but close. I'm very glad Robert didn't hear it, that's for sure. Hernán asks what we would like to do tonight. Victoria says that she would like to learn Askesis. I second that (it sounds like fun). Martín, Horacio and Christian are given the task of trying to teach us. There is undisguised hilarity among the old hands - apparantly when it was originally written and presented it took them four months to learn. They manage to cover the beginning and end of both parts, though, saving the middle bits (known as the Hard Part and the Tricky Part) for another day.
I think it will take me more than four months to learn this.
