Found Objects

This is part 2 of the Hans Brinker review, with the names deconstruction.

If you’re actually using this page as a resource —I decided to split the blog post in two when I suddenly realised that some people might want to do that— please comment or mail to tell me if you’d prefer the names to be ordered thematically or alphabetically instead.

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I don’t know what prompted it [ETA: a daughter trying to keep a beer bottle from squirting by plugging it with her finger], but I read Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates. And couldn’t stop reading it once I was underway, though it’s very dated (that figures; it was published in 1865) and it kept me wishing I had a time machine so I could go and be Mary Mapes Dodge’s copy editor, because she badly needed one. It’s surprisingly gripping.

Note that Hans Brinker is not the name of the boy with his finger in the dike. It’s a story-in-the-story in this book. That story is not, and never has been, something that every Dutch child knows; it’s only known in the Netherlands from translations and retellings of Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates. I shudder to think that whole generations of children in the United States had most of their knowledge of the Netherlands from this book alone. No wonder so many tourists arrive with serious misconceptions.

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A while ago some people on the rec.arts.sf.composition newsgroup tossed the idea around to have a dedicated IRC channel where people could drop in and out to talk about writing (and, as writers do, about cats, chocolate, and just about anything else), to shout out wordcounts without littering the newsgroup, and to ask “what’s that word again?” in someone’s general direction and get an answer immediately so it doesn’t stop the flow.

This disappeared into the general Usenet nowhere for a while, until it came up again just when I happened to have time, so I went and set it up. It’s been up for two weeks now and it’s started working as intended. People drop in and out and talk about anything that happens to be relevant or interesting (though, at the moment, very much about bread-baking; the other hardcore baker and I have already got two other people to take it up), shout out wordcounts, ask for words and toss around plot ideas.

Some people feared that the IRC channel would take the interesting discussion out of the newsgroup, but that seems not to be happening: the chat is mostly social and practical, immediate, whereas the more thoughtful discussion is still in the newsgroup, and even comes back to the newsgroup from the channel (“that’s a good idea, shall I post it or do you want to?”)

It’s not exclusive, though it’s ex-directory: if you don’t do Usenet, but read this and think you’ll fit in with a loose group of …er… idiosyncratic writers, don’t hesitate to drop in. It’s #rasfc on irc.freenode.net, and if you mention my name (I’m irina_r there) someone will know where you’re coming from.

Because there was no handy bus to where I wanted to go. Also, it was splendid weather for a bike ride, sunny and crisp but not too cold.

Or, alternatively, I decided on the bike because that’s where I happened to be when I made the decision to write what I’m writing now, rather than in a seat near the front of the No. 5 bus to Colmschate.

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Tenor: Up?
Me: I’m already up.
Tenor: I’ll sing alto.
Choirmistress: <nods>

Even some people in the choir looked boggled. But it was perfectly clear: this was at the end of Matins when the pitch is usually very low, and people are more comfortable if they take the next part up. Altos (there was only the one of me) sing the melody which sopranos usually have, sopranos the third above that tenors usually have, and tenors (there was only the one of him) take the alto part. Poor basses, who can’t go up, but they can sing the lowest notes an octave higher.

This usually goes seamlessly, but we had a large sprawling choir with some people who don’t come to evening services often so it had to be confirmed.

That I was “already up” was because at that point I tend to be so tired that I don’t get the alto part right: it’s got lots of fourth-up jumps, like the beginning of “Away in a Manger”, and I overshoot that by a quarter-tone at least and raise the whole choir because, confound it, people are used to me being in tune and follow me. So I play it safe and sing the easier melody, which has the added benefit of being so high that I don’t have much room to be sharp.

There are eleven people in our house at the moment, speaking three different native languages (Dutch, Swedish and German) and using English as common language (well, the adults, the teenaged girls and to some extent the ten-year-old Swedish boy). It makes for interesting confusion: starting a sentence in German and finishing it in English, strange errors like “inheritage”, or “copy cuffs” for “coffee cups”. I find myself speaking German to my daughters without noticing, or English to my other half but he usually doesn’t notice either.

The four-year-old German boy is completely unperturbed by all of this. He corrects our errors (“der Schwanz!”) or puts his head to one side like a bird when he can’t understand something because we use the wrong vowels. It’s extremely good for my German, because I have to speak carefully and correctly. I’ll miss him when he’s gone home (in a few hours now), though I’m glad I don’t have a four-year-old of my own any more, because they’re exhausting even if they’re that cute.

Some decades ago I had a boyfriend who had a sign on his door:

We speak German
On parle anglais
Wir sprechen französisch

which is exactly how I feel now, except that any French I speak is accidental. (He also had a sign “BELLEN SIE BITTE” and when I came to his house for the first time I made his day by doing what it said, rather than what it seemed to say. But he was an inveterate atheist and I jilted him because of that.)

Well, I hope. It’s too little to deconstruct, being only Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe from, I think, Mozart’s Krönungsmesse. Either the alto part or the first part that starts the fugue-like object (or perhaps they’re the same; I haven’t sung it for, count on fingers, about thirty years). I don’t know how it goes on. Well, obviously I do know the words, it’s the Gloria, but the tune escapes me.

I earwormed myself with it when the thirteen-year-old was doing vocatives in Latin. I wrote “Dominus Filius unigenitus Jesus Christus” on a piece of paper, with the vocatives under it: it’s got two different forms for the second declension (Domine/unigenite/Christe versus Fili) and also Jesu, which I thought was fourth declension but seems to be a straightforward borrowing from Greek.

I realise now that “Deus” doesn’t seem to have a separate vocative, but uses the nominative instead like other declensions.

And, apropos of the classics, I can’t help liking the vocative of “Master” in Greek: despota.

One of the most effective ways to get rid of an earworm is to analyse it to death. Here goes.

I’ve known this song for ages, from an obscure folk record, and I like to sing it because it does interesting things with tune and rhythm; I’ve always been slightly uneasy about the lyrics, especially the last verse.

First, I looked up the lyrics on the web to see if anybody else had already done it and found to my astonishment that it’s in (or perhaps from) Wim Sonneveld’s repertoire. Wim Sonneveld is, or rather was as he died in 1974, a famous Dutch entertainer, cabaret artist, singer, songwriter; not someone I’d associate with a song that sounds so much like a traditional folk song. But I read somewhere that it was first attested in 1730, so perhaps he didn’t write it but only sang it (in 1968).

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I know someone who, like us, doesn’t have TV, but unlike us she doesn’t read newspapers either. She says it’s a very restful existence. She may be right, but I couldn’t do that: when I go without news for a few weeks, for instance on holiday, I do crave a paper. I often buy a foreign paper when I’m abroad, both to read the local language and see what people in that country find interesting and important.

There seems to be more and more silliness in the papers, though. And on online news sites too. Perhaps it’s only because I’ve been reading more critically lately.

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The kids are away at camp, the house is full of hackers hacking away (Boudewijn is hosting the Krita Hackathon) so it ought to be easy to make some writing progress.

Erm, no. It flows like treacle; very sticky.

Probably because this is one of those awkward scenes that don’t write themselves and can’t be glossed over to fix in the second draft. It’s a court case, and I simply don’t know enough to let that write itself, I have to pay attention to every detail. I’m tempted, and about to give in to the temptation, to have the accused (the about-to-be king and his consort) simply split and leave everything dangling. They’re that kind of people.

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Finally done a real round of marketing-type stuff. It doesn’t make me not want to be a writer —any job has its no-fun parts— but it’s the least fun part of the job, until now.

Three serious email queries, one of which got rejected in 20 hours (!): probably boilerplate, but friendly and encouraging boilerplate along the lines of “this is not the kind of thing I’m handling right now, it’s no reflection on the quality of your work, you should definitely seek other representation”. Pity, because this was the agent I liked best from his web site; when I have something else that’s finished enough, I’ll see if it’s the kind of thing he’s handling then.

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Foundations for Christian Education by John L. Boojamra. A friendly priest gave it to me years ago, I dimly remember skimming it at the time, I’m now reading it for Lent.

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If —I’ll be optimistic: when— an editor buys my book and gives me an advance, I’m going to buy a new bicycle. A new new bicycle, not just another second-hand rattletrap only slightly newer than my current rattletrap. This one. Or this one. Unfortunately they don’t have them in green. But I’ll settle for red or purple or grey as long as it’s the right shape for my proportions and the lights work when I want them to work. Well, I did get the light of the old grey mare bike fixed, and the chain oiled and tightened, but it’s still a rattletrap.

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I felt that I ought to read more Real Literature, but I balk at Dostojevskij, so I went in search of Jane Austen (who seems to be the author whose fiction I am). That’s on the English Literature shelf, and what I found there instead was The Prisoner of Zenda. I faintly remembered reading that years and years ago, or at least starting to read it or wanting to read it, so I took it out (most of the Eng.Lit. is over the living-room door) and couldn’t put it back until I’d finished it.

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That must be ‘stimulate’. I don’t know what makes it ugly (‘ugly’ itself is a good candidate too, falling short by a hair’s breadth because it’s kind of cute in a frog-shaped way) but I’ve never liked it. I don’t like it in Dutch either, ‘stimuleren’. In the erotic sense it sounds downright filthy to me in both languages.

It can’t be the meaning: I like ‘parsimony’ much better than ‘peace’, and ‘love’ and ‘motherhood’ almost make it to the ugly-words list.

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