230th day sober. Last night the headache started coming on again but I practiced all the same, and it went OK. I finally went to bed after reading the first few chapters in the George Orwell book. I slept in until 4, and still had the headache.
If I practice it enough, there's no reason the 2nd octave of C in the staff to high C should not be as easy as the first one.
If I had to point to a single problem right now, though, it's that not having learned "wedge breathing" right from the beginning, I keep forgetting to use it. I've been able to get by OK enough using "high" breathing, up in the chest, that it's too easy to fall back into that practice while thinking too much about my embouchure.
Although it did not actually get down to 30 last night, only down to 34, this cold weather is not conducive to my feeling like going out busking. Whole Foods has cleared out the Christmas trees so my "venue" is wide open again, and last night when I was there, there wasn't even a bum begging there. I just feel too "blah" to get out and do it. Maybe it's just a warm-weather thing.
There are a lot of zombie movies out these days and of course I call the scumsuckers staggering around on the streets of this town zombies. So I've had plenty of occasion to think about the undead things. The thing with movie zombies is, they want to bite you which is understandable, being zombies after all, and somehow even though they can barely think they can unerringly tell if you're not zombified yet and will leave fellow zombies alone while going after you.
The first wanting to bite part, is in keeping with the fear of rabies which is probably instinctual. But the second is a bit puzzling as in real life examples of zombies such as the rabid, drug-addicted, homeless, mentally ill, there's no distinction made between fellow sufferers and "normies". They'll attack whoever is closest. In real life those most often attacked by street zombies are other street zombies. Anyone who's lived near a homeless encampment knows those are constant hotbeds of stabbings, beatings, murders, tent burnings, and so on.
So why do movie zombies so scrupulously avoid harming other zombies in the least while attacking normal people so enthusiastically? Keep in mind the creepier the movie the more tickets sell so the movie-makers have a real interest in making their fictional zombies as scary as possible. There's a lot of science that goes into this.
I think this second feature plays on another instinctual fear, the fear of "the other". The Other might be another tribe, another religion, another political affiliation, etc. It probably goes back to factions in camps of 50-150 proto-humans, when resources were short. "The law of the sea" (cannibalism) was probably also the law of the veldt when things got really tough, and the scariest thing in the world would be some faction that gets together and decides to make prey of you and yours. And the members of the faction would not harm each other no matter how violent things got, but unerringly go after you.
Add in sliminess and rotting-ness and you've got the ideal movie zombie. Fearsome on two counts and just plain disgusting on a third.
No comments:
Post a Comment