Singing on the roofdeck

After my final exam today--my last assignment of the year--I decided to do something deeply meaningful and self-directed. To celebrate life with other people. To do something spontaneous.

My first thought was to celebrate with my roommates, but they were not to be found when I arrived home. So I proposed several ideas to some friends and other housemates: hula-hooping, singing and guitar, wandering around Boston, music jam in the dark on the roofdeck--but they were unexcited. By the time the evening rolled around, I had succeeded only in eating dinner and attempting to rescue a moth that had become trapped in our room.

In the process of ousting this very confused moth, I ended up on the fire escape (our "balcony"), looking in at Alorah, one of my newly returned roommates, through the now closed fire escape window. I ran back inside by climbing down the fire escape and entering pika from the floor below, excited to tell her how I felt I must urgently do something deeply meaningful.

Despite having two finals yet to take, she was enthusiastic when I proposed we sing sea chanteys, and that I give her a viola lesson on the darkened roofdeck. So she rounded up Rod while I tuned my viola. He decided to join in our jam and got a saw to play!

We started with me showing Alorah how to hold a viola. Alorah asked a lot of inciteful questions and was a fast learner. She played hot-crossed-buns. Then Rod showed us how to play the saw. It sounded etherial, and Rod said we could get an even better sound out of a longer saw. Alorah then sang a slow sea chantey for us--she had such a beautiful voice! Rod and I had never heard her sing before. Together, we sang three chanteys, and I learned to play them on my viola.

Along the lines of my previous posts, what was inspiring about this? Definitely Alorah's voice! We should sing more chanteys together. And maybe some Russian folk music--that would be amazing.

I felt so proud when Alorah and Rod complimented my playing. It was quite strange. I like to play music to connect with other people, and I think pride in my ability would set me apart from them more than it would bring us together. The solution to this is probably to play with other people more often. Then they won't be so excited to hear my viola--in a good way.