Experience is a nasty bitch

So last Wednesday, I got a good solid whang in the back of the head with a cello case. I'm not gonna lie; it hurt a whole lot, and I told the carrier of the cello as much.

Now, oddly for being smashed in the back of the skull, I had an instant full-lobed headache. Also, I was pretty dizzy; carrying my bass down the hall seemed unnecessarily balance-challenging. I made it through orchestra (the throbbing asymmetry of Mars didn't help matters), walked my bass back, and drove home. (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't think about what a bad idea that was until later.) I walked in to the apartment, went to pee, washed my hands, and took a long look in the mirror.

It would have been a brief glance, except that I noticed my pupils were engorged for no reason.

Actually, said that snarky inner monologue, they're dilated for a very good reason; you have a concussion, dumbass.

It was about then that I got a call from my Escape Valve from the Estrogen Pit, asking what I was doing tonight. I told him I was really goddamn tired and sort of wanted to nap for a while, not to mention the terrible headache from intersecting vectors with a cello case. He pointed out that common knowledge has strong beliefs against sleeping after a head wound.

So I did the next natural thing; I called my mom and freaked her out, asking questions about how injured should I be before I went to the ER. She said it was cool and I could sleep, which I proceeded to do with passionate nappitude.

Post-nap, I went to hang out with the EVfEP (though there was only one person present for that terrible event), and established my new, total inability to communicate in an intelligent fashion for the next twenty-four hours. Which leads us back to the underlying music theme, you see, because the next evening I had to go to Music Theory class.

Dr. Iannaccone began playing this piece by Mendelssohn, and asked me what technique was being employed to mix up the variations. Now, what was happening was this: a theme was being introduced in the top voice, and while it continued on to new material, that same theme was played in the lower voice. This technique is called 'imitation,' because music theorists aren't that creative when they're naming things. It's frequently used in the works of J. S. Bach.

I stared at him blankly, trying to be as uncreative as I could possibly be, and I failed, utterly. The word was not coming to my mind, regardless of how desperately I tried to pull something from the shaken recesses of my mind.

Finally, with infinite blanditude, I asked if he was just Bachin' it up.

That got a laugh out of him and the class, and he didn't ask me another question for a significant portion of the class. Fortunately then I got it right. (Deutsche uber-massige sechste Korden <3)

Aside: Haha, Jake, I managed to use both throbbing AND engorged in a totally non-sexual context. HA HA.