Separated at Birth

So we had orchestra rehearsal tonight, and my conductor has been acting really weird lately. I mena, there is just something off with him these days . . . he's been manic and then really harsh and critical. I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't like it. You can just see the fun going out of people's eyes. It's not like we are professionals. We're good, but we all have other jobs, and most of them are pretty intense. I'm not the only graduate student in the group, and others are professors, lawyers, doctors, researchers . . . etc. It's not like we sit around all day watching television (okay, it's not like we sit around *most* days watching TV. . . every once in a while, I do) The point is, we all do our best and practice as much as we can, and granted, I don't practice every day--I can't. But by the time the concert gets here, I'll be able to play the piece. But the conductor just WENT OFF on some of the players tonight. Thankfully, I wasn't one of them, but even so I don't think the terror tactics are appropriate for this kind of thing. Tonight was the second time he threatened to make us all play a difficult passage solo next week. That might have been a good motivator in high school, but it's not high school. We're all there because we want to be, We don't get paid. We don't get mileage. We don't get home until 10:30 on rehearsal nights, and most of us have to get up in the AM and work the next day. Obviously we play because we want to play. There's no other reason. We don't want to suck or put on a bad concert--these things are givens, so there's no need to play the humiliation card. Someone forgot to give that memo to the conductor.

But the real reason I wanted to blog tonight was because my sometimes stand-partner came to rehearsal and looked at me and said, "Oh my God." I was like--"What? Am I bleeding?" She said, "no." and then I looked at her, and honest to god, we looked exactly alike. I don't just mean that we were dressed the same (we were: dark jeans and a white t-shirt), but we both have similar glasses, and the best part, we both had done our hair (which is of similar color) in two buns/knots. We look enough a like that we could probably convince someone that we're sisters anyway, but tonight it was like we planned to dress up as each other on purpose. The best part of the rehearsal was watching other members of the orchestra notice that we were being musical Bobbsey Twins and start cracking up at various different times. The strangest thing is that I don't know anyone else who wears her hair that way--I thought I was being all quirky this AM--guess not.