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Me and Sylvia, smiling for the camera (August 2005)

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Jeremy's journal

Somehow, Cleveland has survived, with her gray banner unfurled -- the banner of Archangelsk and Detroit, of Kharkov and Liverpool -- the banner of men and women who would settle the most ignominious parts of the earth, and there, with the hubris born neither of faith nor ideology but biology and longing, bring into the world their whimpering replacements.

Gary Shteyngart


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🦋 ½ position

Here is how to play the key of E on the lower strings of a viola or, mutatis mutandis, the key of B on the lower strings of a violin:

NoteFingerString
E3rdC
F♯4thC
G♯1stG
A2ndG
B3rdG
C♯4thG
D♯1stD
E2ndD

Notice no open strings, which oh well.* The first and second fingers are only a half step apart and the first finger is only a half step above the open string, meaning your second finger lands where your first usually does.

Other keys this works for: B or F♯ on the upper strings of a viola, F♯ or C♯ on the upper strings of a violin. Ooh! and I just figured out you can start the scale on the fourth finger held in this position (i.e. where the high 3 would usually fall) and that opens up a bunch more keys.

*(Actually the open G string is the minor third, and open D is the minor 7th, so there is some room for using both of them -- last night we were playing "Cocaine Habit", which is in B, and I was getting a lot of use out of slurring D-D♯.)

posted evening of Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
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