An integrated shackle for the tack

I've always loved the idea of a gooseneck holder. It's one of those things that sound much more interesting that you think. I know now, whereas I didn't once upon a time, that it's a piece of equipment musicians use, but before I knew this I imagined all sorts of possibilities, not the least of which was literally holding onto a goose by its neck in some sort of prefabricated holder. 

I suspect this isn't as easy as it sounds, however effective the holder is. Geese aren't by nature the most amiable of creatures, and even if you managed to catch one in the aforesaid holder, it's likely its mates would be onto you in a flash, pecking away at whatever body part they could aim most directly for. 

The holding of the holder might be short-lived in such a case. 

Courtesy: Joel Bradshaw

Goosenecks don't just appear on geese, of course. Nor is it only musicians who deal with them. A gooseneck appears on a sailing boat and is, according to Wikipedia, the swivel connection on a sailboat by which the boom attaches to the mast. The boom moves from side to side and up and down by swivelling on the gooseneck. 

This gooseneck may be a two-axis swivel, in fact, with an integrated shackle for the tack. These are common. Something about the first sentence in this paragraph strikes me as having a poetic shape:

This gooseneck may be a 
two-axis swivel, with an 
integrated shackle for the tack. 

Don't you love that last line: an integrated shackle for the tack. I have no idea what it means, but no doubt Wikipedia would inform me if I was a mind to find out. Here's another version of the verse:

A two-axis swivelling gooseneck
has 
an integrated shackle for the tack. 

Getting better all the time. It just goes to show you where a bit of creative meandering on a topic will lead you...

Holders of various sorts

There's something wonderful about the way in which words are invented for different crafts, jobs, and technical areas. The music world has a number of them, some of which I've talked about in other posts, but here's my latest discovery: a gooseneck holder.

Rather than try and describe this, I've added a photo of one form of this rather cute device:

It reminds me of something from an animated movie, though I can't put my finger on it at the moment.

A related musical item, in a very loose sense (the main connection being that it holds something) is the folding music stand. I don't mean those solid stands that are guaranteed to hold the music upright even in an earthquake or tornado, but the ones you unfold bit by bit, trying to work out why it looks as though it's going to blow apart on you as you do so. An example is in the picture below:

The choir I conduct, The Choristers, went out to sing at a rest home today. I'd left the good music stand that they've provided for their conductor back at our rehearsal room (its only quirk is that it has a tendency for the separate parts to...separate). So I grabbed a music stand from home that I was given recently by a friend who'd got it from another friend who's since died. (Are you keeping up?) I'd been grateful to get that new one, because the one we've had in our house since my daughter was at intermediate school (it has her name and the school's name on it) is a little monster than hates to have to stand up and hold anything. It says that after nearly thirty years of being in my house it probably needs a rest. (I've given it a rest: out on the pile that's going to the junk yard.)

The one I was given recently is a more well-behaved character. I thought. As soon as I went to stand it up at the rest home, it claimed that I was opening it incorrectly, and promptly threatened to burst apart. I folded it again, tried again. It still looked as though the actual part that holds the music would throw any music placed on it onto the floor, So I folded it up and tried a third time, finally managing to figure out its intricacies. Even then it demanded not to stand in the position I wanted, but at an angle it claimed was more suitable. (It wasn't.)

Not a good way to start a performance....