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Calamities and Piano Lessons
Leg-waxing day today. Got up earlier than my current sleep habits wanted me to, shaved various parts, showered, dressed reasonably cutely and headed off to be denuded. Then ran a few other errands and had a big lunch. Now it's 1:30 and I'm at my desk and I have a lot of work to do and I'm too full and too tired to do it. Give the Eccentric Flower a big fat zero for planning. (But, darn it, I was hungry!)
So I'll just file random thoughts here instead for a little while.
No one has posted mouth organ messages on the new items. I hope my infrequent updating there isn't driving people away. I don't worry about who reads this (ah, ye merry crop of masochists, I love you all anyway), but mouth organ is something I take seriously and when people stop coming, I get nervous. (Nervous enough to advertise or promote the site? Don't be silly. I do have my principles, after all.)
Today, in a novel twist to the endless rain, it came down as snow. It was rain by the time it hit ground, though.
Speaking of weather, the other day I was walking home and there was a big commotion - fire trucks, police cars, et cetera. Now, this does not always mean anything, because I live in Somerville. I often say I live in Boston, because it's all one big urban area and Boston is recognizable while Somerville requires clarification. Somerville is mostly residential, and while still urban it has a very different character from Boston. In Boston, you get the bare minimum of emergency response for a 911 call or any other cataclysm; they're simply too overbooked. In Somerville, they're bored. That's my theory. Not enough happens.
How else can you explain when a policeman pulls over a traffic offender in front of my house, and suddenly three other police cars pull up just to see what's going on? How else do you explain the other night when, on my side street, there were no fewer than five fire trucks (all flashing their lights), but no obvious fire or emergency in sight? (Eventually a few firemen emerged from one of the houses and they all got in their trucks and left. False alarm, do you think?)
At any rate, this was an actual emergency. About half a tree - a major branch and a large chunk of trunk - had detached itself from its natural habitat in the wind and was dangling, heavy end suspended, from the power lines. Several of them had already broken and were lying around on the sidewalk, waiting for unsuspecting passers-by.
I suppose that justifies the response.
Patrick wants to know what's worse than dragging a queen-sized futon up stairs by yourself. Simple, Patrick: Moving an upright piano up a narrow set of stairs with turns in them. We had six people and it was still unholy hell. That was, oh heavens, I can't say how many years ago; I have only moved a piano once since then, and the maximum height change along the way was three inches. I do learn. Eventually I got even smarter and just stopped owning pianos. It's not like I ever played them when I had them.
I think my dad was always a little disappointed that I didn't show more interest in the piano. Piano was his life. He never pushed, though. He got me piano lessons - twice, maybe three times - and each time it was at my request. I don't think I was trying to please him, either; I'd genuinely like to be able to play the piano better than I can, but I don't like it enough to work at it. (I can find my way around a piano well enough, but I sight-read so slowly that it's useless.)
There were other problems as well. I still remember a few of the utterly useless pieces of music from some of my piano books. Some of them were catchy, but reinforce my contention that piano study books are written by people who aren't talented enough to make a living writing actual music. The material doesn't inspire much love for the subject, if you see what I mean. One teacher didn't believe in using the packaged series (i.e. David Carr Glover and other people with entire lines of graduated books). You'd think that would be interesting, but what did I end up with instead? Mikrokosmos. Piano exercises written by Bela Bartok. I have never forgiven Bartok. I won't listen to his work to this day. These exercises were completely random - honest - it was like just banging various notes all over the keyboard (but at exactly the correct tempo)! They gave me headaches.
My favorite piano books at the time were not anything my teachers gave me but the books we'd sing from in music class in school. Folk songs and other old chestnuts ("This Land Is Your Land," "America the Beautiful," and so forth), plus a lot of the silly songs kids like, such as "Don Gato," which I remember an embarrassing amount of. (I bet my sister does too - when she went to school she had the same music books, and I recall hearing her sing it from time to time.)
Those were songs, it seemed to me, that had a point - I mean people could actually sing them. This went with my early contention that if music isn't vocal music, it's a second-class citizen. (Of course I would not have said it that way at the time!) It took me a long time to grow out of that ... and to this day, music without words is generally something that I appreciate mostly in the background. There are very few pieces of instrumental-only music that I can just sit and listen to without my brain wanting to gyrate off to other things.
Besides, all those old chestnuts are tremendously easy to play. "This Land Is Your Land" only has three chords, and always in the same pattern.
© Columbine
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