Thursday, March 30th
Only in Clintonville
So I had a couple of interesting conversations recently. The first one was in a computer store:
Me: Do you have plastic ties to tie up loose wires inside a computer?
Him: We build computers here- what do you think?
Me: Well, I knew that you must have them, but do you sell them?
Him: No, we don't sell them.
This one is with a patron on my route:
Him: Do you have a form to discontinue mail delivery here?
Me: Are you moving and changing your address?
Him: No I still live here. I just don't want any of my mail.
Me: You can refuse all your mail, but it will all go back to the sender.
Him: That's OK. Do you have a form for that?
Me: No. The surest way to make sure you don't get any mail is to take your mailbox down.
The next day the mailbox is gone.
Tuesday, March 28th
Which way is Home?
Friday night I dreamed I was in a school trying out for a church worship band. The person heading up the auditions was a worship leader I used to work with years ago and didn't have a particularly easy relationship with. At the start of my dream I'm sitting in the auditorium trying to figure out what I'm going to sing when it's my turn. I decide I'm going to sing this:
Tiptoes in silence 'round my bed
And quiets the raindrops over my head.
With an everlasting smile
She stills my fever for a while.
Oh, nursie dear I'm glad you're here
To brush away my fear.
But before I get a chance to sing the worship leader announces that tryouts are over. So I say loudly, "Hey, I'm here to try out!" And he answers, "You won't be trying out today," and it is clear by the tone of his voice that he really means "today or ever." So I look around for my guitar an slowly walk towards the back of the auditorium. Somebody stops me and says, "Hey, nice guitar." So I stop to look at it, and notice with some surprise that it is my old Gibson J45 that I sold about 20 years ago. It has traded its sunburst finish for blonde (I never did like sunburst), the Gibson logo on the headstock has become so faded that I can barely make it out, and the binding (which was cracked when I owned it) has come off in a place or two. But it is unmistakably my old guitar. So I thank him and tell him that it has a few flaws but it still sounds great.
When I get to the back of the auditorium I have to find my guitar case. I had forgotten what it looked like, but I recognized it immediately. It is immaculate as it was when I bought it to replace the cheap case that the guitar was in when I first got it. Then I slowly walk out the back of the auditorium through the back yard of the school to the footpath there. I can go either right or left. I immediately start to the right knowing it is the way Home somehow. At that point my son Jacob comes up and says, "Hey dad, I'm having a problem with my guitar. The balance is screwed up on it." I tell him that if the knobs are set properly than he'll have to have someone other than me check the wiring because I can't help him with that. He thanks me and goes off. Then I notice that the foot path off to the left is really attractive- a paved path sloping gently downward through a picture perfect green field, and then levelling off when it gets past the school. I can see down it for miles it seems. The path I have chosen, though, goes almost impossibly uphill through a thick and uninviting forest and is a hard bumpy dirt trail. I can only see perhaps fifteen feet up it before it is hidden by trees. For just a moment I wonder if maybe Home is down the easy path. But then I turn and go the other way, feeling but not knowing that I am going Home.
Thursday, March 23rd
Idol chatter
It's that wonderful time of the year again- American Idol time. My wife is a huge fan; me- not so much. But of course I end up "following" to a certain degree because Nancy never misses a show.
The first part of the show is absolute hell for me- the part where people try out and the judges make fun of them. Sad, really sad. This part of the show reinforces the myth of talent- that you either have it or you don't. I think it was Edison that said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Talent is the same way. I have actually known a few people who were truly awful singers, but by dint of hard work became pretty decent. It may have taken 10 times as long as the so-called talented people, but it happened.
I find the final countdown portion of the show much more enjoyable. The coolest part is seeing certain singers grow over time. For example, after the first show of the season one countdown, I was 100% sure that Justin Guarini would win the contest. But what happened over the course of the season was that certain people blossomed (notably Kelly Clarkston) whereas Justin actually went backwards. Who woulda thunk?
Last week we had Barry Manilow and the 50's. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. I had to chuckle to myself because I remember catching a blurb on one of the pop culture shows about Barry's new 50's CD. He was saying that there were some truly great songs from the 50's. Of course, I agree. Then the next shot showed him singing Unchained Melody. What a non-sequitur. I told my thoughts about this to Nancy and she told me that Unchained Melody is Simon Cowell's favorite song.
Idol night was kinda like that. I admit that it was really cool to watch Barry coach the contestants. I think he did way better than Stevie Wonder did last week. The contestants seemed appreciative, too, although confused. One of them even said something like, "Who is this guy, anyway?" No one said that about Stevie.
But the songs- oh boy! If this is representative of 50's music it must have been an awful time to be alive. In defense of the contestants, none of them were around in the 50's and when you have such a short time to pick a song you can't spend too much time bing choosy. The only decent song of the night was Come Rain or Come Shine.
Monday, March 20th
Panda Report
The main reason I started blogging was to deal with some of the inner turmoil I felt over political matters. Blogging really has helped with this, and I feel more peace with these issues. Fortunately I seem to be able to concentrate more on musical issues, which is good for me. I was meant to be a musician, not a politician. (Hey--- I was a poet, and I wasn't even cognizant of the fact.)
So perhaps it would be therapeutic to put down thoughts about musical matters on virtual paper as well. For the next five weeks at least I will be playing Friday and Saturday nights at Panda Inn. I'm a bit worried about this, actually. It's wierd- I played every Friday and Saturday at this restaurant for about six years without a worry in the world. Maybe it's because of Roger. Roger is a mailman at the same station I work at. Before he was a mailman, he made a living as a gigging musician- playing a B3 organ. (Actually it might have been a B2- or, well, something like that.) Anyway Roger keeps telling me I'll reach a point where I just won't feel like doing this anymore. Roger keeps his organ, two leslie cabinets, and other musical paraphernalia in his garage and although he tells me that although every so often he has the idea that he should pull it out and play it, when push comes to shove it stays in his garage.
I'm really afraid I will end up like Roger.
I'm sure a lot of Roger's situation has to do with the mechanics of hauling around huge amounts of heavy equipment when you get to be forty-something. For a very brief time I did a gig where I had to bring my seventy-something pound keyboard and associated sound gear to a place across town once or twice a week. Playing the music was fun, but I don't miss the hauling stuff back and forth one bit!
But of course Panda is different. I just bring my butt and sit it on the piano bench which itself sits nicely behind a fairly decent baby grand piano.
Last week at the restaurant was again pretty decent tip-wise. I'd like to think that I appreciate that more because it indicates that people are listening and appreciating what I'm doing than I'm a greedy sonofabitch. I suppose God only knows which it is. I sure do appreciate it when people show attention to the piano that is going in the background. There was a customer last week who brought me over a written list of requests- it's been quite a while since anyone did that. The list was:
Blackbird
Hotel California
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
I'd never played any of them, but I gave the last two a whirl. As I was playing Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I was thinking to myself, "God, this is a boring song!" It wasn't until I was reflecting on the experience a day later that I realized that I had left out the chorus.
Pretty much any song is boring if you leave out the chorus.
I spoke with this customer a bit later, and it turns out that she used to manage Howl At The Moon. I had earlier spoken with a couple of people that told me that I should have applied for a job there. Apparently there is the possibility of making considerably more money there than one makes as a letter carrier. I never seriously considered applying there, mainly because people reported that the piano player's main duty isn't so much to play music as it is to insult people in the audience. It isn't that I am so deluded that I don't think I would be good at insulting people- hell, I'd probaby be the best they ever had. But it wouldn't be a good situation for me. Anyway, this customer let me know I made a good choice. The company had a way of finding ways to let the piano players go when they reached a certain salary level. Ain't American business grand?
And she also clued me in to a place in the short north that hires piano players. When Mike gets back from Texas, maybe I'll check it out.
Monday, March 13th
Exerpts from The Tuning of the World by Murray Shafer
In discussing the transition from the rural to the urban soundscape, I will be using two terms: hi-fi and lo-fi. They need to be explained. A hi-fi system is one possessing a favorable signal to noise ration. The hi-fi soundscape is one in which discrete sounds can be heard clearly because of the low ambient noise level. The country is generally more hi-fi than the city; night more than day; ancient times more than modern. In the hi-fi soundscape, sounds overlap less frequently; there is perspective- foreground and background: "... the sound of a pail on the lip of a well, and the crack of a whip in the distance"- the image is Alain-Fournier's to describe the economic acoustics of the French countryside...
...Today the value of the automobile is under serious scrutiny. as local noise abatement by-laws and practices seek to reduce its sound output by setting increasingly tough noise standards, in the end perhaps only energy shortages will silence it. As the automobile becomes obsolete, its rattle becomes deathening.
Sheer volume aside, the human sound which most closely approximates that of the internal combustion engine is the fart. The analogies between the automobile and the anus are conspicuous. first of all the exhaust pipe is place at the rear, at the same position as the rectum in animals. Cars are also stored in dirty and dark underground garages, beneath the haunches of the modern dwelling. Freud says there are anal types. There are probably also anal eras...
...The Greek prefix schizo means split, separated, and phone is Greek for voice. Schizophonia refers to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustical transmission or reproduction. It is another twentieth-century development.Originally all sounds were originals. They occurred at one time in one place only. Sounds were then indissolubly tied to the mechanisms that produced them. The human voice traveled only as far as one could shout. Every sound was uncounterfeitable, unique. Sounds bore resemblances to one another, such as the phonemes which go to make up the repetition of a word, but they were not identical. Tests have shown that it is physically impossible for nature's most rational and calculating being to reproduce a single phoneme in his own name twice in exactly the same manner.
I coined the term scchizophonia in The New Soundscape intending it to be a nervous word. related to schizophrenia, I wanted it to convey the same sense of aberration and drama. Indeed, the overkill of hi-fi gadgetry not only contributes generously to the lo-fi problem, but it creates a synthetic soundscape in which natural sounds are becoming increasingly unnatural while machine-made substitutes are providing the operative signals directing modern life.
Thursday, March 9th
Need the advice of a crafty person
The bottoms of my chess pieces have degenerated so that they are covered with powdery stuff that gets all over the chess board. So I've scraped it off, but I need to glue some felt to the bottoms so that the pieces don't make such a loud klunk when moved.
So I'm gluing felt to wood. What is the best stuff to use?
Wednesday, March 8th
Time to play
Reading:
The Tuning of the World- Murray Shafer
Listening:
Dave Brubeck- Brubeck Time
Andy Woodson- Catalpa
Biometallic Fusion- Space Journeys
I had a great weekend playing at the restaurant last week. Just from a monetary standpoint it was notable, with Friday night setting a new personal record for tips. But it wasn't just that. It just felt good to play, and that doesn't always happen, especially at about 10 minutes 'till quitting time when there's just no inspiration at all and nobody has requested anything at all- not even the ever popular "Happy Birthday to You." There weren't a particularly large number of requests Friday night but the comments were good. Yeah, people actually talked to me. Some of them anyway. There was the guy that said, "What was that last one you played? I didn't recognize it, but it was beautiful!" And it felt good to tell him it was something I had written. Saturday there was the man that said the piano playing reminded him of being in New York City- and, yes, he had actually been there (I asked him) as well as Chicago and New Jersey.
Why is it that sometimes you are inspired and happy to be playing the piano, and sometimes it seems like a chore?
For the past couple of years at least I've been undergoing a crisis of faith of sorts. Not so much faith in God as faith in the church and the people that consider themselves the church. This ties in a lot to my piano playing, since ever since I can remember I've played music in church. At some point in the not so distant past playing music in church suddenly seemed pointless. No, worse than pointless- irritating and distracting to the real business at hand.
I just didn't know what the real business at hand was. And hence the crisis of faith.
But I seem to be getting over that ill defined crisis. Not that I know what the real business at hand is- but at least it feels really good just to play.
I find myself with the urge to continue on. Again, I don't know exactly what that means. Not continue on into a new venue or genre or anything like that. One of the frustrating things of my musical journey is that musically I seem to be attracted to everything at once, or nothing at all- which in my mind mean the same things, interestingly enough. One comment I get at the restaurant a lot is that I have a very wide range of stuff that I play- from classical to broadway to pop to ragtime to country, jazz, new age, TV themes, etc etc.
So I need to set some goals.
One small goal I have set for myself is to have Chopin's Fantasie Improptu down to the point where I can play a credible version of it by a week from Friday. There has been a lady in the restaurant a couple of times who tipped me very well for playing Memory and Music of the Night. And I think a lot of the tip had something to do with the fact that she had asked for Fantasie Improptu and I gave her a look which must have said something like, "Surely you're kidding." But nevertheless I did play the middle section as best I could remember it. The middle section is the dreamy slow section that the melody for the pop tune I'm always chasing rainbows comes from. That's the easy part to play. The outer sections are horrid fingerbusters that I've never been able to play even close to perfectly. The lady that requested these 3 pieces said that her goal is to sometime in her lifetime be able to play these pieces on the piano.
So, hey, maybe I need to set some new goals, too. Every pianist should have at least one fingerbuster to impress people with. So I might as well learn this one. It's not like I'm playing Carnegie hall and need to have it down pat. One interesting experience I had the other night was piecing together a credible version of Chopin's Raindrop Prelude upon request. Chopin was a popular guy last weekend for some reason. And, yeah, I didn't get every note right by a longshot, but it sure feels good to fill somebody's request.
Another possible project that I'll just throw out into blogdom is studying some jazz. I just can't do the main jazz voicing techniques and there's no way to learn them but the hard way. I've got some good recordings though that I can learn from- especially Brubeck Time, Which I was delighted to find in my parent's record collection. Might as well put it to good work.
Sunday, March 5th
A short study on Christian Anarchism
There is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God. Romans 13:1
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There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers. Matthew 21:33
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The Devil said to Him, "I will give You their splendor and all this authority, because it has been given over to me." Luke 4:6
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The tenants behaved disgracefully. Matthew 21:35-39
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"I give it (present tense) to anyone I want. If you, then, will worship me, all will be yours." Luke 4:6
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Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers? He will destroy those terrible men in a terrible way. Matthew 21:40
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Then comes the end... when He abolishes all rule and all authority and power. 1 Corinthians 15:24
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When 'those who sit in the seat of the lawgiver' (Mt 23:2) heard His parables, they knew He was speaking about them. Matthew 21:45
Friday, March 3rd
Did I dream this?
I could have sworn I saw a story last night on the news that the bomb squad was called in because of a potential bomb hazard. It seems there was a bicycle with a note on it which said, "This Bike is a Pipe Bomb." Only after the bomb squad had concluded that the bike was safe did somebody realize that the note was a flyer for a band.
The name of the band: This Bike is a Pipe Bomb.
But that story is just too wierd to be true. It must have been a dream I had. Right?
Thursday, March 2nd
Two Stories
One of my neighbors on Clinton Heights has been asking us to visit his church, so this Sunday we accompanied him to Columbus Mennonite on Oakland Park Ave. The sermon opened with an interesting story that struck a sympathetic chord in me. Then later this week I got a newsletter from sojourners magazine that had an interesting incident which also involved Mennonites. Interestingly, both stories seem to connect to each other- so I quote them both:
From Sojourners:
Biking wasn't a big part of my life growing up. In the suburbs of Washington, D.C., everything was far away, there was no public transportation, and I wasn't willing to spend bike-required energy to get where I needed to be. As a member of upper-middle class Americana I drove my gas-powered '96 Chevy to high school, college, and then to graduate school without much of a thought. But that was before America went to war with Iraq. And that was before I met Peter Dula.
Dula was at Duke University to defend his dissertation and give a lecture about his time with the Mennonite Central Committee in Iraq. He went to the Middle East to teach theology at a Christian college and to write about what he saw and experienced. What my ethics class expected the day he walked to the podium was a message of hope sprinkled with MCC recruitment talk. What we got was the face of war.
Dula was ashen when he addressed us with his typed speech. His voice and his words conveyed the bitterness of the present-day situation in the Middle East, the Iraqi hatred for Americans, and his powerlessness to distinguish himself from the occupying military forces and contractors. He told us how he had recently been evacuated to Jordan after a rash of expatriate kidnappings, leaving behind new friends whose futures were unknown. Everything about Dula spoke to us of the horrors of seeing one's neighbors' children kidnapped, of walking with fear along a deserted street, of seeing churches exploding in the night.
By the end, our ethics class sat in stunned silence. The least we could hope for was some way to respond. Should we go to Iraq and do the same? Is it time to picket the White House? Write letters? What do we do? Dula's answer was clear and emphatic.
"Ride your bike."
He repeated this short phrase twice but the second time it sounded more like a plea than a suggestion. Then he walked from the lectern and left a befuddled crowd to ponder his words and, hopefully, to act upon them.
From last Sunday's sermon at Columbus Mennonite:
Once there were two servants of a very wealthy king. The king asked them both to do a task for him. One obeyed the king and was promoted. The other disobeyed and was fired. Many years passed and the faithful servant, exceedingly wealthy and secure, set out to find the servant who disobeyed. He searched throughout the kingdom for days and could not find him. It wasn't until he happened upon the poorest shack in the kingdom's poorest neighborhood that he discovered his fellow servant. He pushed open the wooden door and there he was sitting on a dirt floor sipping thin soup. The king's faithful servant laughed at this sight and said, "My friend, if only you learned to obey the king, you would not be sitting there sipping thin soup." The poor servant looked up and said, "My good friend, if only you learned to sip thin soup, you would not have to obey the king."
Wednesday, March 1st
One Last Riddle
Should we pay taxes to Caesar, or not?
Here's what I think:
If you say "yes," you are probably a conservative.
If you say "no," you are probably a liberal.
If you say, "That's a trick question," you are probably Jesus Christ.
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