i may have changed my mind about Sunnyside. i wandered around the area for an hour or so today, looking at it as someone who might want to move there, and it just did nothing for me. nothing is wrong with it, although most of the buildings i looked at were pretty dingy-looking on closer inspection. it is just not equal to any fantasies i may have had about the area — not that i had abundant fantasies or unrealistic expecatations. i just imagined that it would be an area that could give me a new perspective on living in New York, or on myself, or on SOMEthing… but it doesn’t seem like it would do all that. it’s too familiar even though i am not intimately knowledgable about the area, and the only thing that owuld change with a move over there would be my address. i am not disappointed in this development, though i expect to at least see an apartment or 3 before ruling it out altogether. if a change of perspective on things is what i need than i could accomplish that with a couple of weeks in Europe, or Canada, and I could probably accomplish either of those things at the same or lesser cost of moving a few miles away. and the same old reprise comes through: i have a perfectly decent place and no reason to move. Sunnyside might be more tantalizing if there was something there for me: a hot lover, a job, or a stupid cheap place to live. the places seem cheap over there, but that is all, and money is not a driving factor here.
i was looking at maps today, thinking of exploring New York state by car. i discovered through serendipitousness that someone with whom i was vaguely acquainted in high school is buried at a remote-seeming cemetery in Chatauqua County. that is not the Clinton’s Chautaqua, but the far southwest corner of New York state.
this person was a pianist, and he played a recital at the University of Tampa sometime in the mid 1980s. my mother and i attended, and it was the type of performance we talked about for years and years. it is impossible to know how i might feel about it today but at the time it was that good, that impressive. the concert ended with Liszt’s Norma Fantasy, a piece which remained my mother’s favorite for all times.
so i was touched 6 or 7 years later when, while leafing through copies of second-hand music scores at The Strand book store in New York, i discovered a surprising quantity of piano music scores. usually this bin had Broadway tunes at best, and children’s teaching methods as the norm. Nothing is wrong with those things but it made it all the more unusual to see copies of things like Brahms Piano Concerti and the complete Beethoven Sonatas in a place where Cats and Christmas carols were more common. this type of piano music surfaced rarely at The Strand, and never in any real quantity.
polling through copies of Schubert Impromptus and Liszt Concerti I then noticed the name of Michael Fardink stamped on the covers and first pages of all these scores. that was his hard-to-forget name. when i saw his name on all these volumes i either did not have my wits about me or else i did not know how these things work, but it did not occur to me that he had died and that his estate had been laid out to dry at bookstores and thrift shops around New York. i might have imagined that he wore out these scores and replaced them with new ones, or had extras, or that something was at work besides him being dead.
i probably looked up his name in the white pages, and i may have found it, but i never called the number or tried to contact him. i never knew him anywhere near well enough for that type of random outreach.
i mentioned this to my mother, and it must have been she who told me that he probably died. it was 1992, and for all the resources i knew of it was hard to find obituaries and death records, but in time i learned that he had died in 1991, maybe 6 months before i spotted his collection of piano music scores at The Strand.
it might surprise him to great depths if he could know that this virtual stranger is even thinking about him now, 21 years after his death, and he’d be even more alarmed to know that i am even remotely contemplating a visit to his grave in a far-off corner of New York State. but it’s a reason to go someplace random, and i would kinda like to see it for myself… and travel makes no sense without a destination.
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i ordered a new set of Charlie Brown T-Shirts for the spring season!
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as i was saying to myself this lovely afternoon, a trifecta of sour loneliness characterized my yesterday. i didn’t see it piling up like that, but it did.
there’s no need to describe the intricacies of hte thought process, but to make a long story short at about 3pm i started thinking that a girl i know might have gone to school with or even been friends with my lovely ex-gf who i dated from 2009-2011. both these girls are the same age (28), were born and raised in Astoria, and by my logic just might have gone to the same damn high school. i spent the late afternoon wandering AsLIC thinking how interesting that would be, but it was not to be. this other girl moved to Flushing and went to high school there before moving back here. it seemed so close, though, not just a possibility but a virtual inevitability.
so the sour loneliness came a few hours later when i discovered that the lovely ex was spirited away to a surprise bridal shower that same day, and had been at that event from what seemed like the moment i started having my thoughts about this possible connection. i don’t know if there is an energy flowing through the force field of human encounters but it seemed like her presence at the bridal shower coincided to the minute with my exploration of the connection with this other girl… and it sort of brought me down to earty again, because i was starting to get signs that there was trouble with the ex-gf’s engagement. i guess there is not any trouble with it. and as lways, i feel like the outside of her life. i’ll not be invited to the wedding to bridal showers, to anything to do with the big day, even if her most tangential friends of all times will likely be invited.
and then another thing happened but it’s not interesting to anyone but myself and it is too much to type…
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i am thinking of broadcasting again, from the piano. i remmeber last time i did it people were looking for my tip jar. i didn’t have one, didn’t need one, and i don’t need one now, but i might set one up anyway. when i see webcam tip jar i think of naked webcam girls and pornography, not Schubert or Nazareth. but hey, why not. there is a joy in sending money someone’s way, and why preclude the possibility?
the tag line for the broadcast would be “some guy playing piano. not a concert. expect stops/starts/wrong notes/cursing.” but i would only play music that i can more or less actually play…
my hands are looking better than before. i started pouring nivea and other lotions on them to rid them of the chaffing and blemishes, and dang if it didn’t work. i almost recognize the back of my hand!
