i checked in on the old rotary dial payphone up on Ditmars Blvd today. it is sitll there. it still doe snot have a dial tone, but the owner of hte store told me that the phone actually works, and could be restored to service, but that the phone company cut the line. that must have been before october, 2008, which is the last time i saw that old phone.
it was a beautiful day today. having changed my mind about Sunnyside I find myself looking at Astoria again, considering buildings and arrangements for buying or renting. buying would seem to make more financial sense, but renting has that illusory freedom i claim to crave. and everyone i know who bought or acquired real estate in the last 6 or 7 years (myself included) can not seem to get rid of it. my father would be pretty humbled, i think, to know that his property (the centerpiece of his alleged net worth) is essentially worthless. others i know who once boasted of the appreciation in value of their recently-purchased house or land have stopped bragging, and stopped with the claims that their financial freedom was but a real estate transaction away.
renting seems like a freer way to be, but owning would have other freedoms. i could sublet and sublease and go places for 6 months. tenants are a pain in the ass, and even if all tenants were perfect i know i would never actually sublet my place and go anywhere. my travel plans rarely go farther than buying trial size toothpaste and shampoo.
…..
sometimes i forget that practicing works. i mean, i know it works, but sometimes the results are surprising even for me, having played piano most of my life. i can trace with precision where i worked hardest on something and where i got lazy, or where i gave up altogether. that Schubert F Minor Impromptu has an ornaments passage in the opening seconds that has always confounded me. it just never seemed possible that there was any way to play all the notes. of course i arrived at that belief without ever working those notes, without ever working them slowly and in rhythms and in various modes of deliberateness. i was reminded of my college professor who sometimes would say that he could tell by listening to me play where i had practiced and where i had not. it seems so obvious ow but at the time i must have imagined that all talents were mercurial and self-perpetuating.
i played through that ornaments passage today, having worked it pretty well yesterday, and lo, i could play it! i could twirl through those notes — up until the last one, the last flourish. because i didn’t fully practice the last one, and i knew that. it’s all good. i just need to take that last flourish firmly into my hands. if i acontinue to have issues with that passage it is because i don’t like it much. it is florid but plodding in its way. that pattern also repeats near the end, which I forgot about… it’s the hardest passage in the piece, save for the constant annoyance of the typographical error that bugs me every time i pass it. it should be an e-flat in the left hand but it is a G. why? i do not know.
…..
i was watching Letterman last night, blanching at his pinstripe suit, not laughing once at anything that transpired on the show, but feeling like the camera work was strange. it’s like they were almost in his face, making his visage abnormally huge.
i remember an odd comment made to me by a friend. she said she didn’t understand the genre of comedy. she could not imagine paying money to go to an event where performers were expected to make her laugh. she just couldn’t imagine that. i thought that was odd, because i am a fan of the comedy genre, but i guess i can kinda understand it if i think about it long enough. holy shit, i’m going to a comedy show as soon as i finish typing this.
