I can barely see what I am typing, since the glare from the sun is so bright. At the TrumpTower on NY Primary day. For the first time ever I had to let a ssecurity goon inspect the contents of my bag. You gotta wonder what all this election stuff means to the people who work here. This tower seems like such a lot of frosting on a turd, to use an analogy I typically apply to anti-depressants. Like putting frosting on a turd. Here, though, and I’ve felt this way for a long time, it seems like the organization is simmering in its own fluids. Most of these folks do not make a lot of money, but they seem happy enough to be here. But do politically challenged individuals come to the Trump Tower and lambast the employees for choosing to work for this person?
I noticed a long time ago thatTrump uses GoDaddy as its domain name registrar. That is pretty unprofessional for a seemingly esteemed company to use a registrar associated with boobies and tawdry television commercials. I happen to use GoDaddy but it’s as much out of laziness as anything. I don’t remember those stupid commercials being around when I started buying domain names, and changing registrars is time consuming when you have even a few dozen domains.
It is 2pm. Shrink appointment is at 3:40. I had a small sliver of doubt regarding the time so I called earlier to confirm. I guess this really matters to me, this psychiatrist thing. I am going to get there early so I can take a dump. I could do that here. Trump Tower is a great place to take a dump. But it’s eletion day and if Mexico chooses today to bomb this building I don’t want to be that amusing footnote of a casualty who was killed in the attacks while taking a dump.
I cannot get over how beautiful that Rachmaninoff-Volodos transcription is. I should amend what I said earlier: It’s is not extraordinarily difficult, but it is uite a tangled mass of polyphonic lines and lava. I remember my first piano teacher, in the 4th grade, describing the music of Liszt. she said when you get to that stage of piano playing the music itself is just about impossible to read. That teacher told this to my mother, not to me. It seems odd that the custodians of a 4th grade piano student would be talking about Liszt, whose scores are pretty much all beyond the reach of most any grade schooler. I guess they had high hopes for me. My mother reminded me of that conversation years later, when I was playing Liszt’s “Don Juan” Fantasy. She said that Sr. Theodora (my first teacher) must have been talking about that piece when she said it was just impossible to even read, or to look at without getting a headache.
That piece was considered the Mt. Everest of piano playing back in school. I would think that estimate of the Don Juan has not changed much, though for broader repertoire the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto is probably considered the most difficult piece in the standard repertoire. Once you go beyond the standard repertoire you open that pandora’s box of Sorabji, Stockhausen, and others who wrote insanely difficult shit that seldom gets heard in concert halls.
I was really happy yesterday to find that my favorite barista is still working at the teeny-tiny coffee shop I found some months ago. I’ve mentioned him here before. He almost always has some insanely weird story to recount. I didn’t stay long yesterday but we spoke some. Last time I saw him was several weeks ago on the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge. He’s not going to be a best buddy I don’t think but he represents my ongoing if slow-moving attempt to make friends outside of the bar scene in my neighborhood. My favorite bartender at my old regular pub is quitting, which really sucks. On the other hand it might mean that we become actual friends and not just two people with a very congenial and at times ribald server/customer relationship.
Tourists are coming and going through here today, though never more than 3 or 4 at a time. I am sitting in a somewhat conspicuous spot, so everyone passing through sees me, makes eye contact, smiles, doesn’t smile. I see where paint has peeled from what looks like a diagonally-oriented ladder leading to some air conditioner vents on the east side of the TrumpTower. Somebody is emptying a trash can and replacing the garbage bag with one that is new, clean, and empty. That person is now checking his phone and perhaps texting somebody, or else he is jotting down an inspired thought that he wants to have handy later. Maybe he is writing about me at the same time I am writing about him. He is describing a middle aged white guy wearing a Charlie Brown shirt and sitting alone in the Public Garden space, typing quietly. He is still punching words into his phone, perhaps messaging conspirators that he is ready to leave the explosive device in the garbage can but that this obstinate individual wil not leave the Public Garden. “We can’t have innocent casualties, or else Trump will gain sympathy”, is what he just texted to somebody. I hear sirens downstairs. Long, wailing, melancholy siren sounds slowly heave. There is an art to that sound and (I think) a physical substance.
