A day spent at the piano for 3 or 4 hours, playing through music I haven’t touched in years, should not feel like a day wasted but somehow it does. A day spent re-creating the music of others would have been more meaningfully spent creating music of my own. I started composing but succumbed to the tempatation of taking the easier route. I got through most of “Pictures at an Exhibition”, which I played in college and in New York. I don’t think I ever played it particularly well but I think I could now. I think I get the Russian aesthetic a little better now than I did 25 years ago. It’s that borderline bombasticism that I can hear and connect with now. I learned parts of that piece incorrectly There is a lot of switching of the left and right hands that I never fully locked in. I used a lousy Kalmus edition. Generally speaking I think that equating your experience with a piece of music on the edition that you used is a cop out and an excuse, but that Kalmus edition really did suck. Today, free of charge, I downladed multiple editions, all of them superior to the one for which I paid cash money, from IMSLP.org.
I spent most of the day at the piano, partly as a way to pass the hours waiting for UPS. The package finally arrived around 6pm, and was left on the floor of the building lobby. A signature was allegedly required but none was solicited. This package contained a rather expensive Samsung gadget, which I did not appreciate being left up for grabs in a box that pretty clearly indicated that an expensive gadget was contained therein. When I picked up the box I could see why the UPS person just said fuggit, and left it there. The address label was not printed very clearly, and it looked like my apartment number was 2G, which does not exist in the building. Someone had further handwritten “2G” on the box. If I was annoyed at the ~$800 package being left out like that I can at least give the UPS person some respect for not throwing it back into the truck.
If apartment 2G did exist in my apartment building it would be on the 7th floor, which itself does not exist. My building’s numbering is weird. Apartment 5A is on the first floor, while 5D is on the 4th. It’s the letter that signifies the floor, not the number, as is typical. SO FUCKED UP, MAN! IT’S JUST SO FUCKED UP. AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS SUPER FUCKED-IN-THE-HEAD IS THAT SOME LIGHT SWITCHES YOU HAVE TO FLIP THEM DOWN TO TURN ON THE LIGHTS, WHILE OTHERS YOU HAVE TO FLIP THEM UP. HOW DO I FUNCTION IN THAT ENVIRONMENT OF EXCEPTIONAL UP-FUCKEDNESS?
The gadget is the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which will replace the Note 2 that I have used since Sandy rolled through in 2012. Just thought I’d share. I do not use the pen often but I always appreciate having it when I do.
I am at the millennial bar again. No compelling reason or potential circumstance draws me here save for the comfort that I will not see anyone I know, nor will anyone I know see me.
That reminds me of an interesting comment a friend made. He is a citizen of the world, raised in Ohio but he’s lived everywhere on this planet. He once told me that travel is not just about seeing things, it’s about being seen. He did not articulate that point to any detail but I took it to mean that exposure to the mores and values of a society reveal raw and unexplored qualities of yourself that might otherwise remain obscure to you. It is a reasonably profound comment which said friend has no memory of making, and that is how I know it was sincere.
Whenever I think of that comment I circle back to a conversation I had with an underage kid at the old Broadway Station bar in Astoria. Today that place is a somewhat repugnant sports bar but before it was renovated as such Broadway Station was a depressing-as-fuck old man pub. An elderly man tried to feel me up once. I managed to escape, to his obvious frustration.
I was talking to a kid who said he lived in the Ravensood projects, which are nearby. He was obviously underage but that didn’t seem to flummox the bartender, who never asked him for ID.
I don’t remember what we were talking about but every once in a while, in response to something vaguely revelatory I said about myself, he would show a shellshocked smile and say “Man, I just saw you. I saw you!” He looked at me with genuine wide-eyed respect, as if he had never before heard honesty from another human being. He was a funny sort of drinker, obviously new to the hobby but possessed of a certain swagger. He kept asking the bartender to make his drinks “stronger”. I think he was swilling vodka & cranberry juice.
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I learned yesterday that my friend from high school (who does not talk to me any more) is going to be playing at the 30th Reunion which is coming up some time soon. He plays guitar, rock and roll stuff, and a band that he played in back them is going to reunite for this limited time engagement. Good for them, I guess, it sounds like some raw fun. I hope they are getting paid. I can’t help imagining the ludicrosity of the possibility that anyone in the alumni echelon would even consider asking me to play at this event. I mean what jock-heavy 30 year high school reunion would be complete without a little Moussorgsky from an outcast loser who stood out but never fit in? Hah.
Therapist and I talked about high school reunions. We concur that these things are mostly attended by the “popular” kids, while I added that I think the only reason people go to these things is to stick it to their perceived skeptics by showing how well they turned out. I encouraged her to read “American Pastoral”, one of Philip Roth’s later books, which focused on the world of shit inherited by The Swede, a high school god who lost his glamour on account of his asshole hippy daughter. Therapist seems to appreciate my random pockets of literacy. I tend to think that there are probably only about 7 or 8 books one truly needs to read in life, and that those books explain all you need to know about the rest. There is no unique list of those 7 or 8 books. That list differs from individual to individual.
