I was completely tired and off focus during the 9 AM interview with Huffington Post. I think it went well enough, though. I don’t know what to expect but it’s not going to be any kind of a hatchet job. Why would it be? Someow I neglected to mention that I have a personal letter from Vladimir Horowitz to me from 1989, when I was in college. It is a prize possession and should have been included in any discussion of my piano studies. I e-mailed her afterward with a photo of the letter, which she said was very cool. She had actually seen it but did not realize what it was. Will be nice if that makes it into the story given its uniquness.
There was a lot of picture taking. I probably looked OK, with hair about three-quarters dried from the earlier shower. She was actually early, which was honestly a bit irritating since I was not happy with the stricture of 9am Saturday morning being the absolute only possible time this meeting could be arranged. I was going to nuke some bacon when the doorbell rang. My doorbell could wake the dead and its brutal shrillness did little to smooth my sleepless and slightly boozey nerves.
If I started feeling unease about the encounter it was on account of how some of the questions were precisely the same questions asked of me by a Readers Digest reporter who interviewed me years ago for several hours, mining my entire existence for material and arriving at what sounded like pretty insoucient observations. Then she never wrote the story. It was a monster waste of time and energy, not just being interviewed by her for so many hours but also being subject of of a similarly endless photo shoot at a phone booth under the Brooklyn Bridge. Why would Readers Digest send anyone out to write about me in the first place, then actually go the extra expense of hiring a veteran photograher (who was quite good, btw), then never use any of the material and never extend me the courtesy of an explanation… Ah who cares. Whatever that was about with RD I don’t imagine today’ˋs piece will fall into that same rabbithole….
Discovering the music of Xaver Scharwenka. Music by great pianists has always appealed to me, regardless of its quality as music. The great pianists simply had a physical and visceral feel for the instrument that non-pianists lack. Beethoven is often said to have been a great pianist but I think I can tell where his ability to play his own scores reached its limits, and where he delegated the responsibility of playing that stuff to dedicated pianists.
I knew a few of Scharwenka’s pieces but yesterday and today wandered through a couple of hours worth of new-to-me stuff. All I could think while reading through this stuff was “This guy must have been such a great pianist.” It was beautiful to feel the way his music fit into my hands. Not all the music is particularly great, though a few gems stand out. With composers like Scharwenka it feels like one is picking up a delightfully screaming infant, the piano writing is just so full of the stuff of life. Life’s Stuff.
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Going to ramble Astoria/Woodside, weather allowing.
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It is the next day. Sunday. At the ghetto coffee shop. Slept late but it was not good sleep. I did something I have not done for many months. Unable to sleep I got up and did a couple of vodka shots. Ssuch a stupid thing to do but it knocked me out like nothing else. I guess this interview was more stressful than I expected. I don’t really feel like typing today. I mean I do but I don’t. I realized after the interview yesterday that I did not mention this among my many other pursuits in life. No .MOBI. That’s probably just as well. I forgot most of my prepared lines but did go off farther than I would have expected with regard to Keri, and the convoluted path that brought her old Minolta Maxxum film SLR into my possession. I was thinking of Keri recently, some stream of consciousness that started while talking to the therapist. Keri and I used to really talk. I mean for long hours and about important stuff. I pretty well forgot about that until recently. She was an interesting individual.
