Channeling Henselt

Another bit of telephone weirdness just occurred. A call from an unknown number from a woman asking if I had just called her. I had not. All I could say was “No.” I think she made a grunt of perturbation but I just hung up. How could anyone think I just called them when I did not? I know phone number spoofing is easy to do but I can’t imagine why that would be happening. Her number, however, was suspiciously similar to mine. But not similar enough that that could be any source of confusion.

Maybe I just missed a chance for randomness and romance. I could call her number now from LinkNYC devices. If she looks up the CallerID she should find my web site, which discusses LinkNYC’s spoofed CallerID. She would find my web site and it would be LOVE.

I was thinking that if that woman from the law firm called again I might actually call her back. The firm specializes in Visa and immigration matters. But how much of a longshot is it for someone like that to reach out to someone as unlikely as me, and with minimal explanation as to why? There was no explanation save for the Parc Lincoln connection.

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If I had a weak heart I think I’d be dead by now. I just cannot stand the Internet or working with computers anymore. It is a continuous series of shit inexplicably not working, working half-assed, and getting in the way of what should be simple tasks. Today one of my hard drives disappeared from the home network, while another started clucking like a pigeon. God, I hate pigeons. WordPress for some reason kept logging me out, thus deleting paragraphs of text I had written. It took almost 2 hours to piece together a 5-paragraph story that should have taken 15 minutes.

And best of all I do not even care one whit about the story or the content. Any enthusiasm for producing web content is just not there anymore, making the technical barricades all the more anger-inducing. People passing by my open window must think there is a caged animal being tortured in here.

I wake up feeling fine. I know I can feel good. But any kind of constructive work I try to do just makes me want to die. I want to be happy. That is what I want. I know what makes me happy: Comfort and contentedness. Security. A life with no feelings of being threatened or doomed. I feel doomed. I don’t want to be anywhere.

Of course we all are doomed. Birth is just the beginning of dying, as (I believe) Jimmy Breslin once wrote.

I will just change who I am. That’s easy, right? Yeah. Another simple personality change. Those are easy.
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Should be more serious about the podcast thing. My voice seems to tell stories better than the pen these days.

Listening to piano music and thinking: I remember this. I can do that. I can play anything. My current interest is the music of Alexandre Tansman. Some of it is interesting, other of it a curious mix of earnestness and wooden brittleness. He seems to be better known for his guitar music. Hmm, online sources say Tansman was a virtuoso pianist. His piano music does not feel like that which came from the hands of a virtuoso.

Maybe I’ll get on a bus and go somewhere new. New to me. A friend once made an interesting comment, that travel is not just about seeing things. It is also about being seen. The cultures and values of others, projected onto you, can be self-revelatory.

I am listening to David Bowie after learning that a long-time friend regarded him as one of his musical heroes. I was never much attracted to the music but he seems to have been an admirable human being, and someone I would want to know. Sartorially prescient, to say the least.

I heard that there was laughter coming from his studio in the days before he died. I liked hearing that. It reminded me of a college friend who graduated and went to do post-grad studies at some butthole community college. The caliber of students and professors at that place (I have no memory the school’s name) was nowhere near that of Oberlin. After attending that school for a few months he came to pay a visit to the alma mater. Someone said something funny and we all laughed. He said “That’s what I miss. People just don’t laugh.” I don’t think he meant anything insulting by the comment but he seemed to imply that intelligent people laugh more than the not-so-bright.

I don’t know if he was right about that. Might give it some thought, or I might not.

My Plex server has complete discographies of David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Elvis, and maybe 3-dozen other bands in which I have limited interest. Just accumulating for the purpose of having a virtually infinite library of music. I really should listen to more stuff, and watch more of the movies I’ve hoarded. I start into some things but just don’t have the patience these days… or these years. Yo, those years just keep passing by.

Now listening in on Henselt’s F Minor Concerto, an old college favorite. Love that rip-roaring arpeggio stuff in the middle of the first movement. This is the Hamelin recording, which I think does not hold a candle to Lewenthal’s, though it’s been a long time since I heard the latter.

Henselt was a self-admitted failure. In his last days he wrote that he knew he had failed to accomplish what his talents made him capable of. No wonder I’m listening to his music. I used to play one of his 12 Etudes. I think it was the last one, in B-Flat Minor. Loved that piece, and playing it. It was like good sex. UPDATE: Here it is. Damn I could play this sucker.